You want that I cut your horns or your back leggs? Post under your other ET screen names, and take classes in Probability 101. By now you should know I know who you are---I also knew who you are when you PMed me as a nice guy and signed Rob (which was appropriate for what you were trying to get).
If you made $50million trading, would you still daytrade GOOG? No, you would start an investment vehicle. What's there to disagree about? Wikipedia any one of the TRADERS on my list. George Soros, OK, started as an Arb trader at Mayer, then Wertheim, then at ABLE (Arnold Bleichroeder). Soros runs NO outside money right now. It's all his own from what I understand. The most famous publicly revealed 'trade', up until Paulson's short of mortgages made $3Billion (sorry I left this TRADER off my list), was 1992 when Soros 'broke the bank of England' by shorting $10billion worth of Pound Sterling. He netted $1.1Billion on the 'trade'. Are you telling me that Stevie Cohen and Bruce Kovner didn't make their money as traders? None?
Let me state it in a different way: if a trader does not intend on starting a hedge fund, based on current information, s/he will never make it in Forbes list and never make a billion from trading? Did anyone prove the latter statement wrong?
when you have enough money, you began investing....there is no point in scalping the market if you are a billionaire. If you do not get it, we can do nothing to help you.
You are splitting hairs. If they weren't traders to begin with hedge fund managers would have no services to sell. If you want to make billions by being a trader you must trade OPM (and your money), not just your money.
With all due respect, I guess I'm still missing your point. Bruce Kovner started in the pits in Chicago. Once he made a fortune he left that difficult lifestyle. He continued to trade thru his LLC and expanded it yes to become Caxton a hedge fund, but who would not at that level of wealth. Would you expect someone who has made $300 mil trading to continue to be just trading on his own? Steve Cohen similiar story, SAC Capital (Steven A. Cohen), mostly his own capital. Should Hewlitt and Packard still be hawking computers out of Packard's garage in Palo Alto? I don't see a daytrader making the list, because he/she will always move on at some point to protect themselves and to expand. You can't 'trade' $300+ million. You have to invest it.
If you do not want to be a trader because you dont think you will be rich enough why don't you stop posting here. ~3400 posts in a little over a year is a bit excessive in a trading forum for a non-trader. Why dont you just move on to your next get-rich-quick scheme.
Buffet is an investor, not a trader. In addition Buffet did NOT make his fortune from investing but rather from selling stock of his company. The actual money Buffet made from investing can be computed by taking his company's earnings, multiply it by the fraction of his ownership, and divide the result by the P/E ratio. You will get the money he has made by being an investor in usual sense. It is less than a billion.