Is your current skills demonstrable ? I'd like to see this multiple percent returns per day/week first hand. Just being long S&P is no skill. Any idiot could have followed that no risk free money S&P thread and made a truck load.
THANK YOU John Sir,- you have not wasted your time. There are many folks including myself who have benefitted from this post which you carefully drafted. You have sensed the OP. is in for the quick buck and no matter what you tell- he/she is doomed to fail. As mentioned in Mark Douglas -disciplined trader book.. u cant control the market- and dont try that.its irrelevant- but more important is -can you control yourself - then you will be profitable in the Long term
SPY trading is so liquid but u find many quirks... for a SPY option once.- i saw a bid ask at 8 -9 cent.. i put in a mkt buy and what i noticed is it momentarily jumped 1 cent- executed and then reset back... freaking amaZing. when I placed a limit order to buy 9. then it moved to 10-11. the MMs will not leave 1 cent on the table... go figure..
1 cent is one cent. Do that all day, all day.....it adds up to good money and very little risk. Remember Citadel or someone bought Schwab's client book so they can execute like this all day. all dark pool stuff, and i think they paid only 1 billion for their trades and they made 9 billion one year or something off this. so you put an order with CS and they route it to Citadel and they manage their book off this jokers. these jokers have no idea which exchanges they are getting filled on. commission, "slippage", and then when they lose they aren't going to blame a fill a few cents off. or when they win they won't yell over a bad fill. and when they really get filled bad the broker can say "oh, fast market. nobody knows."
My experience is that they don't leave 0.0001 cent on the table. The price granularity doesn't go lower than that for me. But since they are in the business for profit, it should be obvious why they don't give money away. This is something most new comers, and even some old comers, don't get.
The required bare minimum capital for trading would be $1 million in today's money, with no margin for error. $2 million on the other hand would give some breathing space. A 20% return on $1m from trading is excellent or beyond excellent in anyone's book. $100k of the profit can be used for frugal living. The other $100k can be used for capital growth. Without a sizeable growth, the trading capital would be eaten up by inflation and become worthless. Now how many in retail has $1m laying around then ? We know plenty of people fall in the OP's 1k bracket, some people would fall in the OP's enhanced 10k bracket, a small few would fall in the 100k bracket. None of them will succeed, unless they have a good paying full time job on the side. If they did have a job on the side, that would more or less guarantee their failure in trading. Essentially, retail trading is a dead end. Anyway, I am not unfamiliar with high percentage returns. A couple of months ago, I made 25% return on capital. I knew I was in very serious trouble. Last month I made 10%. I was still in serious trouble. Needless to say I had to pay for my lesson. The lesson was expensive and I paid it with a great big grin, but I became a real trader. I now even know what it will take to succeed, down to the 10th decimal place on the capital.
I have demonstrated these skills on a regular basis, that is how I make my living. You said "I'd like to see multiple percent returns per day/week first hand" I'm sure that you would but I doubt that you ever will.lol You also said "Any idiot could have followed the no risk free money S&P thread and made a truck load", so I expect that you will be retiring to a billionaire lifestyle, because you have proven to me and most thinking people on here that you are well and truly qualified.lol Cheers John
I'm sorry but I nearly fell of my chair I was laughing so hard after reading your post.lol All I can say is if you are off your meds you need to get back on them asap.lol If you are on your meds then perhaps it is time to see the doctor about getting something stronger. lol Thank you, you have made my day.lol Cheers John
With any money less than, say 100k your business model is to sell subscriptions online to supplement your bad trading. 99% of all websites of gurus do this. margin will help the first year, and it is gambling, but if you learn to be less risky it can help. no margin, yes probably 500k with very little expenses the first few years. but yes, it's probably not enough and most newbies won't make 7-8% the first year; however, that is not a crazy return and if young, say 20's, you can live off your parent's stake. it's like sports....people make it, but odds are you have never met them.
Fair comment, although I would expect most new comers to think themselves lucky if they end the first year down only 7-8% and that is not including living expenses. I haven't traded stocks since the late 80s/early 90s, and yes you do need a substantially larger account to have any chance of earning a living thru equities, when I realized that derivatives provided the best RR and the ability to manage risk better, with equities you are always caught between two evils, either coping large losses in $ value when the market moves against you or getting chopped to pieces by the whipsaws, it's the natural rhythem of the market . Best to keep a large proportion of your assets earning a safe return whilst capitalizing on the leverage and risk management derivatives afford. But as always each to their own. Cheers John