Quote from SoxxClinton:
yeah it was kinda like that. I made money like everybody else in the last couple of years of the 90's. To be honest I never did much momentum, technical, or daytrading so my returns develop over much longer timeframes than most of you guys talk about. You could say that I am a fundamentally oriented position trader I guess, though it is a little more complicated than that. I use hedges and market neutral strategies, options spreads, and lots of other tools to implement/complement my strategy. I guess the style is probably closest to Hussman's amongst well known investors. So yeah I can see an inefficiency and maybe not get paid for months once I put on a position, or go through periods like last July, where I took a hit like most of the quant funds who tend to long value and short expensive. So the times that are meager for me are either when some of my legs go against me, or when the market takes time to come around to a normal state. I tend to run a ton of positions at the same time too, usually 25-50 at a time. And I don't know what you guys are getting but an average solid year for me is like 25% with of course lots of average variation around that. I do a lot of trading throughout the day but it is more like gardening, trimming positions here and there. I have zero techincal analysis skills whatsoever and am probably the worst short-term trader ever. But yeah I know all about the mental issues, I can have long flat periods and 20% drawdowns which because of my style of trading involve periods of months usually.
To answer another question, I was one of those kids who had a few shares of KO and XOM as a kid so I started watching stocks early. Also I have a finance degree and did five years of credit in a bank. I bet I have read the annual reports of maybe 2,000 companies between work and managing my little portfolio.
