What is your weekly return?

Lots of talking going on in this thread. I have just one question. Are you profitable?

nope. i have never said i was, and in fact have quite openly declared myself not to be. why? because i'm aiming for more than an insulting 50% ROI a year.

I have seen it. when all others say that trading is impossible to live off of (by traders who are actually just punting investors) along come the few who literally prove them all wrong and show what real trading is and the types of gains that are truly possible. i have read their stories and know deep within myself that what they have achieved is truly possible, and truly inspiring.

what have i learned from my time at the factory? that most of you won't ever cut it. maybe i won't either, and time will tell. i have seen many a wannabe jump on system after system and not know a thing about anything, and wonder why nothing works. i have seen scammers. i have seen guru's. i have seen people with just enough 'talk' to suck in beginners who simply don't know any better, and i have watched them get lead down the garden path with garbage teachings.

i have seen systems, and the groupies who follow, that are based on airy-fairy nonsense that bears no relation to anything real or sensible. i have watched their slow timeframe systems succeed for far longer than it ever had a right to until the inevitable blowup, and it succeeded for so long simply due to being on a slow timeframe and was simply lucky for awhile.

i have seen, by digging through threads from years ago, some current guru's who were entirely blinded by ridiculous systems years ago and then finally saw the light and realised that they were being 'taught' nonsense and had wasted all of their effort.

i have personally spent more time than i will ever know, and would cry/die if i knew the actual amount, working through my own ideas. through all of this i have found lots of ways that don't work. i know i have personally spent more time in a week on trying to learn and discover more about trading than a lot of people in the factory have spent in the last year or two, and i have done more simulated trading in one day than a lot of the people here have ever done in their entire 'trading career'.

through all of my own efforts i have personally seen much. i have seen why a lot of systems appear to be 'the grail', but really aren't. i have seen why some threads have such high potential, but are fraught with hidden dangers that will nuke it's followers eventually someday. i have seen why many of the guru's who claim slow and steady is best are revered and admired and taken at face-value, and i know why they succeed for so long until their inevitable destruction.

through all of my own failures i have seen the failures of others and the paths they are still on. i can see the faults and false-guidance from the many in the factory. i see right through it all, and see it all for what it really is.

not everyone is born into money. some people work their butt's off and drag themselves through hell to finally reach success. not everyone can climb mount Everest, and only the few who put the time and effort in will reach that summit. there was a time when the moon was an unreachable object floating in the sky, but it's been reached by a few who dared to try. the world was once believed to be flat, and the sun to be rotating around the Earth. A few dared to come to different conclusions, and some of them were killed because of this. i read an article yesterday about how people in Waco got angry at Bill Nye when he dared to suggest that the moon reflects the suns light and does not emit its own light... these are people from today's society!!!!!

i see the same simple-minded thinking of the people from Waco also amongst some of the members of the factory. it's despicable, and sad, and yet they still have their followers. why? because most people are ordinary and can not see beyond their own nose and most people need to be lead by others and can't think or reason for themselves.

nothing is possible without effort. the greatest achievements require the greatest efforts. most people don't have what it takes to be anything more than what society wants them to be (ordinary). society, and the many folk here, don't want people to be extraordinary and achieve great things. when people exceed others expectations it shines a light on the failings of everyone else and shows just how low the bar is set for most people. it is proof of how completely and utterly ordinary most people are.

many here in the factory simply do not want others to actually be successful. it would crush their own expectations and self-imposed boundaries of what can be achieved. they can't bear the thought of others being better than them and achieving so much more than they ever have.

through all of my own efforts I truly believe i had a revelation one early morning around 4am. i was ready to go to sleep and about to close down my pc but something struck my mind and i decided to give it a test before finally sleeping. i backtested my thoughts and easily doubled the sim account in less than a month of data. i thought it to be a fluke and didn't want to rest before finding out what was going on. i easily doubled the account again. all-in-all i tried a handful of different spins on a core concept i was playing with and it was always profitable, just sometimes more than others depending on how i approached it. i wrote down some thoughts and went to bed with the weight of the world off of my shoulders. i woke-up the next day with a clear head and eagerness to continue exploring what i had done a few hours earlier.... and since that day i have never ever been able to recreate what i had done that 4am morning. i had written down some thoughts, but in my tired state did not even think to make an actual record of what trades i had taken throughout the handful of trials so that i could always refer back to them in the future. this was possibly the biggest trading-related mistake i have ever made.

so no, i am not profitable. i have had times where i have made profitable real life trades, and real life losses. i have tested different ideas and had times of simulated profit, as well as loss. i have had ideas that simply suck and are useless. i have had ideas that float around break-even. i had that one 4am morning where everything made sense and was clear and i could simulate a profit easily time after time... only for it to all drift away in my sleep and be lost by the time i awoke later.

i'm not interested in trading just so i can have 10+v's on a forum and tell the world that everyone should aim to be ordinary. the fact is that most people simply FLUKE being marginally above ordinary and think this gives them the right to tell others how everything is done. i want so much more than that. i can fluke being marginally above ordinary, and have done so in real life before. anyone can fluke being marginally above ordinary.

i'm aiming higher than ordinary. i could aim lower and achieve it, but what's the point? then i'd be like everyone else. i'm aiming for the stars, despite everyone telling me it's not possible. well, the world isn't flat anymore people!

notice how i don't, in reply, ask you if you are profitable?

this is because i KNOW some members are profitable. i KNOW that some fluke profit, and some earn profit. i KNOW that some have what it takes to increase their capital by luck and some by profitable methodologies.

all-in-all you get a general sense of how accomplished some people are, so there is no need to ask and zero to gain from asking. some members are clearly nut-jobs. some members are clearly thinkers. some members are clearly circling the drain. some members are clearly keeping tight-lipped about certain aspects of trading. some members are clearly telling everyone who will listen about their fabulous fibonacci moon-cycle tea-leaf reading system.

some are clearly making low ROI, others are losing low ROI. some are making it big, and others losing it big. the whole spectrum is there. all i care about is who has something interesting to say that might spark that new idea in my brain that will propel me further towards where i am aiming, and where i am aiming is likely to be outside of where a lot of people are currently aiming.

telling members what is and isn't possible, based on the poor achievements of others, is never going to impress me and shouldn't impress anyone else. it's time people start aiming bigger. what's the worst that could happen.... that they achieve greatness?

thanks for your question, Patience, and I hope I satisfied whatever desire you had in regards to learning about my P/L.

Cheers.

with the risk of enflaming a whole new discussion, I have a suggestion for yet unprofitable traders out there.

Find an edge, something that works consistently. Don't care about how much percent you make with that edge. You want consistency. And if the edge only occurs once a year, well then trade it only once a year. Only trade that while working on finding a new edge and so on. Sooner or later you will have a couple of edges complementing each other. And no, this is not system jumping, cause you are researching what works and only rely on the things that work. Requires a lot of research and dedication.

I think, if the returns claimed on this thread are ever to be achieved consistently, it can only be achieved through getting together lots of different edges, meaning years or decades of research.

I think the major problem for not successful traders is that they want to achieve irrealistic returns NOW. So they tend towards the very low time-frames and over-trading. But in essence, it is my belief that through this over-trading and trading costs they kill their account each and every time over and over again.

If exorbitant weekly returns could ever be achieved consistently, one needs to do a lot of thinking, testing and finding lots of good edges that have a consistency and are independent from each other.

I still don't think that one can achieve such kinds of returns from (most) systems presented here on ff, but it might be possible if somebody finds out a lot of inefficiencies in the market. I personally didn't find enough inefficiencies yet, so for me these claims still look very outlandish.

Now this is just my opinion and I don't want an attack. A normal meaningful discussion is welcomed.

Thank you for your honesty. I see it different to you though. I applaud anyone that can make it in this game for any length of time whether it be 10% a year, 30% a year or 100% a year. I don't look down on anybody's percentage gains. You say 50% ROI is insulting, I say well done.

All the best in your endeavours.

What do you mean by inefficiencies?

custos, this is probably the first post of yours that i can give any credit to.

the faults i do have with what you have said is that most people don't know HOW to get an edge, or even what an edge might look like in the first place. also, on one hand someone might find a longer timeframe edge, but on the other if they DESIRE those short timeframe repeated compounding exponential gains there is little option but to spend the time and effort on the short timeframes. time NOT spent learning to scalp etc is time spent NOT learning to do what one might be aiming for!

killing accounts, real or otherwise, over and over again is possibly the only way to resolve all of the ways to fail and push through enough discovery to conclude what does and does not produce profits. doing this with real money, however, is indication of a mental illness or perhaps simply a lack of tools and knowledge to do it any other way.

i think if anyone wants to make money from systems on the factory then their best bet is to bet others that the systems will eventually fail. there may be profitable systems on the factory, but i can only imagine it takes great personal intimacy with each system to know when to drop it and when to use it. some might say that this is THE EDGE WITHIN the system, and so the edge is not THE system! without intimate knowledge, of anything really, is to be relying on a 50/50 punt and have no edge. therefore, it is likely more important for each individual to simply do their own work and create their own methods instead of trying to recreate someone elses system and ruleset which is embedded with intimacy between the system and it's creator that can't be translated and transferred to anyone else.

No problem. I'm not selling anything so have no agenda but to push forward. I'm not butt-hurt if anyone disagrees with anything i say, because i will either see their point of view and agree, or see their point of view and also see why they are simply wrong.

50% is all relative. i wasn't specific with what i said, but i think the inference was obvious. i've said it one way or another before, but 50% on a million is doing A OK and then some in my book (unless of course the risk was disproportionate to the number of trades etc).... but not everyone has a mil to throw around. most of us i would assume are starting small, so aiming for and also achieving 50% on a penny account is ridiculous, and insulting. potato vs tomato.

easy with the graphical description dude...

I think he means those factors that aren't efficient.

i would hazard a guess that perhaps your imagination is greater than most since the term has a very definitive meaning that doesn't encompass anything 'graphical'.

The specification of the amplification of your cohorts and induction coupled with amalgamation of the designated altercation is far too ambivalent for nurturing the depreciation.

Don't worry about it.

a classic example is arbitrage opportunities

I know you have your own beliefs and that is totally fine for me. I just want to point you to the power of compounding.
If you start with a 1000$ an make 50% each and every year, that would compound to 127 million $ after 30 years and to 11 billion $ after 40 years. Now this excludes taxes of course, since they are different across the world. So the real returns are a zero or so lower than that. As can be seen, it is very possible to become very rich in forex, but it just won't happen over night (in my opinion).

Again, only meaningful discussions are welcomed. And we already know that we have different opinions on that topic. I just wanted to point you to the power of compounding.

best regards

i'm not sure if you are being serious, and for my benefit... because compounding is not something most people aren't fully aware of.

the problem : i'm not interested in crawling for the rest of my life when i know and have seen others sprinting, and then taking as much time out as they like... seeing the world... buying the toys... whatever.

i want to be a sprinter, not a crawler. if i ever become a sprinter then i will be able to get to where i want to be so much quicker and easier and then i can take as much time as i like to smell the roses and watch everyone else crawling all they way over yonder in poverty-town, so to speak. i can walk around, see the sights, eat a sandwhich etc.

yep, I get your point. Just wanted to make you aware of the compounding concept.

I bet you scored really high on your SAT.

20% per week

My PhD in Literature rather.