I know a guy personally that ran $10k up to $50million (gave back a decent chunk after the bull ended) in the late '90's. Relatively famous guy in trading circles. Can't name names though. Also have been told stories about guys that traded back in that time of guys that stayed well below the radar and made tens of millions...funny that these guys kept a lot more than Zanger did after his 75% drop from his equity highs of $40 million...and they never seeked out the fame.
ElecEquity sounds like db that went on to open his own fund made about 50 million that one year Are we talking about the same guy ?
I don`t have the exact number, but I think Marty Schwartz did fairly well for himself. There are some numbers in his book PitBull, which I highly recommend, but I don`t have it at hand so I can`t reference it right now.
I only know one Japanese trader of that dimension: Takeshi Kotegawa, nicknamed B-N-F (Japanese pronunciation for Victor Niederhoffer), or simply J-Com man for his coup in J-Com stocks. His starting capital was around $14,000 and turned it into roughly $150 million in 8 years time. With that capital he bought an entire office building in 2008 after noticing that his equity curve started to stale due to its size. Have not heard any news of him ever since.
the biggest flaw in many of these tales is that - these guys who are said to have started with small amounts really had more equity than they are letting out. I know a good number of people who started trading with around $50k but had over $2m in the bank. These guys could leverage big risk looking for the one big moves. And some did well. The heroic story sounds better when they make out the started with only a small amount. It's all spin.
I know the guy in my story never added a dime to the initial $10-$12k. He was trading with BOM and hit like 30 consecutive wins averaging better than 10% per trade. $10k to $300k the first year. $2MM the second year, at which time he moved to UBS. He was hitting position limits, so adding cash would've been a hindrance. He hit $10MM the third year and opened an GmbH and a PB relationship. He destroyed UBS (FX); BNP and SocGen's equity exotics desks. He has a great feel for short-term turns and would often go up to 50% of capital in 1W NTs and DNTs. I recall one trade in which he bought an NT in the SP500 that was 13 pts otm. He bought the NT for $4MM with a NT payout of $10MM. At the time his capital was ~$11MM. Huge balls. Bet paid. There is no better gearing than American exotics. Certainly a lot easier to fathom than a guy trading RegT. I learned a ton from the guy. The bets are easy to price and tough to hedge (Derman), but what is amazing (to me) is that he didn't replicate even after hitting $20MM. IIRC, he was forced to hedge OTC and listed when he hit $40-$50MM. I know it took roughly 3 years to go from $10MM to $100MM, all organic growth and after-tax. Haters gonna hate.
How you know they already have 2 million? I agree some trader on forum pretending to be profit when they are not. Ego boost and online fantasy life. however unless you have proof they were already millionaire you just making accusations of thin air...... but i understand skeptic view, it will always be there.......
One last point. The German did this in complete sh*t equity markets. He didn't benefit from the equity bubble. He did this all from 2001 to late-2009.