What is a good percentage annual return for a day trader?

What kind of annual return, over a 10 year period, would be considered good for a day trader?

I am curious because I want to compare this to what I have averaged over the last 10 years.

 

I AM HUGE!!!!!!!!!! Huge Huge Huge Huge HuGE

 

ask my boy gordy, he knows....

 

Imagine the fringe benefits after driving for 10 years!

http://www.boarshead.com/

 

Just as I figured...not a straight answer yet!!

 

Mrmarket...why don't you use the search function. I bet this has been addressed in thousands of posts already.

Or does it have to be about you?

Peace,
RS

 

It's not about me at all. I asked a straight question, and I was hoping for a straight answer from at least one of the 20,000 members in here.

 

OK...I know there are traders that will claim to make multiple percents on their equity PER DAY.

I say that's bullshit. I have been trading for 24 years. 16 years professionally.

2 percent per month average over a 10 year period would be far more than respectable. Outperforming the S&P is more than respectable for the same time frame.

Anyone who can do this, and PROVE IT, can get as much money to manage as anyone can. As much as Buffett, Soros, anyone.

Is that a straight answer?

Peace,
RS

 

Well I trade at a prop firm and so do my mentors/colleagues. We generally keep about 10G (25G max) in our accounts and can leverage it 10 to 1 intraday.

Now most of the boys are going to earn six figures this year. So right away you are talking about 1000% in 1 year. And this hasn't been a great year. When the market was flying in the late 90's and into 2000 the same traders were making between about 400,000 and the best guy in the crew had 6 years in row where he never made less than a million (keeping 25G in his account, he averaged 3500 per day) So you figure it out in percentage terms.

Bear in mind that these kind of percentage returns would be more difficult to achieve if one is managing large amounts of cash. But when you are just trading 1000 shares at a clip it makes navigation in and out of stocks allot more nimble.

In addition, for the size of positions traded these are some of the best traders around.

 

That 1000% per year is only return on equity, which is not as good a measure of trading ability as return on assets. If you measured your % return as ROA, ($100k earnings on $100k assets), then your return is "only" 100% per year.