How to turn $1000 into $1,000,000 with options in less than 6 years

VIXTrader said:
Isn't making shit up fun? Weeeeeee ! No, they didn't make 30%+ for 30+ years, but I'm glad you believe everything you hear on TV.
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I'm afraid they did, son. Average 30%+ pa for decades. Fully audited and documented, no need to switch the tv on. Just use this new fangled thing called google.
 
crayon851 said:
Have you done it?

Have I done it? Nope. But I'm going to try.

This is probably old news, but I'll share it anyway. Just having it broken down into manageable visible goals may make things a lot easier for some people. At least it does for me.

Let's start with $1000 dollars.

Let's also assume that between the bid/ask spreads there is at least 1% to be made on a daily basis with the contracts.

There are 252 trading days in the year.

If you're able to earn 1% compounded over the course of the 252 year trading period, that's a multiple of 12.27x per year.

With that,

Year 1) 1000 -> 12,270
Year 2)12,270 -> 150,552
Year 3) 150,552 -> 1.84Mil.

That's 100% success rate every day. Pretty hefty huh? So is making 1% a day reasonable using options between the bid and the ask? Are you able to do that everyday? Probably not. Unless you're really good. I'm always hopeful for that.

So what about making a 1% gain every two days?
This gives us a multiple of 3.5x

year 1) 1000 -> 3500
year 2) 12250
year 3) 42875
year 4) 150,062
year 5) 525,218
year 6) 1.83 mil

With options the gains are so minor, that the 1% spread is highly possible. For example, with an average contract of about $50 or 0.5 x 100 shares, IF you're trading with Interactivebrokers, where commission is $2 round trip (4% @ $0.02), you'd have to make a spread of $0.025 to make that 1%. We all know the spreads on options aren't that small.

I guess this is more or less HFT, but the math supports that its possible.

So what's the best way of accomplishing this or the safest way? Who knows.

Personally, I think it'd be better to sell puts that are ways out of the way and try to close them at a 1% profit. That way, your risk is limited to your cash on hand.
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Dude you sound enthusiastic and that's great but this $1000 to $1m thing is setting yourself up to fail imo. I don't know how long you have been trading and it doesn't really matter but we have all done the old variation of 1,2,4,8,16,32.....month1, month2, month3 = billionaire. I would get out of this mindset as soon as you can. Set yourself a sensible goal of turning $1000 into $2000, something that is achievable if you have skills. In the meantime cut your expenses and start saving so you have $25k minimum to trade with. Once you have this you can start building your account with baby steps, none of this shit or bust type thinking will end well. The successful traders I know are well capitalised and place a small portion of their roll with a prop, either that or they have chunky retail accounts.

You say you are trying to make the spread in options. Market making in options is highly complex, I don't understand it but I am currently studying it. Anyone without a quantitative background or a bit of 'rainman' in them is going to find it tough going in this space imo.

GL
 
not to bash quants or those highly educated people, but if they were truly good at what they did with consistency, why even work for a firm?
 
crayon851 said:
not to bash quants or those highly educated people, but if they were truly good at what they did with consistency, why even work for a firm?
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People work for firms because the firms normally do the sell side business. Sell side is the broker side, the bank's side, the casino's house side. That side always wins. They can afford to pay quants and highly educated people because the money comes from you and those like you. If they take $1000 from each, it amounts to a lot of money. Over a life time people usually hand over a lot more than $1000, as we already know you will.
 
i doubt the entire quant industry is clearing anything more than 150k on average. not only that, for people with sich a doom and gloom attitude, i wonder why you even trade to begin with. you arent goong to trade unless yoi think you can make money right?
 
I'm afraid they did, son. Average 30%+ pa for decades. Fully audited and documented, no need to switch the tv on. Just use this new fangled thing called google.
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It seems you, like many others aren't able to differentiate between "trading returns" and added value from business deals and growing company share prices and fund NAVs. You just google stuff and it spits out numbers you immediately trust. Just because Soros rolled the dice and made over a billion dollars in a few days on a spec trade doesn't mean he made 30% for 30 years trading. Similarly, Berkshire's share value does not equal Buffet's trading profits. There's no doubt that certain businessmen have been able to exact huge influence on the business deals they take part in which has led to some pretty staggering long term profits, but that has nothing to do with what we are discussing in this thread, which is guys like Crayon making 2-3% a month trading. You know what trading is right?

A good return target (although still very unrealistic) would be 20% annualized for 30+ years. IF a person were able to achieve that going forward, that would land you among histories all time greats.

I'm 65% annualized over the past 4 years. I'll let you know in 26 years what I'm at, but returns don't scale the way you think they do in trading. The longer you are in this game the more you'll realize that. 30% for 30 years isn't from trading. It's only for people who can put the screws to distressed companies and take advantage of business situations that traders like you and I couldn't dream of.
 
my sensible goal is to try and make 0.025 cent on contracts that cost 0.50
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my completely ludicrous goal due to a complete lack of understanding of bid ask spreads, trade commissions, carry costs, and efficient markets is to try and make 0.025 cent on contracts that cost 0.50

Fixed it for ya :)
 
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