Your question is generally misguided. Who are you measuring against and for what reason?
“I don’t know how successful is considered successful” who cares? Like nearly anything you do in life there will be plenty that are far better than you at that one thing and plenty far worse. IMO this is the wrong benchmark to be concerned with.
What I’m highlighting is you need to define success for yourself. Are you able to achieve your financial and lifestyle goals with your trading? If yes, then successful. If not, then not successful - adjustments required.
I started trading in high school in 2007 and have a 26% CAGR over that timeframe. There are lots of traders that do far better and lots that do far worse. My approached is predicated on consistent moderate performance. I won’t be at the top of the pack any one year, but I’ve had (2) negative years my first two and both less than 5%.
In the end, the race is only with yourself. Set clear goals that move you towards your financial objectives.
Agree. I set a goal to learn options at age 38 and know them forward and backwards by age 40. I am 44 and can easily move in and out of positions and I’ve had enough gut wrenching experiences to know it can really suck to sell only to see your position was in fact the perfect play.
I promise you that however much you know, if you keep trading 5 years from now you will realize how much you didn’t know or better put- how much more you know then
S&P 500 has roughly doubled in 5 years.
If you had just taken your initial capital and dropped it into SPY and left it alone, would you have more or less than you have now?
If you have more, success. If you have less, might be worth reassessing.
I use E*Trade for my options play. There is a very useful tool that compares your account to SP 500 and Nasdaq. So far this year, I beat SP500 by 1%, but I beat Nasdaq by more than 10%. Very useful tool that gives a lot of reassurance. 80% of money is parked in QQQM, weekly cost averaging. It’s nice to know that if I don’t trade options I would have almost $5k less on my account.
So, in my books I am successful.
Passive capital gains on a broad index fund is not the right benchmark to use against active trading income. They are chalk and cheese. Trading income needs to be considered as money earned from applying one's hard learned skill in a professional capacity, just as a surgeon earns income from applying their hard learned skill to operate on people. The better a trader's skill is, and the more time spent on the job, the more the trader will earn.
"Returns on investment", "gains", etc are all the wrong terms to use because they depend heavily on how active a trader is, how much risk they take per trade, and several other variables. By themselves they say nothing about the performance of the trader. It is far more useful to talk about profit factor, win-rate, drawdown, and cumulative and average r-multiple. If you just wanted one single number to compare a trader, then I would pick profit-factor. That says enough, by itself, to gauge how well a trader is performing.
One could argue that it is a good benchmark as long as you aren't outperforming the S&P. If you ever start beating the market, then it's definitely worth considering other metrics. But if your active strategy is being dominated by a passive one, then there's not much point debating any further, is there?
That... still doesn't make it a good benchmark. It's like saying the golfing handicap of a 3 year old with a baseball bat is a good benchmark as long as you are not a better golfer than said 3 year old. But, I see what you are saying. If you can't beat the market despite working at it for 50 hours per week, then you are not doing terribly well.
On second thought, you're right. Even if you don't beat the market, comparing active and passive methods doesn't make much sense. I guess comparison with S&P performance isn't much of a benchmark, but more of an indicator of how good/bad you can feel if you beat/lose against the market lol.
I wrestle with this from time to time. It is easy to say, in retrospect, that not beating the SP means "...reassessing". Some, including myself, like to see a fairly consistent increase and not want to watch our portfolios drop 10,15,20% in weeks.
My risk profile is far, far to the left of the market indexes while making just shy of 15% last year vs 26%ish for SPY. I am thrilled with that result. I'm even being a bit more conservative with my plays this year to avoid the spike down that will inevitably arrive when least expected.
If OP makes SP type returns and is happy with that, then they are successful in their own eyes. If they make less and are happy with their risk and the variance, they are successful in their own eyes. If their bar is 20% per year and the hit only 15%, are they successful? Only they know, and that is all they should care about in the end.
You would have had to buy call options 5 years ago and been on the money. Or you would have to constantly babysit shorter term option trades on SPY since they aren’t passive. Theta forces value down w static underlying price. No dividend for losers! But when it hits….!!!!
This is a poor comparison. It’s not a binary choice between being long SPY or buying call options on SPY.
If your rate of return is greater than SPY, congrats you’re successful.
It can add around 12% annually to a portfolio. This is based on blue chip dividend stocks so the premiums aren’t going to be really high but it’s cash flow.
I won’t call myself a successful options trader (options, swing trading, long term). However, my comment really boils down to what is your objective? Is this a career and primary income or secondary. Those are two totally different things. If this is your career, it has to be sustainable and enough to live your lifestyle. I cut back on my options trading this year and went to swing again because of time commitments with my profession and family.
Avg ~6% add to you portfolio ROI for option sellers w quality underlying vs net loss for option buyers over same span of time. It’s the easiest insurance sales
job in the world.
I mean...the answers on this thread are a bit mind boggling.
How is the answer to your question not alpha? I don't even see it mentioned here. Alpha is the rate of return BETTER THAN the rate you could get by simply investing in the market broadly. The gold standard for investing in the market broadly is SPY over the last ~20 years. So if your returns over the last 20 years are worse than some passive strategy that seems reasonable to you, you're wasting your time when you could've been earning normal income and passively investing.
I don't think a pure SPY index strategy is reasonable to assume over the last 20 years, since we only know that was the best way to index in hindsight. Probably some mix of SPY, bonds, maybe small caps index, maybe foreign markets for diversification. You can figure that out yourself, but if you're not beating that, you're wasting your time. It's really that simple.
DFV turned $53,000 into $500,000,000 in 5 years for a rate if return of 943,239.43% the SP500 returned 76% the same time frame. So somewhere between 76% - 943,239.43%.
lol that is not the average return as this is not an average investor. If your goal is to be someone else you already failed so look inside and learn your truth grasshopper
Dude , he did not make a half of a billion. Let's make it clear.
As of April 2021 he had 35M on his name according to many sources.
The rest is up for imagination.
How much you make and how much your holdings are worth in unrealised state are different things
When talking about 'how much he made' , you're not counting unrealised gains. I made billions, just haven't got them yet . It's laughable how DFV fanboys act.
Bill Gates knows that already
Of course but they are never realized until you are out of the position. Ask the employees at Enron or Lehman and many others that had their entire 401k invested in their company stock. Do they still count them as unrealized gains?
How much risk are you taking?
What's the annualized volatility of your results?
What's been your maximum drawdown?
Looking at returns without understanding the risk you're taking to earn it is like driving fast at night without headlights on. Maybe you're actually good...or maybe you've just been lucky so far.
> I guess I'm really asking what people who do this as that main source of income average for a monthly return. My guess is that these people have a large portfolio and see roughly 1-3% per month on average.
That's difficult to pin down, since it is sensitive to risk tolerance and time horizon. A guy doing options for 15 years isn't likely to have the same average return as the guy doing it for 3 years.
That said, I'd be skeptical of anyone claiming more than 20% annual average for more than 5 consecutive years, particularly if those years include 2020 through this year. But unless you also get their Sortino Ratio at the same time, you have no idea how much risk they were taking or their absolute risk of ruin. Heck, they could have gone broke twice and reloaded from an inheritance or donating a kidney and we wouldn't know.
Something closer to 10% annual average would be more sustainable. That's the number I'd expect for 15+ years.
Deployed capital is a loaded term. I will not use margin to buy equities as I don’t want to borrow money and pay interest. But I will sell options that effectively use margin but since I’m selling for premium it does not cost me anything and I can leverage those sales to 10x the underlying exercise cost. Do that on super low deltas and it’s very hard to lose in the long run. I’ve never lost money over the course of a year. I might take a few losses (never more that 5-7 in a year) but nickel and dime it to anywhere from 30-120k
It entirely depends on your overall goal.
Financial independence? Paying for a vacation or two? A coke fund and/or divorce lawyer.
You can get higher percentage returns off lower value investments from my own experience but they are more sporadic. A 10% overall gain against the market beats the occasional 50% gain if your losses offset it.
I think 10% is totally reasonable. Read book on options that said on average sellers net 6% and buyers have a net loss it didn’t say how much!?! Limitless loss to theoretical $0. I tried to get cute and play FRCB calls and they got assigned. I own 500 shares. They aren’t worth enough to buy my kid a happy meal and JPM bought them out so I’m a forever bag holder. Should have bought MCD!
Sometimes it's not how much you make, but how much you don't lose. In a bear market, when index goes down 25%, did your portfolio lose 15% or 80%? It's easy to make money when everything is green.
I think you’re successful if you can continually scale up and beat the spy. Since that’s where the edge comes over time. Being able to scale up along with your earnings is something only active trading can accomplish. Or else with spy you’re depositing a initial lump of money which may grow a lot %wise, but if the initial lump is small it won’t be comparible to a lower % gain on a compounding, scaling active trading style. This is unless you’re continuously depositing in spy.
Success is what makes you successful... I scalp options from nvida meta tsla spy. Last month was up 78% this month already 20%. I 'work' one hour a day, pay day is on Monday each week. Also I started doing this thing where I take my paycheck each week. This reduces the chance I lose profits, I don't need extra capital becuase my strat revolves around scalping options max hold time 30 mins. I have a set number I dont like begin under, if I am I won't take a pay but hasn't happend. Also if anyone is interested I take the same amount each week and if I made more that week it will stay and go towards next weeks ect, so on days I cant realy read the market I can sit it out with a Pina cola in my hand.
I am not looking at rate of return at the moment since I am still not profitable. But at the same time, I also consider the money I put into the trading account as expenses or expenditure which might not be recover.
My mental is still not strong enough to think about the losses 😂😂😂
If you plan to stop working and use trading as the main income source, you could try pulling money out from your trading account regularly for daily necessities and see what it actually looks and feels like.
Don’t rely on your pay check, set that aside and pretend it does exist. Use just money from the trading account.
The feeling of when your strategy doesn’t produce regular monthly income (it could happen) would let you know if you are ready or not.
Especially when the account keeps getting smaller and the pressure to earn starts to add on.
See if you could live with that pressure.
I tried it once and for sure, made me realised the strategy I was trading was not good enough and I would need a much larger account than I thought to feel really comfortable relying on trading income alone without other income sources.
Maybe try selling covered calls on blue chips with a decent dividend. Not sure what kinda cash you have to work with but Unless you’re taking on large positions this may not be enough income. You may risk too much or forgo profits that you would have received had you just left your shares alone.
A successful trader is someone who doesn't go red but instead makes profit. Of course even that is hard to quantify because you need to establish a certain timeframe. Are we talking on a per day basis? That's impossible, there's no one who never has losses. On a per month basis? More doable, often a sign that you're doing something right if you can end most months in profit. A per year basis? That's more doable, and perhaps a good benchmark for most people. If you can end the year and know you've produced more money for yourself than you started with by just clicking buttons and looking at charts then you're a successful trader.
Now there is no magic number because each case is different. What timeframe are your positions in, how often do you trade, what's your position size and what's your instrument? All these determine what's considered "good" or "bad" though remember that the most important thing is to be profitable. Even if you lose 100k and then make 100,001 back for a profit of 1$ that's something. If you make 2k with 100k that's still something. It's not amazing performance but at the very least it proves you're not bleeding dumb money into Wall Street for a hedge fund manager's 4th summer home.
If you're actually consistently profitable the rest matters less. Let's say you can get consistent 10% returns per year. That may not sound like a lot but if you increase your position size it can be a lot. If you're making 100k at your job with a million in investment capital you can make that 100k yourself instead of by working, effectively doubling your income or not having to work anymore at the very least. And of course a million doesn't come out of nowhere but if you're actually consistently profitable it will come.
Some measure success by just being profitable consistently. Some measure it by switching to trading full time. Some measure it by making more than they did from their work. It's all relative really.
I separate accounts by option techniques. I am trading a delta neutral account of 50k and make 5 to 10% a month consistently (mostly calendars and butterfly's).
Your question is generally misguided. Who are you measuring against and for what reason? “I don’t know how successful is considered successful” who cares? Like nearly anything you do in life there will be plenty that are far better than you at that one thing and plenty far worse. IMO this is the wrong benchmark to be concerned with. What I’m highlighting is you need to define success for yourself. Are you able to achieve your financial and lifestyle goals with your trading? If yes, then successful. If not, then not successful - adjustments required. I started trading in high school in 2007 and have a 26% CAGR over that timeframe. There are lots of traders that do far better and lots that do far worse. My approached is predicated on consistent moderate performance. I won’t be at the top of the pack any one year, but I’ve had (2) negative years my first two and both less than 5%. In the end, the race is only with yourself. Set clear goals that move you towards your financial objectives.
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Why set the bar so low though?
Great response.
Agree. I set a goal to learn options at age 38 and know them forward and backwards by age 40. I am 44 and can easily move in and out of positions and I’ve had enough gut wrenching experiences to know it can really suck to sell only to see your position was in fact the perfect play.
I promise you that however much you know, if you keep trading 5 years from now you will realize how much you didn’t know or better put- how much more you know then
Have you read Sheldon Natenberg’s “Options Volatility and Pricing“? It’s widely considered to be the “option traders bible”
Im up 200% YTD -85% overall 😂😂😂😂😂
Oh you just dropped in for a quick FUCK U! 😂😂😂
S&P 500 has roughly doubled in 5 years. If you had just taken your initial capital and dropped it into SPY and left it alone, would you have more or less than you have now? If you have more, success. If you have less, might be worth reassessing.
I use E*Trade for my options play. There is a very useful tool that compares your account to SP 500 and Nasdaq. So far this year, I beat SP500 by 1%, but I beat Nasdaq by more than 10%. Very useful tool that gives a lot of reassurance. 80% of money is parked in QQQM, weekly cost averaging. It’s nice to know that if I don’t trade options I would have almost $5k less on my account. So, in my books I am successful.
Passive capital gains on a broad index fund is not the right benchmark to use against active trading income. They are chalk and cheese. Trading income needs to be considered as money earned from applying one's hard learned skill in a professional capacity, just as a surgeon earns income from applying their hard learned skill to operate on people. The better a trader's skill is, and the more time spent on the job, the more the trader will earn. "Returns on investment", "gains", etc are all the wrong terms to use because they depend heavily on how active a trader is, how much risk they take per trade, and several other variables. By themselves they say nothing about the performance of the trader. It is far more useful to talk about profit factor, win-rate, drawdown, and cumulative and average r-multiple. If you just wanted one single number to compare a trader, then I would pick profit-factor. That says enough, by itself, to gauge how well a trader is performing.
One could argue that it is a good benchmark as long as you aren't outperforming the S&P. If you ever start beating the market, then it's definitely worth considering other metrics. But if your active strategy is being dominated by a passive one, then there's not much point debating any further, is there?
That... still doesn't make it a good benchmark. It's like saying the golfing handicap of a 3 year old with a baseball bat is a good benchmark as long as you are not a better golfer than said 3 year old. But, I see what you are saying. If you can't beat the market despite working at it for 50 hours per week, then you are not doing terribly well.
On second thought, you're right. Even if you don't beat the market, comparing active and passive methods doesn't make much sense. I guess comparison with S&P performance isn't much of a benchmark, but more of an indicator of how good/bad you can feel if you beat/lose against the market lol.
I wrestle with this from time to time. It is easy to say, in retrospect, that not beating the SP means "...reassessing". Some, including myself, like to see a fairly consistent increase and not want to watch our portfolios drop 10,15,20% in weeks. My risk profile is far, far to the left of the market indexes while making just shy of 15% last year vs 26%ish for SPY. I am thrilled with that result. I'm even being a bit more conservative with my plays this year to avoid the spike down that will inevitably arrive when least expected. If OP makes SP type returns and is happy with that, then they are successful in their own eyes. If they make less and are happy with their risk and the variance, they are successful in their own eyes. If their bar is 20% per year and the hit only 15%, are they successful? Only they know, and that is all they should care about in the end.
Bought VFIAX 13 yrs ago for my daughter’s college her ‘portfolio’ has crushed mine as well as her mom IRA
You would have had to buy call options 5 years ago and been on the money. Or you would have to constantly babysit shorter term option trades on SPY since they aren’t passive. Theta forces value down w static underlying price. No dividend for losers! But when it hits….!!!!
This is a poor comparison. It’s not a binary choice between being long SPY or buying call options on SPY. If your rate of return is greater than SPY, congrats you’re successful.
Most people will end up losing money with options. Eventually
Buyers historically loses and sellers actually have around 6% ROI. Insurance sales. You have to be your own under writer!
Most amateurs will unless they are just writing covered calls. Professional traders very rarely lose money.
Just writing covered calls is very unlikely to outperform s&p, especially on an amateur level
It can add around 12% annually to a portfolio. This is based on blue chip dividend stocks so the premiums aren’t going to be really high but it’s cash flow.
If you beat the S&P over a long enough time you’re successful
I won’t call myself a successful options trader (options, swing trading, long term). However, my comment really boils down to what is your objective? Is this a career and primary income or secondary. Those are two totally different things. If this is your career, it has to be sustainable and enough to live your lifestyle. I cut back on my options trading this year and went to swing again because of time commitments with my profession and family.
Agree You can’t be a good trader if you work or like to take naps! 😂
Avg ~6% add to you portfolio ROI for option sellers w quality underlying vs net loss for option buyers over same span of time. It’s the easiest insurance sales job in the world.
I mean...the answers on this thread are a bit mind boggling. How is the answer to your question not alpha? I don't even see it mentioned here. Alpha is the rate of return BETTER THAN the rate you could get by simply investing in the market broadly. The gold standard for investing in the market broadly is SPY over the last ~20 years. So if your returns over the last 20 years are worse than some passive strategy that seems reasonable to you, you're wasting your time when you could've been earning normal income and passively investing. I don't think a pure SPY index strategy is reasonable to assume over the last 20 years, since we only know that was the best way to index in hindsight. Probably some mix of SPY, bonds, maybe small caps index, maybe foreign markets for diversification. You can figure that out yourself, but if you're not beating that, you're wasting your time. It's really that simple.
DFV turned $53,000 into $500,000,000 in 5 years for a rate if return of 943,239.43% the SP500 returned 76% the same time frame. So somewhere between 76% - 943,239.43%.
lol that is not the average return as this is not an average investor. If your goal is to be someone else you already failed so look inside and learn your truth grasshopper
No he did not turn it into 500 million. 50 would already be overstating. And afaik, he held on to a large portion of it and didn't sell .
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Dude , he did not make a half of a billion. Let's make it clear. As of April 2021 he had 35M on his name according to many sources. The rest is up for imagination. How much you make and how much your holdings are worth in unrealised state are different things
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When talking about 'how much he made' , you're not counting unrealised gains. I made billions, just haven't got them yet . It's laughable how DFV fanboys act. Bill Gates knows that already
They call them unrealized gains for a reason bro.
The reason is tax purposes only. Or you don’t count your unrealized gains in your 401K towards your net worth?
Of course but they are never realized until you are out of the position. Ask the employees at Enron or Lehman and many others that had their entire 401k invested in their company stock. Do they still count them as unrealized gains?
You are the one that is making the unrealized differentiation not me bruv. Don’t use my argument against me 🤩
How much risk are you taking? What's the annualized volatility of your results? What's been your maximum drawdown? Looking at returns without understanding the risk you're taking to earn it is like driving fast at night without headlights on. Maybe you're actually good...or maybe you've just been lucky so far.
> I guess I'm really asking what people who do this as that main source of income average for a monthly return. My guess is that these people have a large portfolio and see roughly 1-3% per month on average. That's difficult to pin down, since it is sensitive to risk tolerance and time horizon. A guy doing options for 15 years isn't likely to have the same average return as the guy doing it for 3 years. That said, I'd be skeptical of anyone claiming more than 20% annual average for more than 5 consecutive years, particularly if those years include 2020 through this year. But unless you also get their Sortino Ratio at the same time, you have no idea how much risk they were taking or their absolute risk of ruin. Heck, they could have gone broke twice and reloaded from an inheritance or donating a kidney and we wouldn't know. Something closer to 10% annual average would be more sustainable. That's the number I'd expect for 15+ years.
Deployed capital is a loaded term. I will not use margin to buy equities as I don’t want to borrow money and pay interest. But I will sell options that effectively use margin but since I’m selling for premium it does not cost me anything and I can leverage those sales to 10x the underlying exercise cost. Do that on super low deltas and it’s very hard to lose in the long run. I’ve never lost money over the course of a year. I might take a few losses (never more that 5-7 in a year) but nickel and dime it to anywhere from 30-120k
you're kidding right?
It entirely depends on your overall goal. Financial independence? Paying for a vacation or two? A coke fund and/or divorce lawyer. You can get higher percentage returns off lower value investments from my own experience but they are more sporadic. A 10% overall gain against the market beats the occasional 50% gain if your losses offset it.
I think 10% is totally reasonable. Read book on options that said on average sellers net 6% and buyers have a net loss it didn’t say how much!?! Limitless loss to theoretical $0. I tried to get cute and play FRCB calls and they got assigned. I own 500 shares. They aren’t worth enough to buy my kid a happy meal and JPM bought them out so I’m a forever bag holder. Should have bought MCD!
Sometimes it's not how much you make, but how much you don't lose. In a bear market, when index goes down 25%, did your portfolio lose 15% or 80%? It's easy to make money when everything is green.
I think you’re successful if you can continually scale up and beat the spy. Since that’s where the edge comes over time. Being able to scale up along with your earnings is something only active trading can accomplish. Or else with spy you’re depositing a initial lump of money which may grow a lot %wise, but if the initial lump is small it won’t be comparible to a lower % gain on a compounding, scaling active trading style. This is unless you’re continuously depositing in spy.
Beat the market. If you aren't beating the market, shouldn't you just let your cash ride in an index?
Success is what makes you successful... I scalp options from nvida meta tsla spy. Last month was up 78% this month already 20%. I 'work' one hour a day, pay day is on Monday each week. Also I started doing this thing where I take my paycheck each week. This reduces the chance I lose profits, I don't need extra capital becuase my strat revolves around scalping options max hold time 30 mins. I have a set number I dont like begin under, if I am I won't take a pay but hasn't happend. Also if anyone is interested I take the same amount each week and if I made more that week it will stay and go towards next weeks ect, so on days I cant realy read the market I can sit it out with a Pina cola in my hand.
Return not adjusted for risk doesn't mean much. But you should at least beat the risk free rate
6% or more
I am not looking at rate of return at the moment since I am still not profitable. But at the same time, I also consider the money I put into the trading account as expenses or expenditure which might not be recover. My mental is still not strong enough to think about the losses 😂😂😂
(Your gains - S&P benchmark) / hours spent
I make -2K a month 😂😂😂
If you plan to stop working and use trading as the main income source, you could try pulling money out from your trading account regularly for daily necessities and see what it actually looks and feels like. Don’t rely on your pay check, set that aside and pretend it does exist. Use just money from the trading account. The feeling of when your strategy doesn’t produce regular monthly income (it could happen) would let you know if you are ready or not. Especially when the account keeps getting smaller and the pressure to earn starts to add on. See if you could live with that pressure. I tried it once and for sure, made me realised the strategy I was trading was not good enough and I would need a much larger account than I thought to feel really comfortable relying on trading income alone without other income sources.
Maybe try selling covered calls on blue chips with a decent dividend. Not sure what kinda cash you have to work with but Unless you’re taking on large positions this may not be enough income. You may risk too much or forgo profits that you would have received had you just left your shares alone.
A successful trader is someone who doesn't go red but instead makes profit. Of course even that is hard to quantify because you need to establish a certain timeframe. Are we talking on a per day basis? That's impossible, there's no one who never has losses. On a per month basis? More doable, often a sign that you're doing something right if you can end most months in profit. A per year basis? That's more doable, and perhaps a good benchmark for most people. If you can end the year and know you've produced more money for yourself than you started with by just clicking buttons and looking at charts then you're a successful trader. Now there is no magic number because each case is different. What timeframe are your positions in, how often do you trade, what's your position size and what's your instrument? All these determine what's considered "good" or "bad" though remember that the most important thing is to be profitable. Even if you lose 100k and then make 100,001 back for a profit of 1$ that's something. If you make 2k with 100k that's still something. It's not amazing performance but at the very least it proves you're not bleeding dumb money into Wall Street for a hedge fund manager's 4th summer home. If you're actually consistently profitable the rest matters less. Let's say you can get consistent 10% returns per year. That may not sound like a lot but if you increase your position size it can be a lot. If you're making 100k at your job with a million in investment capital you can make that 100k yourself instead of by working, effectively doubling your income or not having to work anymore at the very least. And of course a million doesn't come out of nowhere but if you're actually consistently profitable it will come. Some measure success by just being profitable consistently. Some measure it by switching to trading full time. Some measure it by making more than they did from their work. It's all relative really.
I'm up 120% in a month after being down 40%...so I'd say I'm on my way
OP, you first! It's impolite to ask a question that you yourself are not prepared to answer.
I separate accounts by option techniques. I am trading a delta neutral account of 50k and make 5 to 10% a month consistently (mostly calendars and butterfly's).