KEF good point everybody want to be a great trader by just reading a few books visit elitetrader every day and spend 300 bugs into education. good seminars and good coaching cost a lot of money but it's worth. pretorian2 what was your performance 2002 ? I thought you had 2001 a good year with up 50% and more and you think about starting a hedge fund is this correct?
The poll is skewed by the concept of margin. It should have been based on buying power, not on the account size. Someone with $100K account is buying/selling $100K worth of stock (not using the margin) and making 100K profit a year. Someone else with $25K and 4:1 margin is also buying $100K worth of stock and making the same 100K profit. The first person would indicate that his profit is 100%, while the second person would indicate 400%, which is quite misleading.
mine was based on $10,000 which i turned into: $20,970.30... which as of now i am working with $150,000 in buying power, and am paying .01 a share in commission... and i never ever margin...
er, no dude. it's not misleading at all. the question was what was your % return. if you start with X and turn it into 2X, your return was 100% no matter what you did to get it.
We all start out the year with our bag of tools: Trading instruments Time frame preferences Capital Margin availability Risk tolerance Loss cutting technique Profit (lock in) technique We put these tools to work in what we believe to be the most profitable and efficient manner. Our goal being, to maximize total return by year end. Some individuals are willing to take on a higher risk premium to achieve their goals. I believe that we can all agree... it is easier to turn 30K into 90K, than it is to turn 3M into 9M. Especially if your preferred trading instruments are not highly liquid. With so many traders claiming to have made over 100% in 2002... Only EASYGURU has stepped up to the plate to state his tools of choice: Trading instrument Time frame Margin Exposure (he even added his beginning capital in 2002) Is there NO ONE else willing to back up their claim with a little insight on what their tools of choice were?
I did 90.42% in 2002, 2001 I did 231.91% 2000 I did 133.69% I am starting a hedge fund. First day of business was friday. I'm pretty psyched. I've been waiting for this week now for over 6 months. I was pretty disappointed by this year. If not for DDN, it could have been a lot worse. That little bugger was like 1500+ bp of performance for me this year. Stupid THC and OMG didn't help much either. Put ICN into the p2 killer category also.
Instrument - Equities, a few options. Time Frame- A few minutes to still open. Over half my account is in positions that I put on and have yet to sell. Some I have held since 2001. Margin Exposure- Rarely over 100% overnight, often much less. Intraday, it got up to around 120-130% on some ocasions. In my trading account (which is only part of my main acct.) I often maxed out at 4X margin intraday, but that was on only 60k in capital on most ocasions. My trading account has usually had between 60 and 100k in it, and is usually closer to 60k. Sometimes, after a dry spell, i've gotten down to 50k or so. I'd rather not comment on my main account, only to say that it is a few times larger, and it is something of an anchor on my performance as I made a few hundred percent in my trading account and only about 40% in my longer term account this year. (after adjusting for taxes though, the numbers are much closer as all my long term gains are long term taxable gains and were achieved through much less risk than my short term scalps). Unfortunately, the question was for total returns, and not tax adjusted returns. I think that there should be some way to easilly calculate tax adjusted returns. That's really the key. You really do make much more on long term gains than short term ones b/c of the difference in taxes. That's something that many traders never take into account for some reason. BTW: did anyone notice that I somehow logged in as preatorian2 using my same pw? Freaky eh?