Getting Started What can I make in my first year trading?

We get questions like this one quite often. We find that most aspiring traders don't have a clue as to what to expect from the market. Yet here they are, putting up their money. Most are going to learn the hard way. We have no idea in the world what you can expect to make in your first year of trading, or any other year, for that matter. What we can tell you is that without proper guidance and help, you are probably going to have some very bitter experiences. Why? Because your anticipations are almost completely wrong.

Futures traders, especially beginning traders, often open an account with unrealistic expectations of trading performance. These expectations could be formed by the sales literature for a trading program that emphasizes its profitability, by reports of success stories by top traders or by some brokers within the industry. In all cases, you are rarely made aware of the many other times when performances were considerably worse. In other words, you are a victim of selection bias.

Most advertisers of courses, systems, books, etc., will mislead you into thinking that you just can't lose if you buy what they are selling. We are talking here about hype, major hype - as much as the authorities will allow them to get away with.

Selection bias is a term well known within the social sciences and occurs whenever some undesired screening factor leads to a misrepresentation of a population sample. For example, traders seldom express their losing trades with as much enthusiasm as their winning trades. Consequently, a random selection of letters or phone calls received by a company that sells a trading program often will overstate the proportion of traders who are doing well. Sometimes the cause of the selection bias is not obvious. For instance, let's say that a trader who purchases a very expensive price and charting package is more profitable than another trader without it. The merits of the package seem obvious. Maybe not. It could be that the individual who can afford to purchase the package is better capitalized than the other trader and this is the reason for the better performance.

Starting off your futures and options trading experience with unrealistic expectations inevitably will lead to frustration and disappointment. It's better to face reality now. It will make life as a trader easier down the road. Here are just a few facts to dispel those unrealistic expectations.

  1. More traders lose money than make money. The figures are fuzzy, but it is 80% to 90% (maybe more) who end up losers and leave.
  2. Within the industry, only a small percentage of retail traders are profitable on a consistent basis. Moreover, if you are just starting out, you should expect to incur some loss strictly due to error on your part as you climb up the learning curve. Increased trading knowledge and experience combined with trading strategies that have superior risk/return characteristics can help put the odds of success in your favor. So, it is important to study the markets and educate yourself before trading or, alternatively, you can rely on the support of your broker professional. Another option you may also want to consider is paper trading. It's a viable option because it's a lot cheaper to make a mistake in a fictitious account than a real one.
  3. You will have losing trades. In fact, most of your trades will be losing trades. It is impossible to predict price movements every time. Even when the technical and fundamental factors are in agreement, the market often moves in an unexpected way. This can even happen several times in a row. For this reason, it is always important to make sure that loss is limited on every trade and that you have sufficient trading capital to withstand several losing trades without being taken out of the game.
  4. Don't expect to become financially independent. It's unrealistic to expect a small-sized account, especially one under $5,000, to generate consistent income to replace regular employment. While this may be possible for a very low percentage of traders, it does often require high-risk trading. High-risk trading means that if you are one of the many who lost money, then you probably lost your money very quickly and you may end up owing even more money to the clearing firm. High-risk trading should be avoided, especially by the beginner. Rather, concentrate on low-risk, low-frequency trading and devote appropriate effort to increasing your knowledge and understanding of futures trading.

Keep in mind that, as a beginner the emphasis should be on learning and proceeding slowly. By that, I mean practicing in a paper trading account and confining your trades to those that have low risk. The expectations of huge profit that many beginners start out with may be realized, but only after you invest the requisite time and energy and only after a slow and realistic start.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
A quick scan through the posts on this thread leads me to conclude that 'What Can I make In My First Year Trading?' - is the wrong question. A more useful and appropriate question would be: 'What Can I Lose In My First Year Trading'? And the answer to that question is, of course, 'everything'. This may sound negative and unhelpful - but it isn't meant to be. My understanding (and belief) is that pro's always focus on what they stand to lose and never think about what they stand to gain. If you're a 'newbie' in your first year of trading, you would, IMO, be very well advised to focus on the former rather than the latter. I certainly wish I'd had this advise in my first year which, given what I've said, was loss making. Year two as well, come to that!

If there's one thing I've learnt over the past few years or so it's this: most of the 28,000+ T2W members start out by focusing on the £'s or $ signs when they start. Like moths to to a flame, they are seduced by the prospect of vast profits, but are totally naive and unprepared for the lions den that awaits them. If your new to this game, ignore the facts at your peril - 90% of participants lose!!! As a very young man in my first job straight out of college, I was taught the 'Six P's Rule'. Proper Planning Prevenents Piss Poor Performance. Before you back your ideas and beliefs about the markets with your hard earned dosh, make sure you have a proven and tested plan with an identifiable 'edge'.

Happy and profitable trading all. (This may be a tautological statement?!)
Tim.
 
Roberto said:
You make it sound as if you believe it would be their money that you'd be "winning", gullible!

Like others here, I make my living that way and I can assure you it's not.

really!

from my short time here, i have noted that you often seem to ask quite a few basic questions for someone who earns a living from trading.

i think you must be one very talented individual indeed to make a living trading with such little awareness (never mind willingly paying a wider spread than necessary - something that no professional i have ever known would ever do irrespective of his/her time to profit horizon. reason - you are burning money unnecessarily - a trader manages money, he dont burn it or willingly give it to someone else).

maybe oscar wilde was right after all!

hats off to you mate (if its true).

imo the amount a trader will make in his 1st year is all down to the training and mentoring the individual receives - and of course his/her desire to learn. i have seen one young lady earn $2m in her first year with a $20k account. she then retired aged 24. i believe she opened a shop.

if there is no mentoring from a professional then your basically in for a much tougher ride. my hat goes off to those that do it by them selves. i would doubt that most are net positive at the end of year 1. if they are, then they have a bright future ahead if they keep their discipline and honesty.

i get the impression from reading these threads that most of you guys are at the retail end (like our muse roberto)

people generally have a bad habit of putting glass ceilings in front of themselves.

if you think 30% pa is a good result, then you will get no more. if you think 300% pa is a reasonable figure then you may get no more.

we cut our own keys to the door of destiny.
 
1lot - you sound like a coach I probably know.

I kind of agree with you. If a newbie can find a good coach, or even better a MENTOR then he/she will likely be blocks ahead of the other starters by 1st year end.

The trick is sorting the good from the mediocre and the downright awful.

On a separate note, of your few posts on t2w you do seem to make assumptions about individuals and nebulous groups without too much justification. If you're a real trader, you'll know what assumptions can do to your bottom line.

BTW - A "Glass Ceiling" is normally above you - not in front of you and it's more normally associated with inappropriate societal constraints/restrictions - not self-induced limitations.

There's a fine line between pedantry and accuracy and I don't particularly care which side of it I wobble from time to time. Better than being plain wrong.
 
I suggest that a successful trader will be able to average a net of 1 to 1.5 units of risk per month, once the learning curve has been weathered. Any more than that would not be sustainable as a long-run average.

e.g. if your risk per trade is 2%, then an annualised return of 27% to 43% is feasible as a long run average. Much more than a unit of risk per month is not feasible for the simple reason that it would lead to billionaire status for too many home-based traders, and this is clearly not the case!

As long as the trader is well-capitalised, the above rates of return can result in a very nice living.
 
Hi Roberto,

Really? What is your agenda? Makes a nice change no mention of CS? Do you live in the real world? Have you not contributed to the thread ' winner' priced out of market?
Wha is the basis of your statement ' it's not like betting n a horse'?
Who said anything about whose money a punter wins? Are you on the defensive?
How do you know it is not their money? Have you inside and intimate knowledge of how SB companies make a fortune?

I happen to believe that we live in a democracy and unlike do not wish to impose my views ill informed or otherwise on unsuspecting innocent punters.

I also happen to believe that there is no merit in attempting to stifle debate.

good luck in you betting career.
 
gullible said:
Who said anything about whose money a punter wins?
Nobody did. But you said "SB companies will not allow you to 'win' £1/2M" and then I said "You make it sound as if you believe it would be their money that you'd be "winning"." And I still say that now, because that is how you made it sound. You made it sound that way because that was what you mistakenly believed.

gullible said:
Are you on the defensive?
Not at all; simply repeating what I said before.

gullible said:
How do you know it is not their money?
If it were, they'd eventually close down the accounts of all consistent winners (instead of that being, as it is, a very great rarity) and it wouldn't even be possible to make a living that way at all. As it is, some SB companies have never done that at all, and the ones that have done it have normally done it only over "grey market" betting.

gullible said:
Have you inside and intimate knowledge of how SB companies make a fortune?
A little, yes. I have a friend from Cambridge who's now rather senior in the FSA department responsible for regulating them, and another friend who works for one of the SB companies (though actually not one of the ones I use myself as a punter).

gullible said:
I also happen to believe that there is no merit in attempting to stifle debate.
In this case, there is one merit, just to me: it avoids my blood pressure rising every time you offer some ill-informed and totally incorrect piece of prejudiced nonsense. :)

At least when you do so in the "Capital Spreads" thread and get firmly put down by Simon and by other readers, you sometimes have the grace to acknowledge inferentially (though somehow never openly!) that you didn't actually know what you're talking about.

gullible said:
good luck in you betting career.
Thank you. And good luck to you, too.

I have no interest in arguing with you, in public or in private, but every time I see one of your misleading and completely incorrect statements, I'll correct it.
 
Roberto,

Who is misleading whom? What is your agenda? Your blood pressure is your problem.
Will only respond, if you open up and make your agenda public.
illinformed keep your prejudices to yourslef?
 
gullible said:
What is your agenda?
I don't understand your question.

My "agenda", as you put it, is simply to correct factual misinformation and prejudice.

If you mean "do I have any connection with any spread-betting company" the answer is emphatically no, not at all, other than being a client of two (actually three, but one account more or less disused now because their spreads aren't competitive enough for me).

Spread-betting isn't the only way I trade anyway, as you can see from my other posts. As you can see, I've posted here (and on other sites, where I'm usually known as "Robert M") over a huge range of trading subjects and over a long period of time.

I'm just a self-employed home-based trader, who happens to be a full-time one and makes his living this way.

Did that answer you? If you meant something else, then please clarify it and I'll answer with pleasure, because I dislike innuendo and insinuation! :)
 
gullible said:
Your blood pressure is your problem.
I was trying to make a joke, or at least a light-hearted comment! I imagined wrongly that the smiley would clarify it. Sorry if it was a little too subtle for you.
 
Why do interesting threads seem to descend into slanging matches between the "Alpha" male ego`s?
 
I think it's because a very small minority of rather prejudiced members repeatedly produces "factual statements" that are actually completely untrue. If you correct them for the benefit of others (the only alternative being to leave them standing uncorrected, which clearly does nobody any favours!), they then apparently object to that and make unfounded and incorrect allegations about your motives for doing so, imputing some sort of "agenda" other than simply correcting a mistake. It's a great shame. IMHO the only remedy is to object to their posts every time (as I did to gullible's last one, which I see the Moderator has now very kindly removed), so perhaps the discussion can now continue without any more of that! Let's hope so, anyway.
 
gullible said:
Roberto, What makes you think you are right
Gullible,

Any spread-betting firm, if they could really find a customer capable of winning £500,000 would be absolutely overjoyed to have him and keep him. They wouldn't carry that risk themselves, obviously. They can't afford to do that and their shareholders clearly wouldn't allow it. They would front-run him and make at least the same amount for themselves. It's how the industry works.

A suggestion for you: why don't you simply discuss it with Simon Denham (with whom you've discussed other things about spread-betting and always learned something)?

You and I both know that Simon is honest and straightforward and good at answering your questions. I can appreciate that I might have irritated you (and I'm sorry about that, by the way), and I expect that you'll accept explanations more willingly from other people than you will from me. And I don't blame you or criticise you at all for that.

But, to answer your question, I know it from my own experience (no, I haven't won that much yet, but I am now well into my 5th year of making my living this way, so I'm getting on towards it in total as my monthly income actually creeps up a bit each year), and I also know it from the 2 people in the industry I mentioned higher up in the thread, and I also know it from Directors of both the firms where I've spread-bet myself (I'm excluding Simon).

Also, if you'll excuse the comment (and I promise I don't mean this rudely!) I think the overall record around here rather demonstrates that I happen to know a little more about this subject than you do. That doesn't make me a better trader than you; and it doesn't make me cleverer than you; and it doesn't in any way make me a better person than you, so please don't take it personally! I'm sure that there are also hundreds of areas where you know masses more than I do and have loads and loads more experience. But you happen here (as sometimes before) to have expressed (as "fact") an entirely mistaken opinion about the one of the few things that I really do know about, so please humour me and allow me to correct it so that other people don't get misinformed, ok? :)
 
Roberto said:
Gullible,

Any spread-betting firm, if they could really find a customer capable of winning £500,000 would be absolutely overjoyed to have him and keep him. They wouldn't carry that risk themselves, obviously. They can't afford to do that and their shareholders clearly wouldn't allow it. They would front-run him and make at least the same amount for themselves. It's how the industry works.

A suggestion for you: why don't you simply discuss it with Simon Denham (with whom you've discussed other things about spread-betting and always learned something)?

You and I both know that Simon is honest and straightforward and good at answering your questions. I can appreciate that I might have irritated you (and I'm sorry about that, by the way), and I expect that you'll accept explanations more willingly from other people than you will from me. And I don't blame you or criticise you at all for that.

But, to answer your question, I know it from my own experience (no, I haven't won that much yet, but I am now well into my 5th year of making my living this way, so I'm getting on towards it in total as my monthly income actually creeps up a bit each year), and I also know it from the 2 people in the industry I mentioned higher up in the thread, and I also know it from Directors of both the firms where I've spread-bet myself (I'm excluding Simon).

Also, if you'll excuse the comment (and I promise I don't mean this rudely!) I think the overall record around here rather demonstrates that I happen to know a little more about this subject than you do. That doesn't make me a better trader than you; and it doesn't make me cleverer than you; and it doesn't in any way make me a better person than you, so please don't take it personally! I'm sure that there are also hundreds of areas where you know masses more than I do and have loads and loads more experience. But you happen here (as sometimes before) to have expressed (as "fact") an entirely mistaken opinion about the one of the few things that I really do know about, so please humour me and allow me to correct it so that other people don't get misinformed, ok? :)
Great and informative post, Rob. Also full marks for diplomacy!

Gullible, I've been spreadbetting for longer than Roberto here and unlike him I HAVE won over 500,000 from it, and I totally endorse every word he says. That IS how the industry works. It ISN'T their money they're paying out, not to me and not to Roberto either. And we could do with an expert article in the KLab section to say so, btw. IGIndex and CityIndex regularly pay out five and six figure sums having hedged them and made profits themselves of course. A glance at the FT will also confirm this anyway.

David
 
Going slightly off topic here but did anyone else see the comment in the week end FT regarding IG Index closing their housing index book for a while towards the end of last year because it had become too onesided. I thought they used a demand push pricing system (i.e. they can't off lay their bets so the price gets pushed if there are too many sellers). My guess is that if they pushed the price down but there still weren't any buyers so their risk got too high (or rather there potential losses may have been to high) so they closed the book for a while. Do they do the same in binaries where it gets too scary for them?
 
I think it was the Chairman of IGIndex who a couple of years ago admitted that they didn't lay bets off because it was just too expensive to do. He made a public statement to this effect. (a friend of Gerald Ratner perhaps ?). Effectively they take a view of the market each day and adjust their quotes accordingly in order to minimise damage and maximise profit. That is a summary of what I believe he said.

In fact the only SB company who allegedly hedge their bets is Cantor Index, which accounts for their bigger spreads.

Glenn
 
No spread-bet firm needs to hedge _all_ the positions taken with them, because if they can balance their spread flexibly enough, they can try to engineer a situation in which half of the positions on a product hedge the other half, so that they carry no net exposure on that product.

On that particularl product, they then "make their living" from the spread, which is of course paid by winners and losers alike.

In practice, it will rarely if ever work out exactly like that, of course!

To the extent to which they _can't_ do that, they must then decide whether to hedge their "net position".

If the product in question is something like a currency-rate or an index, obviously they can't move the spread about more than a point or two just to avoid hedging, because obviously they can't be too far out of line with all the other spread-bet companies. To do so would create arbitrage potential for the punters every single time it happened.

On the other hand, if the product is a grey market like the one mentioned above, they can't hedge anyway, because there's nothing available to be used as a hedge, so they necessarily carry any net risk themselves. But in these cases they can avoid excessive net exposure either by adjusting the spread or, if necessary, closing the instrument. Some of the bigger companies will do this up to a point. Some of the smaller ones can't take even a smaller risk and they therefore tend not to quote on such "products" precisely because they can't hedge them.

This is all so obvious if you think about it, guys; and it's not exactly "classified information" anyway.

If a successful client suddenly opens a very substantial new position on any hedgeable instrument, depending on which spread-betting firm is involved, that position will either automatically be hedged or automatically be over-hedged.

Again, no secret here, and both the punters and the FSA are happy to know that in any event the funds will always be available to pay out the winning punters (not traditionally a problem, given the extent to which the average punter loses!).

Glenn said:
the only SB company who allegedly hedge their bets is Cantor Index
Sorry, that's mistaken, Glenn. Logic, experience and statements on these boards and in many other places from SB company staff all disprove it.

Why, oh why, does the mechanics of spread-betting always have to be such a contentious issue? Why do people seem to believe so many things about it that are just inaccurate? None of this stuff is information that's remotely difficult to get hold of or verify. Magazines are full of articles about it. They write about it in the Financial Times, in Shares magazine and in loads of other places - articles by perfectly well informed people with all the right experience and connections, interviews with SB company staff, and so on and so forth.

Why, therefore, do people persist with so many erroneous beliefs about it?

Do people really believe that there's some vast media conspiracy to deceive the trading public about the nature of spread-betting?!

It seems supremely ironic that one of the safest, best-regulated, most reliable and least taxable areas of trading can't be discussed without the most extraordinary accusations and imputations of dishonesty, crookery and fraud being made. I've even seen it alleged (once, briefly, in another thread here) that SB firms display different prices on an instrument to clients who are long and short of that instrument! It really is quite, quite bizarre and rather macabre that people can believe such things!
 
Roberto,
You know as well as I do that "There's none so blind as those who will not see".
 
dr_d_michaelson said:
And we could do with an expert article in the KLab section to say so, btw.

I believe there is one such article from a SB company in the offing - not sure which.
 
Top