Why aren't there more Billionaire traders?

[TraderZones]

Quote from AndrewL:

Traderzones, I played professional poker for a living where 95% of players lose.

What you learned in poker will not help you with daytrading, except perhaps some with trade management. Reading faces and calculating poker odds does not tell you where the market will be 15 minutes from now.

And the "rake" of market slippage/commissions/broker or personal errors is a lot lot higher than it is for a longer term investor.

Daytrading takes perhaps 8-12,000 hours of screen time to effectively learn, and even then, most people will still not be profitable.

The number of daytraders who make a killing is probably something like 0.0002% It is not 5% win - it is 5% mostly break even, some less make a little, a lot less make a living, and very-very few make a killing.

 

[Deadwood]

Yes , you can make money daytrading and your poker experience should help a lot assuming you were successful.

Most successful traders I know don't really want to be billionaries. They just want the freedom of financial security and not having to deal with the corporate world. Thats what drew them into the game to begin with.

In fact, it's common that once a guy grows his account to a certain level he'll just suck profits out and buy t-bills or something. Afterall, not losing money should be goal numero uno.

Btw, contrary to what Traerzone says, if you know money management and probabilities, knowing where the market will be in 15 minutes is irrelevant. Any decent trader would know this instintively.

And just out of curiosity, when you say "daytrading" exactly what do you mean? There's a lot of ways to trade stocks intraday that fall under the umbrella of daytrading.

 

[neveragain]

you guys are NUTS''''''''''''''''''''''''i would be fine just with a MILLION
and trading with a PORTFOLIO MARGIN ACCOUNT
why do you need a billion for????

 

[Cutten]

Quote from AndrewL:

So if trading can be consistently profitable like poker (I had a streak of 32 straight winning months) why haven't I heard of more billionaire day traders?

Scalability. Just as it's hard to find a game at $50,000-$100,000, it's hard to daytrade above a certain size.

That's why almost all billionaires trade over longer-term timeframes, or across multiple markets (which requires multiple employees).

 

[good one]

Why doesn't the OP just build his bankroll in poker until he is playing 5/10 million dollar blinds?
My question is as logical as why aren't there more billion dollar day traders...

 

[marketsurfer]

Quote from Div_Arb:

There are lots of billionaire traders that come to mind. Stevie Cohen, James Simons, George Soros..... They are all traders, but not necessarily day traders. Maybe that should tell you something.

They are hedge fund managers who made their billions hiring talent and earning fees on OPM.

surf

 

[Kicking]

There are many multibillionnaires on ET. They are just being modest and very secretive , you know when you make that kind of money chicks are all over you you need to protect yourself.

But if you browse the web you will read about a trader who made 18 billion dollars in one year. I don't know what his ET alias is though. He must have several of them.

 

[gnome]

Trading is a highly uncertain endeavor. To build a big bankroll one has to figure out how to be consistently profitable, to do so long enough, and to avoid the market's "slings and arrows".

That combination is rare.

 

[Midas]

There are plenty of billionaire traders, however, day trading activity is not conducive to large acounts. With every zero you add to your account the # of trading edges that exist decrease.

 

[marketsurfer]

Quote from Midas:

There are plenty of billionaire traders, however, day trading activity is not conducive to large acounts. With every zero you add to your account the # of trading edges that exist decrease.

there may be billionaires who actively trade. however, there are no billionaire traders who became billionaires via purely trading without massive OPM and fund fees.

Take a look at the Forbes 400 if you doubt it.



surf