How long has everyone been trading?

Quote from austinp:

Backing out the 1999 gambler's luck result, you are up +10.69% in eight years annualized on 30% capital and 5.6% in eight years annualized 40% of capital applied against 100% capital invested in fixed income for eight years.

Or your investing could be expressed as +397% return on 70% of capital for eight years = 34.7% annualized return on 100% of capital versus fixed income.

Very nice returns for a passive investor... but please don't accuse that of anything to do with high-end trading.

1) Day-trading is for experts. Either learn to be one, or concede the fact that you don't make the grade and leave it to those who can
2) holding is the game... while the market moves in your direction. hold too long, and you are the bag
3) see lesson #1
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Austinp, my take on his comments was that he would need to be swing trading in order to achieve the returns outlined, therefore he would not be holding through thick or thin and certainly not a passive investor! There are a myriard of reasons why people might choose to avoid daytrading yet their approach can still be essentially professional and expert in nature.

Best Regards

Johno
 
Started in Swift Trade 8 years ago. I failed and got let go after 3 months. Since then I've been trading forex on and off while having a full-time accounting job. I have always traded a small account, since I don't have much money and I never wanted to risk more money than I have to while I am learning to trade.

PA
 
Started at Schonfeld in 99.
Tradeded with Rearden Metal, legacy of the Russian, until 2002. Then traded for Last Atlantas, options til 2003.
Teamed up with the "Russian's" option king, he and I traded up til 2004.
In 2004, I took a break The Option king moved to Taiwan to trade Asia, I moved to Miami to relax and work on Techno music.
2005, I ended up in Private Equity as a rainmaker, only trade a little of my own money now.
Trading is for fun and net worth building now, not making a living... but I use maybe 5% of my networth to trade.

so, overall,about 5 years of trading for a living. Did ok, had some great months, had some outstanding months and had some wreak havoic months. Was not a wiz, was probably about average.
 
Quote from Johno:

Austinp, my take on his comments was that he would need to be swing trading in order to achieve the returns outlined, therefore he would not be holding through thick or thin and certainly not a passive investor! There are a myriard of reasons why people might choose to avoid daytrading yet their approach can still be essentially professional and expert in nature.

Best Regards

Johno
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It was the "#1 daytrading is for dummies" quote I referred to. Pretty sure there are some daytraders here with greater % returns overall in several different single years than his 8-yr cumulative % gain.

I'm a swing trader at heart... be it intraday or across more than one session. But saying that long-term hold is the only viable management method is pretty foolish.
 
made some good trades in the 70's on fundamentals, got the bug for TA and daytrading in the 90's, just puttering with it nowadays but planning to rest up and hit it harder later this year and try to really make something out of it all. That should go well and ten years from now I could be in Monaco.. or an old folks home..... If I learned anything in all that time it's that I can be really, really happy with not much money! The cutest of my galpals took me dining and dancing last night in Santa Barbara.. life is good...
 
Started dabbling in 1999. I made 1000% that year, literally. Almost all of it from a single networking stock.

I lost all of it in a single day in early 2000. I think i was using Datek at the time and I remember trying like hell to get my sell order to go through and the damn site wouldnt respond. By the time it went through my account had actually gone negative :-/

Following that i scrounged together some capital, stuffed it in a mutual fund, and stopped paying attention. Next thing you know I made 50% that year doing nothing.

Anyway, Started more actively trading again in 2005. Several unprofitable and reckless years. In retrospect, it was more gambling than trading.

Got a lot more serious about it in early 2008. I've been mostly flat or a little down in 2008 and 2009. However, I am up relative to the indexes over that period, so I don't feel too bad because the alternative would have been passive mutual fund investing.

I spend about 20 hours per week on various aspects of trading, and that's in addition to my full time job. I feel reasonably confident that this year I will start to be profitable. That said, none of my strategies or approaches are air tight enough yet for me to be 100% sure. Even over the last two years I have been mostly profitable 90% of the time but occasional spectacular failures that offset my otherwise good performance. As a result, this year I'm focusing heavily on capital preservation, risk management and discipline.


My longer term goal is to develop a consistently profitable approach to trading that, when coupled with an adequate account size, will allow me to stop working and focus on trading full time. Goal is to do that within 3-4 years, if possible.
 
I would not tell you I started in year XXXX. You can guess or look up in Google. This makes it more fun.

When I first started...

- Stock prices were quoted in fractions. And went in 1/4 increments mostly.

- Jerry Yang and David Filo were studying at Standford.

- Tokyo Joe was pumping penny stocks in his underwears.

- There was no "website". Only BBS. Most people didn't know what "Internet" mean. Though most computer users had heard of UUNET.

- Quick and Reilly was considered the "Deep" discount broker.

- The Motley Fools sent some readers to drive by the plant of Iomega. They reported back the parking lot was full most of the time. The Fools concluded that Iomega must be building their secret high capacity floopy drive (Zip) and recommended a buy on IOMG. The stock went from $20 something to over $50 in months to follow.

- Bought a penny stock "Comparator" (symbol IDID) at $1/16 (that's right, 6.25 cents a share). About 8 months later, one day it suddenly jumped to $1/4. I sold all and made 3 times my money. I was on the top of the world! IDID closed at $1/2 that day. I was depressed for selling too soon. The next day IDID went to $1. I was more depressed. The third day, IDID broke the Nasdaq trading volume record and went above $1 1/2. I was extremely depressed for making 3 times my money but not 20 times my money in two days. But the depression came to an end... Because SEC halted the trading of IDID that day pending on fraud investigation. When IDID re-opened for trading months and months later, it did not worth a penny. Those greedy people who got in at $1 1/2 lost all their money. I was finally at peace with myself.
 
I started trading 1000 shares of xilinx in 1996, because my broker said tech was where you make your money.....lol. Well, for awhile anyway until spring of 2000 hit. I had to go through the education process (as all newcomers will certainly go through if you stay with it).

Took a "real job" for three years in 2004 and came back in 2008 full-time.
 
I stated trading 1 lots of Jose Canseco and Mark McGuire cards back in '87. I work my way up and by age 8 I was slanggin' 100 lots of TOPPS, Fleer, Leaf, you name it I traded it. Unfortunately I got caught in the great baseball card bubble in the early 90's and now all I've got to show for it is a drawer full of stale gum. I'll be back mark my words.
 
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