You will be blown away once you get deeper into retail success stories. There aren't as rare as you might think, it's just that you won't find them anywhere because they have no incentive to show up in public. They don't have clients, they don't have a public balance sheet. Guys like @HighStakesCap or @TheShortBear are the exception because they have twitter profiles. I think the later started trading at 17 with a couple of grand and is now sitting at 200m at 24 years old. Just to show what is possible and what you should benchmark against when you start in this business. If you have a couple of grand to your name and you aim at 30% return "because not even hedgefunds can beat this consistently" you're doing it wrong. Rentec isn't your benchmark, Buffet isn't either. They have to manage billions and you have the luxury of handling peanuts. As said, with 5k you should be aiming to 10x your account within the first 1 or 2 years. Up until 1m and without the hassle of a regulated entity, trading is easy mode because you can play at the easiest table against the dumbest money. When you have to get into the main markets because you've maxed out capacity, things are getting super hard super quickly. I think atticus/poppy/dest had a thread here on ET where he fleeced Oandas digital options. Stuff like this is what you should focus on doing, yet people open IB accounts in droves to play against the big guys in the ES
did you see the article I posted in the chat where they gave people economic data ahead of time and asked them to trade the reaction.?
Nice story. It's amazing how timeless that book is in many ways. I may have to re-read it soon. That story reminds me of Mark Weinstein in Market Wizards. After he started doing very well in the market (after his first blow up) he decided to buy a castle in Europe for $350 000 and the market was going to pay for it. This quickly lead to a huge loss to the tune of $600 000 in a week. It seems like whenever you start thinking too much about the money in this game you're financially dead. Maybe that paradox is part of the reason why so many would be traders fail.
A 17 year old taking a couple of grand to 200M in 7 years should be a benchmark? I will check out his Twitter account, but my initial impression from those numbers is he must have been extremely lucky. There's a few retail success stories here in Norway as well from early adopters of crypto. I'm not sure how much skill was involved. Regardless. Inspiring.
I'm not saying that you should try to emulate that performance. He's extremely gifted. But if you get into the game by e.g. trying to learn scalping index futures via retail brokerage you are making it way harder for you than it needs to be. Really, the best game in town was ripping off the funded trader programs by abusing their shitty fill simulation on their demos. Pick a thick market that barely moves, post a limit order on the bid, get filled right away because the demo doesn't simulate position in queue and go home with a 100% winrate. Turn a 500$ monthly fee into 100k payout by copytrading 5 accounts at the same time. That would be a 200x performance and there are more than enough people who pulled it of. Of course the game is dead now because trader fundings adjusted the rules to plug the hole, but imagine you sit there for years trying to get the hang of it with all that technical analysis and orderflow BS and someone just raced past you by cheesing an inefficiency. Does that mean you can make a living off of it? Most likely not. But even if you made only 20k from it within two months you still bought yourself some time to find new edge. And if you can code just a little bit...boy, you're in for a treat. There is a ginormous amount of low capacity arbs out there that are just waiting to be grabed. Probably worth just a couple of grand each, but if you can automate execution and string 10-20 together you will have a decent year.
What kind of low capacity arbs you are talking ? You mean intraday start arb with cointegration analysis on mid cap stocks doing it solely on intraday trading ? Or do you mean momentum plays after market hours ? Let me know the direction where are some treasures of low capacity to be found. Thanks.
https://www.algos.org/p/small-trader-alpha-another-real-strategy Start here. Behind paywall and I won't violate the copyright here. I think there are 6 articles that feature individual strategies each some even feature python code. Worth 50$ monthly subscription if you ask me.