The failure rate is about 80% to 90% across the board when accounting for survivorship bias in the data. But that number needs to be broken down more in terms of long term viability. Long term success is probably under 10% due to changing market conditions, volatility levels, liquidity, etc. The numbers have been pretty constant over the last 100 years and I have never seen any data from anyone that contradicts this.
Someone that who earns all their income from trading and trades full time. No other jobs. And someone that can pay all their overhead and living expenses and still build equity in their account for 3 consecutive years. For those of you who are familiar with Brett Steenbarger's books or blogs he actually goes into great detail on this and he actually breaks trading down into 3 levels. His level 3 is what I define as a successful trader. His book "enhancing trader performance" describes the levels. Off the top of my head those levels are: Level 1: net negative trader Level 2: scratch trader (someone who makes only enough money to cover commissions and maybe their expenses month to month. Level 3: Someone who is both net profitable and earns enough money to not only cover all their expenses and monthly bills but also builds their account equity at the same time. Level 1 and 2 have a burn rate. They have a finite amount of time before they run out of money. Level 3 is a trader that has the ability to completely support himself and continue to build his account balance year after year.
Maverick is just a trader. I think that he probably is a great trader...but I do not know him. Perhaps over at Bright Trading the teamwork effect is stressed. Eventhough trading is an independent kill first or get killed job. Maybe we forget that a teamwork atmosphere may be helpful to newbies....I think Bright Trading ought to lock up the great traders in the basement to do their trading to not scare away the gems waiting to be discovered. ElectricSavant
Don, Does Bright have any traders that work only options strategies (traders that rarely trade stocks)? http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=210243 TIA!
Just curious Don do you break down the traders you have at Bright into different categories by the way they trade... pairs, open, daytrade, combo, etc and see which group is more successful over the last year or so? I realize "success" can have many variables.... I don't suppose options or swing trading (outside pairs) are strategies used by your traders? Thanks. Also what is the min deposit for your firm these days?