Yeah I'm by no means trying to belitte what we're doing here, I take great satisfaction in what I'm doing that extends way beyond the monetary rewards. But I still can't help a tiny part of me that feels it's all just a "side" game that we as individuals have no choice but to settle for, like watching a no-limit poker championship game and betting with other onlookers on who's going to win this hand or that. Maybe this even more unrealistic analogy will come across better: would you rather make X amount of money doing color commentary on the sport that you absolutely love, or make 1/2X actually playing for your favorite championship team?
We all play the game as well as we can, and if that only makes us part of the "side game," then so be it. We can't all be at the very forefront. But I think there is a fair amount of satisfaction to be had on the sidelines. If everyone felt that they had to be at the forefront in order to be happy and content, then there would be very, very few happy and content people. As for the sports analogy, I don't like team sports, so you can guess my answer.
I'd take the 3 MM. That's "never have to work again" kind of money for my lifestyle. Other peoples utiltiy for the money might be different. These threads are fun but might be more revealing if the respondents mentioned their income and net worth first. A 40 year old with 1 MM already might answer differently than an idealistic kid with no money and high hopes. Traveler
Here is a different different style answer than most, I looked over the situation. Stevie has about 225 guys and you are paying them 1.5 mil each. That adds up to something and he uses what he doesn't pay to the OPM group to come up with the cash. I looked at what kind of money it would take an individual to earn either the 1.5million or the 3 million. I also looked at Liz's estate account which we just activated last week because she wanted to. Think of it as her family's advisors being told we would handle it for them for her interests. Today we had a pow pow at their request. The consequence is that they are going to redo all the trades (the commission part ,etc..) and they will move the account from their offices that can't handle it and place it in the home office where they have appropriate staff. It went on for about a week and we went through three different account execs, etc... So there it is. All the topic is about is: what is the comparison of running trades with an amount of capital or running trades using a pool and getting paid a given amount? All with consideration to the environment you are in. The pool profits that Stevie uses to do the salary of 1.5 mil to a bunch of people is earned entirely differently than how a person trades and individual account to make twice the paycheck so to speak. Liz's story above just points out that any person operating from home who is keeping active taking the potential of the capital she has, has to be able to deal with the market in a way that is unusual to the regular broker type account person. We are familiar with electronic trading as well, but I am referring to a local estate type account that is common to a local community. The daily pay at Stevie's is 6,250 that goes into your personal operating budget. At home, the deal is to pay yourself 12,500 out of you account daily. Either way, my view is that some of that cash flow would wind up in an investment account and part of it would be traded either way. When I worked, I did make daily calls to my broker. I looked at the home deal and decided to put money into earning 1.5 mil for operating a budget like steveie's employee would and the other 1.5 mil I earned from home would be just letting it ride and compounding. Running the numbers put me at a starting point where I would have to be running a little under 11,000 shares of an averge 3 beta stock on day one (think 25 dollar stock) I've done the cocktail circuit and the sailing stuff out of Greenwich and I think that crowd is not too attractive compared with just going electronic at the home office and staying loose in Tucson. I'll let you know in a year.
get a clue dudes. None of you will ever trade for Steve Cohen or any hedge fund similar to SAC. He won't even look at you unless you are making 50K-100K per Month net, consistently for at least a few years. Also, no one on these chatboards makes that kind of dough from their own trading (yeah, maybe on overrides within their group newbies) - because any serious trader is COMING UP WITH IDEAS AND IMPLEMENTING THEM and not reading/leaving chatboard messages.