I agree with Scataphagos 10,000% Day Trading Account: The only reason I day trade is to one day trade XX to XXX contracts in the futures market. And make $XXX,XXX to $X,XXX,XXX per year with my skills. Investing Account: SP 500 index dollar cost average until 63 years old The goal: Open either or both account one day and see $X,XXX,XXX. Any other discussion is bullshit. KISS baby, as always.
I'm not making triple digits (so maybe not what you consider successful) but a pretty steady 20%ish for the last 20 years using the same strategy.
Hello deaddog, 20%ish return for the last 20 years. you are beating the SP 500 overall. You are more than successful sir. Great job.
There is a lot of misconception about a lot of fund companies unable to beat the S & P 500. The very obvious reason is capitalization. Try buying stock and investing hundreds of millions or even tens of billions of dollars? Those funds are elephants in a pond. They have a hard time moving due to their own success. Contrast that with the retail trader who is a competent trader able to trade and take monies out of the stockmarket over and over. The top traders in the Market Wizards book of Jack Schwager, like Ed Seykota go for absolute returns or as much as the stockmarket will give him. Diversification like with the S & P 500 guarantees you will have bad companies included in that index reducing your returns. And S & P 500 average returns of 10% is pretty paltry if you compare it to the performance of the top hedge funds out there.
While it's true that you can make more as a day trader, it should not be forgotten there are more corpses from day trading than from investing.
That's irrelevant for the good daytrader. And surely not a reason to stop daytrading. In business there are also more people who go broke than there are new millionaires, but that's no reason not to try.
%% Good points. Salem Abraham's grandad said to Salem ''Congrats, of all the ways to lose money, you picked the fastest'' LOL . Turned out better than most hedge funds, don't know what he did today. To invest or trade, would have to be motivated to do one or both.