Quote from kubilai:
Hmm, things are making more sense the more I follow your adventures.
Had to say $1k margin on ES sounded very aggressive, reckless even, when I first heard it. Should have suspected you're not deploying your whole networth on this one strategy. Assuming you only deploy 10% of your networth, you're really using $10k margin with respect to your networth. You are just using the extra leverage on the ES contract, to get essentially a 10% stoploss on this strategy (account wipeout). Am I following you so far?
Are there other reasons you're not letting the strategy compound fully? Maybe you don't think the strategy can make efficient use of more capital? I'm starting to suspect that all the people with legit claims to very high performance, did it because they didn't let their account compound. A high performance strategy has to hits its capital ceiling very quickly, so you have to withdraw profits and look for new strategies to deploy excess capital.
This is how it worked out for me/or will work out for me, although the figures I give are hypothetical and Iâm still somewhere between the start and the end of this evolution. I donât want to tell how it exactly went for me nor how my financial situation is.
For those who want to calculate to see if what I say is not a lie: the figures I give are a mix of hypothetical and real figures, so per definition there will be things that mathematically will give very strange results. I do this on purpose to be sure that my financial situation will stay unknown.
Letâs say my net worth was 100% at the beginning. I took 20% to trade. After years , when the system got mature, the results gave very high returns. The 20% that I invested initially became much more. At a certain level the invested capital became/or will become to big in size to daytrade as I do. So at that moment all the profits have to be withdrawn because they cannot be invested anymore in more contracts (itâs impossible to increase size of the position eternally).
This results in a completely different situation: the capital engaged in trading stays at the same level whereas my total net worth continues to grow. So where my original situation was:80% in fixed assets and real estate and 20% in trading, it went in/or could go to 50% in trading and 50% in fixed assets and real estate. At the level where the maximum amount of capital that could be invested, the ratio would change again and % invested in trading would decline again due to the pay out of the excessive amounts. So once the system runs at maximum capacity the risk declines continually. The advantage is that even if you wipe out your account, you still save most of the profits you made, and you can easily start over again.
Than the killing question I always get: how does it come youâre not the richest man in the world if your system is that good.
There are several reasons why:
First, iâm good in day trading the Eminis but size has itâs limitations, so the theoretical calculations of compounded returns are limited.
Secondly, I made a choice: I want to enjoy live a bit. So I limit my trading. If I can make enough money to do what I like to do, and save enough so that my children donât have to work if they donât want to, Iâm satisfied. So why start a fund with zillions of dollars giving lots of stress and consuming all the time you have so that you cannot enjoy live anymore? Would Buffett or Gates be unhappy if they had to live with 10% of the money they have? My live will lose too much of itâs quality if I would try to trade bigger than I have planned. Money isnât all.

Me too