Weekly poll - Realistic Rate of Return for a Day Trader

Posted on October 24, 2005
Tags: General rant |

It’s been a while since I updated my “Weekly” poll.. Here are the results for the most recent one. It looks like the majority of voters feel a return of 10 to 30% is realistic..

Weekly Poll Realistic Return for a Day Trader

Comments

12 Responses to “Weekly poll - Realistic Rate of Return for a Day Trader”

  1. iain on October 24th, 2005 10:33 pm

    200% (100-300%) annually

    that’s my target. i won’t be too bothered if i exdeed the range as long as i operate within my risk parameters ie no more than 1% of trading risk capital at risk on any 1 trade and preferably in any period…

  2. delightedtoreply on October 25th, 2005 7:57 pm

    Iain has it right for today’s market. “Back in the day”, pre nas-crash, the best traders at Broadway trading, one of the biggest daytrading firms at the time in the US, were making 50-100% per month. Fifty thousand to rich in two years.

  3. eyal on October 25th, 2005 9:29 pm

    A classic of being at the right place at the right time (NOT, for me..)

  4. eyal on October 25th, 2005 9:34 pm

    Iain, that sounds pretty amazing.. I keep very strict risk parameters as well, the only way I can even consider putting my money at risk.

  5. iain on October 26th, 2005 1:25 am

    First thing is that there is nothing wrong with a batting average of 30% or even 20%. That’s better than most fund managers, and more than most hedge funds aim for. But then they have to operate under different constraints. It is certainly much harder work to go for stellar averages, and for most folks that may not be worth it, if they can do very well nicely anyhow.

    Here’s a link to some funds one of which did 480% in the first 9 months (2004) and is ‘only’ up 137% so far this year. I would be interested to know whether, as I suspect, this second year is harder as he was probably trading mostly his own capital the first year maybe. I plan to remind Simon on CNBCeurope to interview him again and maybe get him to ask a question or two of mine hopefully.

    http://www.swissdirekt.com/e/account.asp?ids=5

    There’s also a pdf interview with Traders mag to download on the page, which I haven’t yet read.

  6. iain on October 28th, 2005 5:38 pm

    anyone read the interview? (link above)

  7. Eyal on October 29th, 2005 1:20 pm

    Fascinating article.. he covers lots of interesting points. In particular it is quite interesting taking note of the simplicity of making decisions off the openning price and closing at the end of the day.

    What caught your attention with this article?

  8. Trader Eyal » Blog Archive » Willem van der Vorm does 481% return on October 30th, 2005 12:07 am

    […] In the disucssion of annual rates of return Iain mentioned a link to a trader called Willem van der Vorm who manages and trades a technical based fund for swissDirekt. There are some very good points in the article and in the 2 CNBC interviews. He shares some insights into the patterns he is looking for and even where his stops are on those patterns. If not for the appalling job the CNBC interviewer did we’d probably have a chance to learn even more. […]

  9. iain on October 30th, 2005 1:46 am

    i just happened to be tuned in for some of the interview and them when i couldn’t find the link. simon the interviewer emailed me with the link personally (i am sure he would be interested to hear from you with any comments).

    to be honest my first reaction when i looked at his fund performance table 481% was simply ‘now that’s what i call a target to aim for!’

    i need to chew over the detail of the interviews further maybe. anything that makes life easier has got to be worth consideration.

  10. eyal on October 31st, 2005 9:44 pm

    The method he mentioned sounds over-simplistic but maybe that’s where its strength lies..

    I have not seen or heard Simon on any other occasion but it seemed trading isn’t really his area so he’s not well equipped to conduct this sort of interview, e.g. knowing about shorting, weekly chart vs. 7 days chart, candlesticks etc.

    It takes serious research and prep work to interview this sort of people - such research is common for journalists but not so much for anchors. That’s one reason I like the BBC’s Hard Talk (Tim Sebastian was the best btw).

  11. iain on November 1st, 2005 9:47 pm

    tim sebastian interviews traders?

  12. eyal on November 1st, 2005 9:54 pm

    Politicians, activitist, etc. I was just referring to the journalistic and research work that goes into each interview.

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