The Lawrence Chan Blog
I have diverse interest in many things from science and technology to martial arts and ancient health practices. Obviously, discussion of these topics should be done within my own blog as oppose to keeping them here. Hence my blog is created so that I can have a venue to express my creativity and thoughts on my other interests. For those of you who share similar interests, you can check out my site TheLawrenceChan.com
Due to the sheer volume of articles I have written about trading, many of which are trading related yet not technically in line with what DaytradingBias.com is offering, they have to be split from my blog into yet another site. Hence for my non-technical writings about trading, videos I have curated from various sources that I think are useful for traders and my reviews of trading related products, you can find them at the site Essence of Trading
The reason why I picked the Tai Chi picture above for this page is best explained by my article Tai Chi Traders in a World of Chaos at Essence of Trading.
Below are the old blog posts that were originally posted here. To avoid broken links from other sites, I have decided to keep them here.
Non-Scientific Study Of Trader Performance: Future Traders (Part 2)
2013 Oct 2 Wed 22:34:13 | by
For background information refer to Part 1
I am referring to future traders as a group who trade any kind of future contracts. They have their accounts setup at various future brokerage firms. Grouping traders this way does not produce very consistent information due to big difference in margin requirement on different future contracts. For example, traders who trade mini FX contracts would need less capital than those trading the large index future contracts.
Since I cannot get very precise answers from the firms in the first place, I guess we have to settle for that.
Account Size Distribution
All data are cut off at the end of 2012 unless otherwise stated. Data from 3 firms only. Statistics on individual accounts only.
Account Size | up to $10,000 | up to $50,000 | up to $250,000 | more |
New Account | 50% – 75% | 20% – 35% | 5% – 10% | rare |
Current Standing | 50% – 60% | 25% – 30% | 5% – 10% | N/A |
Average Age | 1.5 – 2 years | 3.5 – 5 years | 8 – 10+ years | N/A |
The information I gathered is not totally out of expectation. I think it is a good starting point for discussion as there can be many ways to interpret the data here.
The N/A entries means I did not get an answer at all for those questions.
My take on the statistics:
1. Larger account size plays a role in survival for sure.
2. Notice the lower boundary of account size at $10,000 to $50,000 is higher at the current standing than the new account one.
3. Some accounts must have moved up the account size ladder over time. I know this partly because of the next set of statistics.
4. When I asked for further breakdown of the $50,000 to $250,000 category, I think the questions somehow intimidated the firms hence I did not get a better breakdown of the data.
Income Distribution
Futures brokerages track client income for taxation purpose. Thus they have very good information regarding the performance of their clients. The problem to gather this information is that it is extremely sensitive. Even though I tried very hard to make the questions as general as possible, many questions are not answered.
Income | None | up to $50,000 | up to $100,0000 | up to $250,000 | more |
Overall | 50% – 60% | 30% – 40% | 5% | 2% | N/A |
>= 10 years | 25% – 35% | 25% – 35% | 20% – 25% | 5% – 10% | N/A |
A few important points:
1. I choose $50,000 as the boundary because it is approximately the medium family income for United States
2. The income level none does not include only idle accounts. It also includes accounts that have traded but resulted in net loss for the year. I tried to find out more about this with questions on the magnitude of the losses but I could not get any answers on those questions.
3. For the more category I received no answer again.
4. The consistency of the 10 years of more group implies the statistics for the other accounts would be worse comparing to the overall results.
Wisdoms From These Firms
The contacts I talked to mention several phenomenon worth talking about here.
There are a group of people who would deposit several thousand dollars, trade until the accounts go under. They would disappear for a while and then come back with several thousand dollars to start all over again. Majority of these people never make it to the point with consistent performance.
The way how the profitable accounts make it somehow follows a different pattern in their equity swings comparing to the ones that fail. The ones that have small gains and losses most of the time with occasion bigger gains are the ones growing bigger over time. The ones with big equity swings are the ones blowing up quickly. There are exceptions but rare.
A significant number of accounts that performs well at $50,000 to $100,000 a year income level do not have a balance more than the yearly income. In another words, they generate 100% to 200% return year after year.
The 5th to 8th year time window seems like a curse to many profitable accounts. During this time window, many strong performing accounts that keep growing often face a disastrous setback or even wipe-out event.
A similar time window exists for the non-performing accounts by their 10th to 12th years. Some of these non-performing accounts would simply become profitable and never look back. This last one is something I have never heard of. I am taking it with a grain of salt because it could be a self serving statement from the brokerage firms.
Summary
As you can see, being a trader does not necessary means you will be making a lot of money. In fact, it often works out like a job for many people whose trading accounts existed for 10 years or more. It is similar to any other professions where you have to put in extra effort to improve yourself so that you can perform better.
You can also view it in a slightly different way, say, as a business owner. You have a choice to grow your business further but you have to somehow put in the effort to make it happen.
I like to research more on this subject when I get the chance. For example, the performance statistics of career traders (20+ years) will be very interesting. A study on the performance of non-individual accounts will help too because many people would choose to trade under an incorporated entity once they become profitable consistently.
To Brokerage Firms
I am not trying to pry into your firm’s secrets or stealing your clients. All I am just trying to do here is to help retail traders learning about the income potential of trading.
If you find my study interesting and that you are willing to share some performance statistics with me, please contact me at lawrence@daytradingbias.com
No NFP Report This Friday Oct 4, 2013
2013 Oct 2 Wed 12:08:25 | by
Just a reminder that due to the US government shutdown there will be no NFP report by this Friday.
It is an event shock thus NFP bias will be affected.
Julia Galef: Look at a Problem as an Outsider
2013 Oct 1 Tue 20:03:35 | by
Another way in looking at Ms. Galef’s other video on The Sunk Costs Fallacy.
Being a trader, if you find that you are failing to make money in trading, or that you could not improve your performance further. You need to take a step back and really evaluate yourself as an observer or an outsider.
Sometimes there is only so much you can do to improve on a trading method that has limited potential.
Think of what you have missed during the day.
Have you written down any notes about them yet?
Do you notice that some of them recurring yet you are not comfortable in trading them?
Why you are not comfortable?
Can you make yourself comfortable by trading them with sim trading or confirm your gut feeling or observations with backtesting?
Think outside of what you think you know at this point.
There is always room for improvement in our lives.
MBO Issue 22 Available Now
2013 Sep 30 Mon 16:56:23 | by
WTF Chart of the Day: US Government Shutdown Play In Forex And Indices
2013 Sep 30 Mon 13:34:13 | by
In case you are not familiar with US government shutdowns, it has happened before and it is likely to happen now.
The last shutdown on record was 1995 November 14 to 19 and then 1995 December 16 to 1996 January 6.
What happened to Emini S&P500? Not much really.
What happened to the majors? Wow.
We are talking about several hundred pips each.
You’ve been warned.
China announced its aggressive plan of the Free Trade Zone (FTZ) in Shanghai today. The zoning of FTZ was approval back in July but no details were available at the time what the plan entails. More details are now disclosed with the announcement this …
We will have some software maintenance and update over this weekend. Will likely be done on Saturday in the afternoon or late in the evening. My guy who work on the website will keep you all posted. …
Jim Cramer on TheStreet, http://www.thestreet.com/story/12027849/1/cramer-jump-on-jc-penney.html ZeroHedge quotes his words with sarcastic comments, http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-26/how-lose-32-jim-cramer-three-weeks-jump-jc-penney that’s …
Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and other interesting books, presented a very interesting investigation he has completed on college students and their collective behaviours. What does this has to do with trading? From the moment you are hooked …
I am asked many times for information about the performance of individual retail traders. It is a difficult question to answer because without actual data it is not possible to compute a norm or identify the characteristics by various categories. The …
blog link partners | |
BlogFlux.com Investing Blog Directory Blogging Fusion Blog Directory | ReadABlog.com |