Hi All I am interested in benchmarking my performance. Last year on my trades i returned 31.5% vs 23.5% on the S&P. This YTD i am trading 4.6% versus vs -1.8% on the S&P. I have only had one quarter in last 5 when my drawdown was larger than S&P. My best quarter in last 5 was 21.5% Obviously, I am no supertrader but i have no way of knowing how this compares with 'an average' p/t self directed trader. Any thoughts? A.
As you already know most traders are not profitable. Therefore, you must be talking about comparing your performance to other self-directed traders also known as retail traders. You should check out the Trader P/L 2010 thread @ http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=187235 Look for those that are profitable and then send them a private message to find out what are their stats. Also, there's a magazine (can't remember it's name) that keeps tracks or keeps a list of top performance by traders. Ask around for the name of that magazine. Mark
1) Performance anxiety? 2) You don't have enough "data" to make a reasonable comparison. 3) Focus on trading profitably and put away the stop watch and tape measure for the time being.
Be confident in yourself. You may do good before and you may do bad now. The important thing here is when you gain more experiences. Go and trade some more and try not to bother yourself with performance ratings. Good luck!
Andiroo, Its hard to answer you question unless we know what style of trading you are using. A day trader, swing trader and position trader have very different trading models. Super trader I am not familiar with. Another area is costs. What % of your gross are taxes, slippage and commission? Your drawdown was sketchy? A drawdown less than the S & P doesnât tell us much. I track gross continuous profits. How big was your drawdown versus that? Last year was hard on many of us. Including myself.
More negative posts from the miserable "traders" on ET. Great job. Do you know the guy? know his goals for trading? doubtful. Maybe he wants to document his performance, bring in capital. Who knows. But sounds like you want to be somber because hes positive for the year and you can't seem to figure this 'trading' thing out. To the OP, don't listen to 90% of the people here. I don't know what your goal is, but if you are bringing in those returns and are documenting it, have an audited PnL for your performance so that way you can have it done properly so you can attract investors and raise capital if that's what you're trying to do.
If you outperform the S&P by 20-30%, you can pat yourself on the back because you have beaten most of the mutual fund managers. Since you are making money, you have beaten perhaps 90% of the traders who are not profitable. As an individual trader, we need to aim higher. Beating the S&P by 20-30% is not enough because of the risks we are taking. We need a higher gain per year to cover the down ones. I think you have done a great job!
Depends on your strategy. If you are a daytrader then benchmarking the S&P makes no sense, it's absolute $$ returns that matter. If you are trading a hedge-fund style approach, it's absolute % return on capital relative to drawdown/risk. S&P benchmark only really makes sense for long-only stock traders/investors, and potentially long/short equity traders/investors. If you are doing overnight trading, then anything with an average annual return >10% and equal to or bigger than the largest drawdown is a good result. If you are trading intraday, anything that gives an income say 2 or more times what you could earn elsewhere is a good result. If you are a fund manager, anything that consistently beats the S&P by >2% is a good result. So as an example, what was your biggest drawdown since you started? And what type of strategy are you using?