How do famous swing traders like Dan Zanger size up so fast?

[M.W.]

And when the streak ends and the market moves a tiny amount against the trader he is out of ALL his positions. The conundrum remains: how could all those snake oil salesmen catch the attention of so many know-nothings with their massive lies and inflated numbers...any common sense should have raised tons of red flags.

This is not how classic pyramiding works. The idea is to always advance your stop-loss(es) when an additional trade is opened.

For example -

Open Trade 1:
Buy at 10,000
Stop-loss at 9,900
Risk = -100

Price rises to 10,100

Open Trade 2 at 10,100
Stop-loss at 10,000
Move stop-loss of Trade 1 to 10,000
Aggregate risk = -100

Price rises to 10,200

Open Trade 3 at 10,200
Stop-loss at 10,100
Move stop-losses of Trade 1 and Trade 2 to 10,100
Aggregate risk = +/-0

Price rises to 10,300

Open Trade 4 at 10,300
Stop-loss at 10,200
Move stop-losses of Trade 1, Trade 2 and Trade 3 to to 10,200
Aggregate risk = +200

And so on and so on.

 

[BuzzTrader]

And when the streak ends and the market moves a tiny amount against the trader he is out of ALL his positions. The conundrum remains: how could all those snake oil salesmen catch the attention of so many know-nothings with their massive lies and inflated numbers...any common sense should have raised tons of red flags.

U make 30MM a year yet you immerse yourself with some loser traders from ET... Lol

 

[newwurldmn]

U make 30MM a year yet you immerse yourself with some loser traders from ET... Lol

His desk made 30MM/year using bank capital, market access, and bank level research. His payout on that is a tiny tiny fraction of that. That 30MM is a gross revenue. There's millions of dollars of costs the firm incurs to earn that (back office, mid office, etc, loss leading lines of business that provide the bank level research, etc).

He tried to big time you, relying upon your ignorance of how bank trading works.

 

[PadusMom]

CB arb, single name and index otc options, dispersion books, to name a few our desk embarked on. Fully bank funded, accountable solely to internal reporting lines. Not stuff retail would get access to, but that was not the point. The point was that just because a few cowboys took insane risk, were bloody lucky in timing and positioning, and sucked the last penny out of the lottery wins through youtube views and merch does not make them long term successful nor great traders. Almost all of them stopped producing after the insane dislocations in the market ended.

They get to keep the money though.

 

[taowave]

So we are in agreement that managing risk on Stock positions,no derivatives is a relatively simple task that doesnt require much more than simple math and iron clad discipline"..

LOL@ blowing up accounts and showcasing the periods of success... Thats flat out NAUGHTY..

I know where you are coming from,but would like to believe that Jack Schwager does his due diligence before choosing the traders for his Market Wizard books...

Specific to this topic if you read Momentum Masters,Dan Zanger is a guy who took outsized risk way back when and fully realizes it now...David Ryan,Minervini are guys who appear legit and excel at their craft. Minervini's students have won the Zadeh Championships,and Ryans son just returned 120% plus using chart patterns,RSI and tight stops.. Mark Ritchie II son of Mark Ritchie (Founder of CRT) is from all accounts (my friends who know him well)a stand up guy who has produced outsized returns.Hes a a student of Minervini.

I have also worked on derivative desks and know dam well its a walk in the park relative to trading your own capital. You seem a bit bitter..Whats up???

"managing risk" generally refers in the financial industry to managing trading positions. Trading in short.

Making it as in being long term profitable and showcasing a risk profile that, risk adjusted, reflects a prudent level of assumed risk rather than blowing up accounts and only showcasing the periods of success.

 

[tomkat22]

And when the streak ends and the market moves a tiny amount against the trader he is out of ALL his positions. The conundrum remains: how could all those snake oil salesmen catch the attention of so many know-nothings with their massive lies and inflated numbers...any common sense should have raised tons of red flags.

Perhaps you missed the question I asked you earlier in the thread. Who do you consider a great trader and why? Give me some names. And a related question how much have YOU made in your personal trading account from trading? Not your firms,your personal account. Since you feel you're qualified to bad-mouth Kullamagi I assume you've made several million from trading your personal account.

 

[traider]

Perhaps you missed the question I asked you earlier in the thread. Who do you consider a great trader and why? Give me some names. And a related question how much have YOU made in your personal trading account from trading? Not your firms,your personal account. Since you feel you're qualified to bad-mouth Kullamagi I assume you've made several million from trading your personal account.

Steve Cohen, took risks and only got caught after becoming a multi billionaire
James Simon

 

[smacdtrader]

I have tried to follow how all these (Kristian Kullamaggie is another) massive traders took sub $10k accounts to $1mm+ all while keeping good R:R? I hear the whole trading community arguing to keep your risk <1% of your total account. If thats say a $5000 account then thats $50 risk per trade. No matter how I try to extrapolate an insanely profitable trade (lets say buy stock at $20 and sell at $180 risk $50 and buy 25 shares for $2 stop=$3989 profit) its still hardly any money (in relation to time and traders like Zanger doing it in 23 months). Now the above outlined fringe case is exactly that. Super hard for most people to land a stock like that once let alone multiple times. My question is, is it more likely that guys like him are far exceeding 1% and going closer to a kelly,half kelly,optimal f etc. to attain these gains? Anything im missing?

Please refrain from commenting that the gains possibly weren't audited, that CANSLIM/momo swing trading doesnt work,that your trading system is far better blah blah blah. Above is just an example of these kind of traders saying they do it in this short amt of time and how they do it.

Thanks and godspeed for some tendies fellow netizens

So here's a set of returns simulated to to have a .22 expectancy ratio, 1.46 profit factor, 1.31 win rate and 52% positive returns. Starting with $10K capital, trade size 5% of total capital with 50:1 leverage, over 578 trades. I did 100K simulations like this.

This plot is a wealth curve of one iteration with total ending capital $1,463,110 and max drawdown of -$94.86 (never below $9900 total capital). The top quantiles are the total percent returns for all simulations. None below 11x, and the 95th percentile is 385x. The bottom quantiles are the min percent drawdown for all simulations. 5th percentile is -.11.

So do that one more time, and you've got $100M+.

 

[taowave]

The biggest risk Steve took was being the recipient of "special information"..

Steve Cohen, took risks and only got caught after becoming a multi billionaire
James Simon

 

[zghorner]

You can train someone to learn the trade but there many traits that can't be learned to be a good risk manager. One has those traits or one does not. You can't magically change a person's DNA makeup. That's not just my belief, thats what every seasoned trader with long term positive track record will tell you and what the original turtles experiment also revealed. Very few who possessed those inborn traits made it, the rest fizzled out and went for other careers.

What surprised me about your post is that you start denying the above but in the latter part of your post say exactly what I just stated. Without being "wired right" you can get all the training in the world but won't make it. Wired up for me means what you are born with, not how someone shapes you.

Concerning the Turtles:
I do agree with what you said about them. But would like to add that when in the program they did extremely well on average. which tells us if the plan is good enough, and there is enough structure in place to tame your risk -> most can make money.

no big deal, the only missing element for most traders is having Richard Dennis and William Eckhardt as your boss and bankroll lol IVE FOUND THE HOLY FUCKING GRAIL RIGHT HERE!!!