2014: The Battle for Survival

if you wanna make 100% +, then you have to be ok with 25%+ drawdowns. Painful but if u don't like it, take up knitting.

Neke, u r doing ok. Keep going, man!
 
You can't know that, neke hasn't revealed any data so you're just guessing how much liquidity there is for his style.

Neke has said in the past that he reckons he could potentially take 400K to 4million in one year.
So from that i infer his strategy is scalable to making at least a few million per year.

Neke could be the worlds best trader, or at least make six/seven figures every year, if he aimed to make between 50% to 100% a year, instead of trying to do that every month.

At the moment he is averaging 'just' 50K a year. He can do much better than that.
Those on here who are approving of his trading style (constant big risks for big rewards) are really just encouraging a poorer long term trading style.
 
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Neke's compounded rate of return since 2007 has been roughly 20% a year.
That is great, but too low for what he is happy with.
...
Southall,
I feel so belittled by your rate of return I am forced to bring out the facts :) . From your calculation, if someone has 100K, made exactly 100K and pulled all that out each year, after 10 years he will be still at 100K balance, and you would say his compounded rate of return is 0%. Harsh!

Form 2007 (start of journal) till end of last year, I started with 76K, made 751k, withdrew 624K, finishing with a balance of 203K. I have tabulated the annual performance and withdrawals below, and here are my calculations.

Average annual rate = 88% (average of the return%)
Compounded Annual Rate = 65% (factor in timing of cash movement - I assume they were withdrawn end of each year, rate should be higher if we assume middle of year)

It's hard getting a fair compounded annual growth rate when the volatility in performance is high, and there are withdrawals. To me it is like solving for two variables - annual rate of return (x%), and retention rate (y%), such that at the end of the period, the total withdrawal comes to the amount withdrawn (624K), and the balance on account comes to the final balance of 203K. Using excel, I find that rate to be about 65% annual with about 20% retention. So I have actually been pulling out the bulk of my gains (apologies to guy990opl).Have I been taking out too much? Well I leave that to southall and guy990opl to find a compromise.

Code:
From            To              StartingBalance                 Net P&L         Return%          Net Cash Movement      Closing Balance
Feb 28 2007     Jan 12 2008              76,000                 138,000             182                  (111,000)              103,000
Jan 12 2008     Jan 11 2009             103,000                 377,000             366                  (160,000)              320,00  
Jan 11 2009     Jan 10 2010             320,000                 210,000              65                  (120,000)              410,000
Jan 10 2010     Jan  9 2011             410,000                 (44,000)            (11)                  (30,000)              336,000
Jan 10 2011     Jan 17 2012             336,000                (121,271)            (36)                  (11,000)              203,729
Jan 17 2012     Jan  6 2013             203,729                 (61,573)            (30)                  (59,000)               83,156
Jan  6 2013     Jan  4 2014              83,156                 45,281               54                   (27,400)              101,037
Jan  4 2014     Jan  3 2015             101,037                 197,562             195                   (42,500)              256,099
Jan  3 2015     Jan  1 2016             256,099                  10,350               4                   (63,000)              203,449
 
Those on here who are approving of his trading style (constant big risks for big rewards) are really just encouraging a poorer long term trading style.
I certainly don't want to be critiquing another trader who I know nothing about, nor his method, but I do think this is accurate. If a given month can be up 100k or down 100k, then this could just as easily be up or down 500k or even 1mil.

Very quickly looking over the trades for last month, there are big hits of -31k, -21k, -14k and hardly any wins that are in order of this same magnitude. It seems to be to be simple statistics that if the average loss is so much bigger than the average win, you need an incredibly high win rate because a few losses can wipe you out in no time.

All of this just gets so much more dangerous if things are scaled up, so I do have to agree that for long term trading, this will be deadly.
 
Southall,
I feel so belittled by your rate of return I am forced to bring out the facts :) . From your calculation, if someone has 100K, made exactly 100K and pulled all that out each year, after 10 years he will be still at 100K balance, and you would say his compounded rate of return is 0%. Harsh!

Form 2007 (start of journal) till end of last year, I started with 76K, made 751k, withdrew 624K, finishing with a balance of 203K. I have tabulated the annual performance and withdrawals below, and here are my calculations.

Average annual rate = 88% (average of the return%)
Compounded Annual Rate = 65% (factor in timing of cash movement - I assume they were withdrawn end of each year, rate should be higher if we assume middle of year)


I used 91K starting account (January 2007) and my own estimate of your profits (500/600K) and it came to cira 20%.

Your CAGR return on your 2007 starting investment is about 25% when i use your correct profit figures (750k).

ie. 91K starting capital compounding 25% p/a makes 750K profit after 10 years.
 
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I used 91K starting account (January 2007) and estimate of profits and it came to cira 20%.

Your CAGR return on your 2007 starting investment is about 25% using your exact profit figures.

ie. 91K starting capital making 25% p/a in an interest account ends up with 850K after 10 years.

Again, it is wrong to calculate rate of return without factoring in timing of withdrawals. From your perspective, for the example I gave (making 100K each year and pulling all out with 100K), after ten years your rate would be 27%, after 20 years, it comes down to 17%. No, it is 100% per year all the way.

You can't assume all money must be preserved to be relevant in determining compound rate of return. Besides 100K pulled out in year 1 does not equal the same amount pulled out in year 10
 
You can't know that, neke hasn't revealed any data so you're just guessing how much liquidity there is for his style. Many strategies will have trouble with his position sizes. Even if there is plenty of liquidity, bad execution will cause constant slippage that he might or might not have included in his plan. Slippage analysis should be a process done regularly.

Southall's point as I understood was that neke's position sizing is ridiculous, he is entirely correct regarding the risk of ruin. Now it only takes one more bad month for him to lose portfolio margin (I recall him using PM) meaning he will have less leverage and less chance of coming out from the hole.

Why don't you worry about your trading and let Neke do what he does? Okay.
 
I used 91K starting account (January 2007) and my own estimate of your profits (500/600K) and it came to cira 20%.

Your CAGR return on your 2007 starting investment is about 25% when i use your correct profit figures (750k).

ie. 91K starting capital compounding 25% p/a makes 750K profit after 10 years.

Don't worry about Neke's progress or trading. Worry about your own. If he needs help, he will let us know. You do you. Neke will do what he does. Okay?
 
2 stats without comment:

1. Neke's last 19 months performance is -20K.

2. He said the goal for 2016 was 100K, that was achieved last month by being up YTD 125K.
 
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