Originally posted by Yannis
The 10% success rate of a new business in the first year is a well researched and publicized, approximate figure that the Government (e.g., SBA) and large corporations use - I learned it first during my MBA years some time ago. Later, while I was new ventures manager at AT&T we were using that same figure.
So, if the probability of success for a trading venture is about 10% and a prop trading firm documents that 50% of their traders make it past the first year, that's an improvement of 40 percentage points, a quadrupling of the chance to survive the crucial first year, a 400% net, incremental improvement.
ok, well i have "documented studies" also that put the figure squarely at 80% over 5 years, so obviously one of us is looking at the wrong figures. i'll bite the bullet on this one. (still, i can't help thinking 90% in ONE year is astronomically high. it's only ONE YEAR for cryin' out loud! what the hell are these people doing so wrong that they're on the street in a year???)
secondly, your mathematical semantics really defeat the purpose of using percentage terms.
just think of it as two trading firm, A and B. 50% of A's traders survive first year, 40% of B's.
Firm A has a survival rate 10% higher than firm B, yes or no?