How much were you spending on STCG taxes? Transaction costs? Not to mention realized losses.
Sorry, I don't believe anyone who says they made $25k a year consistently on $100k for any length of time. You might have an occasional 50% year, an occasional 25% year, the odd losing year, the occasional flat year or single digit year, a few low double digit years, maybe above 50 or even above 100% once in a blue moon in a year like '09.
If you're doing 5-10 trades a day at $5 a trade, you're spending a fortune on that $100k just in transaction costs each year.
You'd need to have millions or at least other sources of income to make it worth your time even IF you were consistently hitting 25%. Why would someone quit working to make $25k a year?
Was that before or after expenses and taxes?
95% of traders fail. If you were among that 5%, why did you stop? If you were truly good enough to hit 25% at some point in the year then stop for the rest of the year every year, you're one in a trillion. Congrats.
are you talking investors or traders? as an investor, you're trying to pick a winner.. an undervalued company.
if you're a trader, it's not hard at all to be up .5%-1% per week.. you're not just picking long term investments. you're trading everyday long and short. picking a stock that drops 5% in a week or even just a few days is easy compared to picking one that pops 5% in a month.
and we're not even talking options... covered calls and whatnot.
you're making it seem as if there's some magic formula that only 'the elite of the elite' know about.
there isn't. so long as you're good with numbers and can remember numbers for years ago... and so long as you most importantly, PAY ATTENTION... it's not hard to make money.
20% per year is 1/3 of a % per week... if you can't trade and make 1/3 of a % in a week, you'd just better put your money in a mutual fund or an index fund and make 10-12% like everyone else too lazy to pay attention.
