As the sample size has grown, while the "10k and Under" remains the same, the numbers below 100k have flattened-out and the numbers above 100k have increased by a few percentile points.
As the sample size has grown, poll voters are inflating their account size. This is pretty normal human behavior. I believe the first 100 or so votes accurately reflect the account size, over 50% are 50k or less and over 25% are 10k or less. If someone wants to start another poll it would be interesting to know what is the average percentage of their accunts "in trade". For instance, a 10-50K account may be fully 100% in trade at any given time, while a 250k-500k account may only see 25%-50% in trade (in my opinion) so while account size grows, overall risk (and overall return) declines. This provides a smoother equity curve and prevents blowing out your account. The moral of the story (in my opinion), given a trader with good experience, the better funded you are, the probabilities increase for your long term success as a trader.
Yeah, you're probably right. I've archived the results, so they give me a pretty good snap-shot of the account stats of the posters. Thanks for the survey. It was definitely one of the more useful ones.
Why dont you do the math on what a 10K account that produces $177,000 returns per year? In % terms, I will kill you year in and year out. You cannot compete with me because I am constantly freeing up my capital to take advantage of new opportunities. Since I am fairly good at what I do, freeing up my capital almost always increases my returns after every single day. Your 100% a year is peanuts compared to what a skilled scalper can return. Perhaps the reason you have no respect for guys like me is because you know you cant compete and it drives you nuts. Of course, scalping does have its limitations in terms of liquidity but as far as a viable way to make money, it certainly is!
I think a better poll would be "How much buying power do you have" I may keep 500k in an account or 250k or $50k. It varies based on other investments I find, but my BP doesn't change and that's what is really important.
day . long the 1350/1295 spx put sprd from 17 (6 times) it closed at 35,offer to offer, the spx cosed at 1294 so sprd is worth 55 but with 2 weeks to go theres a lot of premium in the calls,take it off early this week on the next big dip,in the meantime scalp es 4-5 times a day while staying on top of the mrkt,why not do both?
What motive would cause this? Makes no sense.. Also why would you exposure reduce as account size grows unless the traders appetite for risk psychologically drops or they cannot manage multiple markets?
There is a lot of truth in what you said, appetite for risk and the desire to manage multiple markets can drop as one gets older and the trading account gets larger. I found my exposure went down as my account has grown substantially over the years. I usually manage between 3 to 6 swing trades (3-7 days) at a time. The past 6 weeks have been great though with total account up over 10%, well on my way to another +50 to 60% year.
It would be interesting to know the net worth of Elite members. Account size may not be a very good indicator of financial skills. For example, since I only trade futures I only keep 20k in my trading account. Whenever it reachs 30k, I withdraw 10k. The bulk of my wealth is invested in realestate and small business's that I own. I checked the button for 15-25k but it is not indicative of what I have managed to achieve through all investments. I would suspect there are others with small accounts but high net worth.