It's easy, % is irrelevant without a base $. A guy can honestly say he's up 100% for the year but if you don't ask then the reality can be that he went from $500 to $1000. YOu need both set of data, not one, but both, to make any kind of assessment on how good a year a trader had.
% is much easier for mutual funds/hedgies because they always already work with big #'s so you when a fund says that it made 40% ytd, I'm impressed, i don't worry about how many millions or billions it has under it, but when some guy on ET says he's up so many %, then you automatically have to ask on what start up base. As i said, you need both #'s unless you're dealing with the big boys. It's really a non-issue...and if i didnt have so much free time on my hands after this incredibly long vacation i wouldn't even be typing all these words....