I guess it depends on your definition of Holy Grail . One can be consistently positive trading. I have acquaintances who put me to shame, so I don't consider myself to be much of an authority on trading, but I've gotten to be a decent price reader. I don't think my current style would scale up to mega cars, but I'm not trying to beat the world, just make a living. I've attached a dollar-sanitized snapshot of my February so far. I daytrade ES. I'm equally comfortable trading in both directions. So far in February, I made 144 long trades (51% profitable) and 111 shorts (48% profitable). *Note that each trade I make is scored by tradestation as three trades (I use bracket orders with three targets normally), so divide by three.
Well Jesus and Piker... I didn't keep great records for part of my career, but the numbers you give her are actually not that far from reality... also with a lot of withdrawals and now a lot of expenses for salaries / office space. So... yeah... like I said with small accounts pretty amazing returns are possible if you have the skills. Piker, let me know when you're in the city and I'll show you some things you never imagined were possible. I can show you someone trading less than a year with a 100K account who is profitable 75% of her trading days and averages 10K / week. That just to show you what's possible. Let me know if you're up to the challenge lol.
2/5/10 start balance 704,949 2/12/10 ending balance 756,112 weekly gain of 7.25% 1/1/2010 start 888,972 2/12/10 end 756,112 ytd loss of 14.95% Bummer , I was really looking forward to a good buying opportunity. Oh well guess i can suffer through some more gains if I have to. Maybe the "PIGS" situation will help me out some time later. Portugal , ireland, greece, spain.
Thanks for posting. In the future could you break it down into a monthly & ytd percentage gain(loss) value for us. That would be great for other readers. Thanks
1) From reading your posts you make it sound as if you were getting the same or better returns earlier and now you support all of those expenses. Sounds kinda stupid to me , maybe you should explain why it's worth the overhead. 2) Honestly talon , for the most part I hate traveling and don't even enjoy relatively small cities much less large ones. I have no desire and no plans to ever visit therefore I decline your challenge. But thanks for the offer. 2) 120% yearly returns, yeah I buy that.
Piker you're crazy risking you and your families financial security on your unproven theory and risky as hell. You come across as an arrogant prick but man I hate to see anyone throw away money, but hey it's your ass not mine. If I were you I'd make a couple of phone calls to verify talon then get a ticket to see what is possible. Do you know how few opportunties there are for someone to offer to show you anything about trading one on one, almost zero. Good luck piker.
1.) I haven't learned that, I have believed that for years, probably way before you've been "indexing." 2.) Piker, you've actually got everything right when it comes to investing, except two things. The first thing is arrogance, you think that nothing catastrophic will happen to your portfolio even though a catastrophic event is a definite possibility. The second and most important thing is you do not understand leverage AT ALL! If your etf's are just 2X leveraged, then a 40% drawdown in the market would equal about 80% drawdown in your portfolio. Even with 15% cash, that kind of drawdown would take your $100 thousand (roughly) portfolio to $35 thousand. Just to get back to even after that, your 2X leveraged ETFs would have to gain about 186%, and thus the market would have to gain about 93%. THATS JUST TO BREAK EVEN! That is without subtracting maintenance fees of the etf, and that scenario assumes no price decay, and believe me, if the market dropped 40% there would be price decay! If you were just holding a non leveraged security, you could easily ride out the highs and lows like you plan to. But by holding leveraged ETFs or buying securities on margin (I don't know if you're doing that) you simply cannot ride out the lows. You WILL be WIPED OUT. It doesn't matter what the pundits say, or what you or I say. It's just math. Your investing strategy is fine and you would probably beat 90% of traders and 98% of ET "traders" if you just got rid of leverage. But if you insist on using leverage there are only 2 outcomes, you will get wiped out the next time the market takes a big dive, or you will get lucky and decide to sell before you think the market will take that dive (also known as market timing or trading). 3.) I have trouble believing some anonymous guy over the internet who guarantees he will get 100% every year for the next ten years, and then gets angry when you doubt him.
LOL Piker, you know how rediculous that advice is? There has been plenty of garbage advice given to you I'm sure, but the only advice you have to take is the advice that the laws of mathematics are shouting at you.
Sorry if I was unclear; I was just making the point that traders can be consistent, not to brag about my compounded rate of return or to compare accounts. I showed a record of 80 daytrades, a mix of long and short, 50% wins, 8 out of 10 days in the green, and 13% return in a 2 week period. It's not the result of a couple of big wins, which could simply be luck. I'll post the rest of the month too -- assuming anyone's interested.