Anybody making any real $$$???

Trader99 originally Asks, "is anybody making any real $$$ ?"

Three respondents were kind enough to share and answer the question specifically and for sharing this, thank you. Much appreciated.

TRADERJIMBO-- up to $4K per day

THEEDGE--prior to this year, low six figures

UPTIK2000--churned and burned

Three others answered, but I don't understand what was said, and I don't mean to be disrespectful:

FITZ--didn't understand

Faster Pussycat--"a ton of $," whatever that means

Don--what specifically did you say anyhow?

It would be nice if more would have shared, so we could get a handle on the answer to Trader99's question. Thanks.
 
Originally posted by sammybea



Let me understand this Don. You are stating on a public message board that your AVERAGE trader is not only making money, but he is doing 6 figures. That is either incredible, or false advertising. Hopefully the SEC will take a look at Bright Trading and their tactics. Because if the ave. trader does make six figures, all my friends out of school will be eager to sign up with you. And if this is a lie, all my friends out of school, will be putting a petition together to investigate the tactics of Bright Trading.
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My educated guess based on industry stats would be that of a 1000 people starting out at one of those firms or trading on your own, doesn't really matter, is that 95% will never earn more than they lose after total costs.

5% will earn more than they lose after costs.

Of those 5% maybe 1% will earn enough to make it worthwhile, although worthwhile is of course highly dependent on the individual, their lifestyle and so on.

But, those numbers probably sound worse than they are. Because one thing is for sure, and that is that you have a situation where you have a limited downside, your initial stake which in most cases isn't big enough to be lifestyle threatening, but an upside that just depends on you and your abilities, also your abilities to eventually start compounding your equity.

You just gotta be a R E A L I S T and grasp the probabilities, though.

Good luck.
 
daniel,

daniel wrote:"If, however, you haven't got the 3 mil already, but instead have, say, $25 and you wanna be making $100k per year, you're gonna have to take some risks.

Let's say this is the objective. (making $100k in a year.)
If we break it down, it's $2000/week and $400 per day (or thereabouts)."

Exactly!!! That was my pt all along. If you read my earlier post, most traders don't ahve 3mil so that's why they go to these prop firms in the first place right? First you said because of small acct. size prop traders have tighter stop(I agree), then you say they have to take risk now. Of course, everyone has to take some risk.

But as I said, it's usually wise to not bet more than 1-2% of total acct size(institutional/Market Wizard type position sizing. though they both do go to the occassionaly 5%).

But because of their relatively small acct. starting values of only $25K, they are using EXTREME leverage!! Do you understand my pt? I seem to illustrate it over and over and say it in so many ways. I don't know what else to say.

You then wrote,"Note: if you DO make $100k in a year, or, in other words, grow your account from $25k to $125k, that is a 500% return per annum. It should be obvious that there is a definite upside limit to how much you can grow your account using the same strategy (scalping, for example). "

Sure that's possible. But that's like f*cking crazy to expect everyone to make 500% return in one yr!! But even if that's doable, it UNDERSTATES the huge risk. In actuality, the trader employ huge leverage in order to get to the 25K to $125K. It's not like he just played witht e $25K and steadily build it up. It's not possible. That's why they have prop firms in the first place.

You wrote:"Trader99 just to go back to your example of setting an 8pt stop on a $100 stock and swing it for a couple of weeks. If you only bought 100 shares, the risk would be $800 - or 3.2% of a $25k account, probably still too big. You could buy 100 of a $50 stock with a 4 point stop, in which case the risk would be 1.6% - not too bad."

Yeah, that's just saying the same things we said previously in other posts but scaling it down to 100 shares, which is almost pointless to trade. Unless you just want to demonstrate or test an idea/strategy at first. But once you know it works you have to trade size.

You wrote,"The only thing is with a trading style such as that, the opportunities to trade (a VERY important factor) are going to occur far less than with a day trading style."

That's the tradeoff between # of opportunity and size of opportunity. do you know the formual for trading opportunities that accounts for frequency, size, opportunity,etc.? look at it and it tells you which variable you want to tradeoff.. that's all.

You made the same pts we've made earlier. I'm just merely sayign that everything we said is agreed and your examples understate the REAL RISK b/c of huge leverage when you said my examples are risky.

trader99
 
Originally posted by trader99
daniel,


But because of their relatively small acct. starting values of only $25K, they are using EXTREME leverage!! Do you understand my pt? I seem to illustrate it over and over and say it in so many ways. I don't know what else to say.


You made the same pts we've made earlier. I'm just merely sayign that everything we said is agreed and your examples understate the REAL RISK b/c of huge leverage when you said my examples are risky.

trader99
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Having a $25k account does not - DOES NOT - require you to use "extreme" leverage to make money. (I've seen you mention prop traders using $1million with a $25k account. You ARE NOT gonna get that sort of leverage - and why would you want it?)

Let me produce a very simple example that shows that you DO NOT need extreme leverage to make some nice dollars with a $25k account. (I thought this would be obvious, but anyway.)

With $25k, let's say you wanna buy 1000 QLGC, that will cost $50k. That's only 2:1 margin. You could even buy 2000 and use only 4:1 margin. You don't even NEED a prop firm for this, pattern day traders have access to it at any retail broker.

Now, for the risk. WIll you be taking insane risk using so much leverage? Let's say you buy 1000 QLGC at $50 and set a 20cent stop. That translates to $200, or 0.8% of your account. Is that too high a risk? No way!

Can you make the fabled $100k/year risking $200 per trade (and winning that much, or a bit more sometimes)? It depends on how many times you get to trade. Which is where we're in luck - because day trading gives us PLENTY of opportunities. And again - you don't need to be insanely leveraged to do it.

That is MY point.

If you wanted to do multi day swing trades with your $25k account, and not risk more than $200 per trade, you have to cut your position size down. Naturally, you are gonna have less opportunities to trade, so it's gonna take longer for you to make that $100k. Why would you do this? BECAUSE YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO DAYTRADE (you might hate sitting in front of a pc all day, all that action might "freak you out", your kids distract you, whatever).

If day trading, with all its opportunities is so great, why do people bother with longer time frames? Because, apart from the afore mentioned reasons, there is a limit to how big you can trade. What is that limit? I don't know, I haven't reached it yet.

Daniel
 
Just a point about the "use" of capital, vs. the "abuse." Remember the Opening strategy that requires the "use" of several million (40 orders x 2000 shares) or so..yet the "risk" is not there....this is a good example of how so many of our people make money with their $25K.

Not looking to argue, it just seems that everyone is trying to find some big devious angle here...and there simply isn't one....

:)
 
Originally posted by Don Bright
Just a point about the "use" of capital, vs. the "abuse." Remember the Opening strategy that requires the "use" of several million (40 orders x 2000 shares) or so..yet the "risk" is not there....this is a good example of how so many of our people make money with their $25K.

:)
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Of course the risk is there if you are filled on most of them, and there is simply no way of knowing before the fact on how many you'll be filled.

Market exposure = market risk, unless you've reinvented the wheel.

And what you call use of capital is nothing else than leverage.

What's really funny is how you keep inventing some alleged regulation, that doesn't exist btw, that you claim keeps you from giving out some hard stats about the profitability of your customers, something that Hitman did not have any problems doing on the threads I found and that showed a very realistic picture sans all the window dressing you seem to be fond of, yet you don't think anything about posting statements like

how so many of our people make money with their 25k

Prove it. How many traders do you have, out of how many in total, that are taking home more money than they'd earn working at McDonalds?

Put up that info, because otherwise I don't think that you should be posting misleading statements like that that are simply a subtle form of pull marketing.

 
Originally posted by daniel_m



If day trading, with all its opportunities is so great, why do people bother with longer time frames? Because, apart from the afore mentioned reasons, there is a limit to how big you can trade. What is that limit? I don't know, I haven't reached it yet.

Daniel
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I sort of agree with the theory of that, but applying that in real life is, as all the stats show, a different story altogether.

Just for the record let me add that I do believe that there is money to be made trading extremely short time frames, but the upside is limited, and there simply are not very many that can profitably do that.

But there are some, no doubts about that.

Regards
 
Ask your friend Hitman to post up stats for his company - or anyone else, I have posted enough numbers, and all who join the firm are made privy to our performance. And we give out our balance sheets, etc.....have you seen anyone elses?? Now, to you......what is your angle here...? Post up what you're making....no regulation against that..

And if you think a childish, schoolyard "challenge" will move someone to risk the livelihodd of hundreds of people, your sadly mistaken. '

thanks for daily smiles, and those of you with PM about "tiger" LOL......keep em coming...

 
Originally posted by Don Bright
Ask your friend Hitman to post up stats for his company - or anyone else, I have posted enough numbers, and all who join the firm are made privy to our performance. And we give our our Financials....have you seen anyone elses?? Now, to you......what is your angle here...? Post up what you're making....no regulation against that...and if you think a childish "challenge" will move someone to risk the livelihodd of hundreds of people, your sadly mistaken. '

thanks for daily smiles, and those of you with PM about "tiger" LOL......keep em coming...
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Don, I'm no friend of Hitman as I don't know the dude, never met him, and never will.

All I said was that the stats that Hitman posted on the thread I found fully corroborated the figures of the study I posted yesterday, and of course he can post them because there is no regulation that prevented him from doing that

http://www.apbonline.com/safetycenter/business/2000/02/24/daytrading0224_01.html

whereas you are implying sthg quite different, which, btw, was also typical behaviour of daytrading firm reps as shown in the study.

Just tell us how many of your customers out of all of them took home more money than they could have earned at the local Mcdonalds last year, and prove that.

Otherwise you really shouldn't be making implied but unsubstantiated claims about the alleged success of a majority of your traders.

Regards
 
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