and to follow up optioncoach...
ignoring whether all replies are honest, the polls tend to be self-selecting. i'll give one example of this:
my college would annually post results of "here's how much the salaries are of our recent graduates, and what degree they received." i was astounded at how high they were relative to the national avg, and what i thought the graduation salaries were.
so, when i finally graduated, i found out what they did. they sent out a form which said "please return this, let us know where you work and what salary you make.". so the only people on the study were those who replied. it EXcluded:
-> people who were in graduate school, some of whom went to graduate school because they couldn't find a job.
-> people who couldn't find a job and were doing the equivalent of burger king.
-> people who took a job but felt embarrassed about their salary.
-> people who didn't feel like telling their salary.
so, putting those together, you basically had results which were skewed to the upper end of the results. there was no requirement / incentive / force to make everyone report back on their salary.
to not be invasive, the question you want to ask is NOT how much "you" make, but how much others make, a reasonable goal for a (discretionary / mechanical) trading methodology based on whatever markets / size of account, etc. but those questions are answered tons of times over on ET.
by the way, i didn't answer this poll.
my profits are between myself, family, accountant and IRS.