@prash_u I do not know what is your experience level in stock market & what is your track record if you have traded live in stock market. To become a professional trader and make money consistently is not less than acquiring a degree like MBA, MBBS or BE, etc. In fact becoming a professional trader requires much more efforts, sincerity and hard work than all these traditional degrees, of course with a tuition fee.
Knowing the theory only is just 25% or less to become a professional trader. A trader has to trade live to gain practical experience day after day to know the tricks of the trade, to know his strength & weaknesses. Traders who trade occasionally with a fear based mind, donāt take trading as a serious business and donāt put their 100% efforts; they donāt get the degree of a Professional trader. After wasting their precious time for 1 or 2 yrs they quit (drop out with out a degree).
Whatās your opinion @anon99108009
Now the earnings part. Professional traders who trade for a living expect and try their best to make at least 10% of their capital on monthly basis. But sometimes they make 5% per month, sometimes 15% per month. But on an average end up with a profit of 7 to 8% around. These traders are called Professionals for a reason: they only incur normal loss due to mkt fluctuations (normal loss is equivalent to expense/cost of running a business). They never incur loss due to personal trading error like altering or removing a stoploss, averaging a losing position, taking a trade without a trading setup, trading every single day like a daily wage worker even though mkt is range bound (without a setup) or trading with fear & hesitation while executing a trade.
So, yes 7 to 8% is what every professional trader expects and believe me even 5% profit per month consistently is also awesome But these ppl are extremely rare. Who is ready to put double the efforts of becoming an engineer, doctor or MBA and ready to pay equivalent tuition fee? Nobody.
@99Bulls. No opinions. I already shared my inputs & experiences earlier. Besides, in my case, I will continue trading as long as iām alive. Everyday I trade. Profit? I really havenāt fixed to limited. It doesnāt matter weather I make profits or losses. If Iām making losses whatās the use of trading? Right? Well, Yes to certain i agree. But this subject of STOCK MARKET is so complex, Itās mechanism is killing my brain one way or other, changes every moment. It is better to have no strategy than having a strategy. Because soon or later, plan is getting failed again & again several times. New plans ? again a new mistake. How to overcome this?
Not repeating the same mistake
Capital Account is limited.
I Trade only what i know. When I say āKnowā It means, What we deal with is numbers. Itās not a magic materials. So I strongly believe, Math is always valid. So my numbers are rock solid as my thoughts.
No profit line is fixed, Will trade as long as market opens. Only on those trades iām pretty sure of.
Iām still failing? Yes! Iām greedy bastard. Where this will lead? This is just beginning!
A polite note. Maybe everyone should stop talking about others strictly and make our self useful. Why does it matters what others make? We should worried about ourselves. He makes a large or small profits, thatās his problem. How does does it matters to us? I saw this many times, always talking about others. This should be stopped.
Eventually everyone will learn by themselves. Following others, Someday he will knock off his head for giving a advice if its not working.
Thanks @99Bulls for replying in such a detail . I agree with you 100% on what you have said.
I have been trading for around 1.5-2 years now. Although not at a stretch, because i was taking around a months gap in between, whenever i felt i was not trading the way i should . I was making small but consistent profits but each time made different mistakes and lost all those profits and some of my capital each time too.
So, was taking gaps to recollect all the right and wrong things i had done and started afresh each time. I also maintained sort of a log book in which i also wrote what went right or what went wrong for me each day (although i am not doing it now). So, that also helped to recollect and analyse my mistakes.
So, yes i am not completely new to trading, but also not as experienced as i would like to be.
Also, thank you for specifically giving your understanding on the returns that professional traders make.
@anon99108009, i agree with you on your post and also on this point too. But since itās here, i also feel the need to provide a clarification or atleast a different perspective.
Firstly, I did not ask it because i wanted to take a deceision in my trading career based on what others returns would be. I also did not ask because i wanted to set myself a target based on other returns.
I asked simply because i had no clue about it and felt like knowing it.
Because, you see traders posting about their losses, maybe consistent losses through the course of a year or maybe one off huge loss, which wiped out their entire capital.
I also read your post about such an experience, which was nice and can help a lot of traders.
We might not take a trading decision based on this, but it is an experience worth knowing to keep in your back of mind, right?
You also see people posting about their one off trades where they were hugely profitable say 10%, 20% or 50% or whatever the number. But, its just a one day or one-off trade, which is useless.
But, usually you donāt get to see people who are making profit consistently (say on average in a year or month or however they trade) post about what kind of returns they get. or Atleast i havenāt come across many such posts or articles.
I started this post with an intention to know about this category, just to get a better understanding. It might help in the short or long term, or might not help at all, i am not sure.
@prash_u Hey man! Iām sorry. I didnāt mean you or anyone. What i meant to say, Others might make really good profits, 10 20 or whatever the % it is.
We have no clue how others make. Points to be seriously considered, Others Capital account value? In which segments they deal with? how vast their experience is, How much info they carry in their brain, How much risk they are ready to take? Comes from their own experiences, It varies person to person. I think we already come across through
So this process is keep changing. Canāt decide in the end.
Hey, no problem man! I also completely agree with what you said and also understand your intention and concern. So, no problems at all, i just gave a clarification on why i started the thread. Your feedback and opinions also help.
I am not sure many right away started to earn something significant, however in India and if you have access to some foreign markets I think you can really live off that in the long term, so be prepared for such fluctuations here for much more.
My post was not allowed as it was considered promotion but trust me there are some traders who make profits you all can barely imagineā¦after going through statements here
Retail traders are not professional traders. By that i mean you are not getting paid a SALARY every month to trade.
View trading more like a investment in the long run , but only after you have invested in Equity/Debt/FDs and you want to further diversify.
Never look a trading from a retail perspective like a job that will give you a salary every month.
if you want to get paid a salary in this industry , go work for a brokerage firm. if you are good at trading , they will hire you. you will get Salary + bonus.
@trader_dude, Thank you for the response. Yes, i understand that its not a fixed salary job. I was not looking for someone to tell me that they earn a fixed amount, or just because someone tells me the returns, i wouldnāt try to mimic them to get similar returns.
As i have mentioned earlier in the thread, it was just out of curiosity to know the kind of returns professional traders make, and I was asking for an approximate or average type of income/return % that they earn in the long run say for example year on year.
Also, by professional traders i meant, people who trade for a living either hired by an institution or the people who trade on their own as a full-time or main profession.
So, my intention here was, if someone is trading professionally in this manner, i believe most of them would be profitable big or small (Of course there will be exceptions to this too, but it would just help in having a better understanding).
@trader_dude yes, i figured that out by now. Since, it was not of any significant importance or some life-changing decision depending on it, I asked this question just out of general curiosity. If someone took out the time to read the thread and give their inputs, then i hope it will be to help or with a good intention.
So donāt see the need to verify what everyone claims. (Of course there will be exceptions to this too, but just hope for the good).
But, yes, since i read the comments also i would have a fair idea too, so will decide later on which responses to take into consideration or which is not of much help.
Also, like iāve already mentioned a lot of times, it is not for me to replicate anyoneās returns or strategy. I have my own and i trade too. It was just out of curiosity, to know if someone who is active here also trades professionally and is profitable in the long run, and no other intention.
Yes, as you say, maybe this is not the right platform to get that kind of information, but still worth a try, nothing to lose for trying.
If this is true, with the word āconsistentlyā underlined, then you are a genius for sure! You are among the top 0.1% traders of the world. My heartiest congratulations to you for your strategy, risk management, and psychology.
@iSTFF Hahah definitely no, i think iāve mentioned it somewhere but, i am a bit new to trading and have been only profitable for the last 4-5 months, so those numbers are also only for those few months.
So, too small a time and i trade with a small capital too. To term it consistently, that was my mistake, it was just to provide an example.
Also, i am almost certain, those returns will not hold in the long run or if i increase the captial. So, still a lot of learning to do.
Ok I get you now. Last 4-5 months have also been quite volatile, and you still did excellently! Keep going I would say! If you do well next 12-15 months consistently then I would say you have arrived because 12-15 months will somewhat show you different phases of the market.
I have been part of various proprietary investment teams for the last 15+ years. While i was always on the investment side, i usually had colleagues who were on the trading side (F&O). I would say that for any professional trader ~3-5% cumulative avg monthly return (over a long period of course) is the holy grail (meaning u get ur max bonus etc etc). Ofcourse there are months where you make even 10% but then there are losing months too. Honestly, i havent seen too many folks managing to do this over a 5+yr time frame. Obviously, returns depend on the strategy (and the implied risks taken) but the higher risk strategies do tend to have a tendency to have a blow-up everyonce in a while and therefore do not last 5 years!!!
When an individual does it for a living, it could change. Smaller corpus means probability of higher returns, lack of third party risk management (we had risk managers hovering around our desks on tough days and literally forcing traders to book a loss) means higher probability of blow-ups, lack of institutional resources means lower returns etc etc. Overall, i think it should net out and the 3%-5% average monthly returns over a long period (pre-expenses and taxes) should be a the holy grail if some one is doing this full time for a living (ie with a reasonable corpus)
But these ppl are extremely rare. Who is ready to put double the efforts of becoming an engineer, doctor or MBA and ready to pay equivalent tuition fee? Nobody.
Since, it was not of any significant importance or some life-changing decision depending on it, I asked this question just out of general curiosity. If someone took out the time to read the thread and give their inputs, then i hope it will be to help or with a good intention.
definitely no, i think iāve mentioned it somewhere but, i am a bit new to trading and have been only profitable for the last 4-5 months, so those numbers are also only for those few months.
because 12-15 months will somewhat show you different phases of the market.
Good luck to you too!