I think on this forum, where people AVERAGE around 5 ES points per contract per day, the choices should be more like 0%-1,000,000,000,000,000% 1,000,000,000,000,000%-1,000,000,000,000,000,000% 1,000,000,000,000,000,000%-1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000% >1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000% I don't know if people don't understand the word "average" or if long-term means one day, but somehow it is hard to collect that kind of information on ET. As for myself, this last month my "long term annualized return" was 655%, the month before that it was -43%. I admit, those were both extreme months, but it just goes to show you that people here can claim 1000% returns without even lying. I am sure there is someone here whose last trade made him 2 ES points in 10 seconds. That's an annualized return of a few bazillion percent. And if you assume that was the only trade in that particular hour, it is a long term (1-hour) average annual return of around 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000%, isn't it?
I think if you consistently made 1,000% a day, you would saturate the market in a week's time. My goal is to average 35% per month in ES. My best average return in the past was a few hundred percent annualized and my worst was around -20%. Since that time, I've become more wreckless and daring. I'm sure I'm the kind of trader that will turn 5k into a few hundred thousand and then promptly blow it all on one bad trade -- but oh well, live fast and die young. "If you can help it, don't live past 60!" Dr. Macloed Theology Princeton University aphie
If you could make more than 1000% a year for a few years, Bill Gate wouldn't need to bother running Microsoft. He should come here, give you half of his money to beg you teach him how to trade!!!!!!
Returns are irrelevant when it come to short term trading. Traders don't keep fund-size amounts of money in their accounts.
A lot of people don't understand the concept of returns. First of all, it is a lot easier for a savvy trader to turn a 1000% gain in a year than it is for a multi-billion dollar mutual fund to get a high return. Why? Simple -- the size of the beast makes it very hard to be nimble. We can all put in thousands and, in some cases, tens of thousands of dollars on a single trade and not affect a highly liquid stock, but if you are in charge of a mutual fund that handles 50 billion dollars, you can't use any of the tricks a retail trader uses. I think the poll should be exponential -- since if you look at the bell curve, the best traders will be pushing well over 500% a year or more, while the worst traders will be doing negative returns. I don't think investing and trading can even be compared, since trading is an active process which requires "work" and thus deserves a much higher percentage return than "buy and hold," which requires no work but leaves the investor to the whims of the market. aphie