Quote from Zuizo:
With so many traders claiming to have made over 100% in 2002...
Only EASYGURU has stepped up to the plate to state his tools of choice:
Trading instrument
Time frame
Margin Exposure
(he even added his beginning capital in 2002)
Is there NO ONE else willing to back up their claim with a little insight on what their tools of choice were?
Instrument - Equities, a few options.
Time Frame- A few minutes to still open. Over half my account is in positions that I put on and have yet to sell. Some I have held since 2001.
Margin Exposure- Rarely over 100% overnight, often much less. Intraday, it got up to around 120-130% on some ocasions.
In my trading account (which is only part of my main acct.) I often maxed out at 4X margin intraday, but that was on only 60k in capital on most ocasions.
My trading account has usually had between 60 and 100k in it, and is usually closer to 60k. Sometimes, after a dry spell, i've gotten down to 50k or so. I'd rather not comment on my main account, only to say that it is a few times larger, and it is something of an anchor on my performance as I made a few hundred percent in my trading account and only about 40% in my longer term account this year. (after adjusting for taxes though, the numbers are much closer as all my long term gains are long term taxable gains and were achieved through much less risk than my short term scalps). Unfortunately, the question was for total returns, and not tax adjusted returns.
I think that there should be some way to easilly calculate tax adjusted returns. That's really the key. You really do make much more on long term gains than short term ones b/c of the difference in taxes. That's something that many traders never take into account for some reason.
BTW: did anyone notice that I somehow logged in as preatorian2 using my same pw? Freaky eh?