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Comment by simon_ | Hacker News Reader

These guys are obviously charlatans. He claims to reliably make >$100K/yr trading his $100K account. If he could really generate 100% return on capital, he would be the richest person in the world. (Or... at least he would have more than $100K to manage.)

The author isn't totally uncritical, but it's annoying that he gave these guys so much space in the Times to advertise.

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Assuming he compounded all of his returns he'd be the richest person in the world. Making 100% on 100k is demonstratively easier than making 100% on 100m and is not unheard of. So why doesn't this guy manage other people's money? No where in this article does it mention his account volatility or average draw down. This guy might be making 100% return with a peak to valley draw down of 75%.

Don't assume they are charlatans just because you don't understand what they're doing.

exactly, they're probably spending most of the returns.

what they do is highly dubious, but they're not charlatans because they mostly account only to themselves.

The reason I find it dubious is because $100k is not very much. You need to make very large trades--risking thousands of dollars at a time--or else you'll be eaten by fees and commissions.

I don't know anything about day trading, but I used to play poker (profitably), and know sports betters. $100k is simply not enough to be risking thousands of dollars on single bets, unless the bets have an enormous edge--an edge that is economically impossible in the algo-dominated, limited-information world of day trading. You will go bust.

I could produce math for you, but I'm lazy. But I've seen so many poker players go bust taking risks like this, and poker is a game where it's unbelievable how many morons are willing to throw money at you. Not like day trading.

There are a lot of subtleties with trading. To make money you need positive expectancy and you need 'inventory', or tradeable markets. They don't have to make large trades to make money. You have to consider transaction costs, rebates, avg win size, avg lose size, holding period, and a number of other criteria before you can judge these traders.

I don't claim they won't go bust, but I do take issue that simply because they make out-sized returns they are labeled charlatans.

There's no question there are a lot of snake oil salesmen in this business. That said, there are a small number of elite traders out there that make these types of returns and are fully content not growing their account infinitely.

Also, as your account gets larger, trading it for the same types of returns becomes more and more difficult just because of the position sizes you have to take. This reason alone is why the little guy still has a built in advantage over institutional traders who have to move around very large amounts of money to be worth it.

I don't know if these guys are charlatans or not, but there are guys and gals doing similar things making similar returns consistently.

Consistently is a stretch. the journalist covered the Taiwanese study. Only 20% were profitable (winning streak). Only 1% were consistent.

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