Professional trading and professional investing aren't very similar, and not just because of the length of time securities are held, and the basis of reasoning for entering or exiting positions (fundamental vs. technical/news related fluctuations) Typically large account sizes like Buffet's can't be traded by a single individual or small group of people. So instead the capital is invested based on price valuation and the fundamental traits of companies. Hedge Funds are similar to Mutual funds, even though they're traded, the size and distribution of capital eliminates a lot of strategic options available to traders. Trading is very different because one person can only trade so much before they have to diversify and start taking longer term positions. Even a small group of traders making trading decisions based on the same general criteria, trade very differently from each other. The results of such ventures usually look or function like Prop Firms, and these groups rarely have a singular, concise direction. Most likely because they are still made up of individual's and their independent decisions. The end result is what you see, Some individual traders can post returns over 100%, but they have a cap that they find difficult to exceed. $10,000,000 is very difficult to manage as an individual trader. Investment Firms like Buffet's have 100's of Millions, or more likely, Billions of dollars to manage. Hence the reason the returns are so different, it takes many people to manage it, and risk tolerances are very, very different than the average trader's. A Black Monday with out the Investment firms' vast range of diversification could wipe them out completely. 100% returns may sound sexy, but the larger the account sizes and capital bases are, the lower the returns will be. A 20% return on $1 Billion would be phenomenally more significant than a 100% return on $50,000. If traded based on the same criteria and decision-making models as a $50,000 account; a $5,000,000 account would still have lesser returns. Maybe a 75% return on a $5,000,000 account is less appealing than a 100% return on a $50,000 account, but it is still a much more significant accomplishment.