Search results

Let's say you need $50K before tax to support your lifestyle (I'm assuming your in the US; this is roughly average household income). A good trader can expect to make 10% a year, but it won't be consistent (please don't believe anyone who quotes you a higher number. You may be very good, or...

https://www.mta.org/video/systematic-trading/ GAt

I have a long only buy and hold "forever" portfolio of equities, but I don't trade them. It was far easier for me at least to set up a futures system when I started trading my own capital, so that's the route I took. Setting up an equities trading system is on my (long) to do list, but...

0.5% on equities trading. One reason I trade futures. That tax, of course, is payable regardless of where you or your broker is based. GAT

income https://www.gov.uk/income-tax-rates/current-rates-and-allowances capital gains (what I pay) https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rates-and-allowances-capital-gains-tax/capital-gains-tax-rates-and-annual-tax-free-allowances Are you UK based? Or planning to move here? To reiterate...

You can't (legally) avoid taxes by choosing a different broker! Your tax take is determined by where you are based, and where the asset you are trading is based. So I live in the UK. I pay UK taxes on my worldwide earnings. Perhaps I might eventually trade in a country that doesn't have a...

Sigh. I don't understand why you use multiple brokers given that IB has the best multi country coverage of any retail broker I know (no connection, just a [mostly] satisfied customer). You seem to be intent on making your life as complicated as possible. I'm going to stop following this...

Speaking from experience, it's much harder to try and communicate with brokers (or indeed any organisation) through web interfaces than through provided API's. So for example to scrape the positions from IB activity reports is much more involved than making a single API call. Also it's not a...

You have to use the API anyway to deliver your orders for (3). So why not use it for (1)? If you have to write 1000's of lines of code for (2) why not write a few hundred to get the API working? I've tried to help you with this before I seem to remember... GAT

I used python beautiful soup to scrape the trading and position management reports from IB https://github.com/robcarver17/python-uk-trading-tax-calculator/blob/master/shredIBfiles.py So it's possible. But what are you planning to do with the .csv files - this might not make sense? GAT

Yes, I'll post a link when I get it GAT

It depends entirely on the strategy and the holding period. For someone trading pretty slowly like me costs are basically a minor annoyance. My costs could increase by a factor of 10 and I'd be unhappy, but I'd still be profitable (just). However for HFT traders a tiny increase in costs would...

Sorry for the late notice, but if you're interested I'm doing a webcast as part of the MTA educational series in just under 90 minutes ( 2pm UK time 9am EST) Details here https://www.mta.org/event/webcast-presentation-featuring-robert-carver/?instance_id=3151 Log in here...

Don't beat yourself up. Understanding what costs you are paying is more than 99.999% of other traders are doing. For someone who is day trading your cost ratio is about what I'd expect; and actually better than most (most day traders in the long run probably end up paying more than 100% of...

This is a really good question. Too few people pay attention to costs. I target paying 6% of my returns in costs. To be precise I conservatively target around 1.5% of account value a year, which may be a larger or smaller figure depending on how returns come out. That's made up of 0.3% in...

why does every trader around the world have screens with charts? Again, not true. Yes some traders have screens with charts. Perhaps most. But every trader? Not true. Heck I don't even have screens.... GAT

Best of luck JJ. I will follow with interest and help when I can. GAT

Sorry I should have said, sometimes I use % price, sometimes delta (price). I think log change will give you similar results to % price (I also think you mean change(log(price)), rather than log (change)!) I use this for position scaling. The latter is useful for scaling trading rules, eg EWMAC...

It depends on what I'm using the vol for, sometimes I use %, sometimes price. You don't need to use the whole series; something like 5 times the length of the EWMA lookback will give you an accurate enough answer. Rob