# $100 a day



## aBadTrader (20 September 2016)

For them ore experienced traders here; what sort of account size would you ideally be comfortable with in order to comfortably and emotionless create $100 daily.

Needless to say that my goal is to generate a side income from trading since I work from home anyway.


----------



## Value Collector (20 September 2016)

aBadTrader said:


> comfortable with in order to comfortably and emotionless create $100 daily.




$730,000 should do it.


----------



## Roller_1 (20 September 2016)

I look at it this way..

$100 a day, approx 250 trading days a year = $25,000 a year

If you can make 25% a year as a beginner you are doing very well, so in that case you're looking at a $100,000 account. Probably not the answer you're looking for but it's closer to reality. 

It's not a linear thing either every day, week or month probably be profitable remember.


----------



## aBadTrader (20 September 2016)

Roller_1 said:


> I look at it this way..
> 
> $100 a day, approx 250 trading days a year = $25,000 a year
> 
> ...




No no - that is the answer I am looking for. 100K sounds about right for small positions without worrying about over leverage or risk. The other fellow who said 730K - I would rather invest a huge portion of that into property rather than day trading haha


----------



## Roller_1 (20 September 2016)

aBadTrader said:


> No no - that is the answer I am looking for. 100K sounds about right for small positions without worrying about over leverage or risk. The other fellow who said 730K - I would rather invest a huge portion of that into property rather than day trading haha




What do you mean by small positions?

If its for a side income, you won't be able able to day trade will you?


----------



## aBadTrader (20 September 2016)

Roller_1 said:


> What do you mean by small positions?
> 
> If its for a side income, you won't be able able to day trade will you?




I work from home anyway. Expenses extremely low. My mortgage payments are tiny, and I wholesale products from home. So I have more than enough time to dedicate to either day trading, learning to ride a Llama or filleting a sandwich

Oh and by small positions I mean risking, say 0.1% of my account. So on 100k that would be a 100 dollar risk per trade. that's what I consider ideal but then again, what I consider ideal is irrelevant since I am a fool!


----------



## tech/a (20 September 2016)

aBadTrader said:


> I work from home anyway. Expenses extremely low. My mortgage payments are tiny, and I wholesale products from home. So I have more than enough time to dedicate to either day trading, learning to ride a Llama or filleting a sandwich
> 
> Oh and by small positions I mean risking, say 0.1% of my account. So on 100k that would be a 100 dollar risk per trade. that's what I consider ideal but then again, what I consider ideal is irrelevant since I am a fool!




*Crazy*.

That's not how it works.
You need to have the 100K earning 25%
.01% of it wont do that----------


----------



## aBadTrader (20 September 2016)

tech/a said:


> *Crazy*.
> 
> That's not how it works.
> You need to have the 100K earning 25%
> .01% of it wont do that----------




Oh crap - can you elaborate on that further for me tech/a - if you have the time ofcourse? I genuinely want to hear your thoughts on the matter.


----------



## Value Collector (20 September 2016)

aBadTrader said:


> The other fellow who said 730K - I would rather invest a huge portion of that into property rather than day trading haha




Well you won't get your target $100 a day by putting $730,000 into an investment property.


----------



## Value Collector (20 September 2016)

I am not a trader, but the reason I suggested $730,000 was just based on a conservative earnings rate (due to the fact you are a beginner) and your target.

$100 / day = $36,500 / year.

Now, aiming to earn 25%pa as a beginner seems a bit high as a target, especially considering you said you wanted to do in "Comfortably".

Comfortably to me means, little or no leverage, not swinging at every pitch and not trying to shoot for the stars.

So given your beginner status and desire for comfort, I set an initial target earnings rate of 5%.

5% of $730,000 is $36,500 or $100 a day, (offcourse you still need to pay tax on that).


----------



## Value Collector (20 September 2016)

aBadTrader said:


> Oh crap - can you elaborate on that further for me tech/a - if you have the time ofcourse? I genuinely want to hear your thoughts on the matter.




I think he means you will need the whole $100K invested, and earn at least 0.1%(on the 100K) every day to meet your target.

Not have 0.1% ($100) of the total invested and the other 99.9% in the bank account only earning 1%pa.


----------



## CanOz (20 September 2016)

Value Collector said:


> Well you won't get your target $100 a day by putting $730,000 into an investment property.




Really? We're making a net 5% on a property here in Brisbane. Thats over 20k per year before tax. Now of course after tax its less, but that depends on your income situation. Rental yields of 5% net aren't easy to come by, but they're out there. 

I know some guys that post on here or have posted on here that return 4 figures a day and more on 100k + accounts. They are the exception and most of them are pros or have been pros. Minwa's record is on here as well.

Peter2's strategy swing / breakout trading returns over 30%. So 100k account there would yield 30k annually before tax. I know of a pattern trading strategy that returns between 10-20% annually, before tax.  

If you think of it in basic % terms to begin with, focus on getting a profitable strategy that you can scale up, then think of what it can yield in dollar terms after tax and expenses. 

Finally, think of what you could lose as well, risk adjusted returns are more critical than a dollar return daily. Also, drawdowns, they happen to us all eventually. 

Are you going to make a living or pay the bills on a 10k account, short answer is very unlikely. But if you can make a steady return trading FX on a 5k account then there is a good possibility that you can scale it up.


----------



## Value Collector (20 September 2016)

CanOz said:


> Really? We're making a net 5% on a property here in Brisbane. Thats over 20k per year before tax. Now of course after tax its less, but that depends on your income situation. Rental yields of 5% net aren't easy to come by, but they're out there.




Are you talking residential? and when you say 5% net, are you talking about after rates, water, maintenance, agents fees, body corp, vacancy eg all holding costs.

I admit I haven't looked for a while, but most stuff I see around Brisbane and Sydney struggles to get 4% gross, then you lose 25% of that leaving you with a net return of some where around 3%, which would put you around $60/day.


----------



## CanOz (20 September 2016)

Value Collector said:


> Are you talking residential? and when you say 5% net, are you talking about after rates, water, maintenance, agents fees, body corp, vacancy eg all holding costs.
> 
> I admit I haven't looked for a while, but most stuff I see around Brisbane and Sydney struggles to get 4% gross, then you lose 25% of that leaving you with a net return of some where around 3%, which would put you around $60/day.




Yes, we're at 5% after expenses, before tax. Its a 'dual key' property, 2 bedroom apartment with a studio below.


----------



## Ves (20 September 2016)

CanOz said:


> Yes, we're at 5% after expenses, before tax. Its a 'dual key' property, 2 bedroom apartment with a studio below.



Where is it?

Haven't looked for a few years,  but was definitely possible to get a gross yield of over 8% in places in the Logan shire area,  and also down the Ipswich corridor.  Probably still can.


----------



## Value Collector (20 September 2016)

CanOz said:


> Yes, we're at 5% after expenses, before tax. Its a 'dual key' property, 2 bedroom apartment with a studio below.




I own a similar property in Brisbane, it's actually a duplex, when I bought it (years ago) it was earning 5.25% gross, which means it is less than 5% net.

Was the property you are talking about purchased at a net return of 5%, or is it only earning 5% after rental increases etc?

Also are you deducting a maintenance allowance from your rental, to allow for big expenses which will come, or just working it out on what you are spending this year.

to work it out correctly, I would deduct 25% of your current yearly rental income, and then compare it to what your current property value is, unless its in an area with low property prices you will probably find it is less than 5% yield once you factor in the replacement cost of the things that are wearing out, eg bathrooms, kitchens, roof, carpets, curtains etc etc.


----------



## CanOz (20 September 2016)

Value Collector said:


> I own a similar property in Brisbane, it's actually a duplex, when I bought it (years ago) it was earning 5.25% gross, which means it is less than 5% net.
> 
> Was the property you are talking about purchased at a net return of 5%, or is it only earning 5% after rental increases etc?
> 
> ...




We include Body Corp. levies and some maintenance, but we do not include large 'capital' expenses such as bathroon or kitchen replacements. This is great idea though. The property is in an ideal location close to public transport and a main road into the city. We should get decent growth over the long term with it. The building is 30 years old but extremely well maintained. The property rents easy as it appears to have the pool all to its own, which it overlooks. I'd like to do some work to it, but for now well just let it tick along. We have not raised the rent as there is too much stock coming onto the market to justify it now......

The townhouse we're in on the other hand will yield around 3.8% net and its 10 years old and now we're finding out there are some maintenance issues and we'll be putting in extra levies to keep up the work on the lemon....We're building a house soon and we'll lease the townhouse out next year. 

Very off topic now, but yeah, good yields are hard to come by.


----------



## CanOz (20 September 2016)

Ves said:


> Where is it?
> 
> Haven't looked for a few years,  but was definitely possible to get a gross yield of over 8% in places in the Logan shire area,  and also down the Ipswich corridor.  Probably still can.




South of Brisbane CBD approx 8 km.


----------



## Ves (20 September 2016)

CanOz said:


> South of Brisbane CBD approx 8 km.



That's pretty good going.   Well done,  much closer than I assumed.

Probably not far down the road for me.  We're near Carindale.


----------



## CanOz (20 September 2016)

Ves said:


> That's pretty good going.   Well done,  much closer than I assumed.
> 
> Probably not far down the road for me.  We're near *Carindale*.




Thats where we're building, hopefully! Not far from the golf course:dance:


----------



## Ves (20 September 2016)

CanOz said:


> Thats where we're building, hopefully! Not far from the golf course:dance:




I'll stop hijacking the thread now,  but I think you'll enjoy living in that area.


----------



## McLovin (20 September 2016)

CanOz said:


> Thats where we're building, hopefully! Not far from the golf course:dance:




Is that the Pacific? I played there once before. Bit of water and some pretty tight fairways. Good course though.


----------



## CanOz (20 September 2016)

> I'll stop hijacking the thread now, but I think you'll enjoy living in that area.




Yeah, looking forward to it....immensely!



McLovin said:


> Is that the Pacific? I played there once before. Bit of water and some pretty tight fairways. Good course though.




Yup, that's correct. Resonable membership as well Unlike Brookwater, that was like 4k a year. We looked at property there, but its a little far out of the CBD for our liking. 

Maybe the mods can move to a proprty or general chat thread? Before i get banned


----------



## McLovin (20 September 2016)

CanOz said:


> Yup, that's correct. Resonable membership as well Unlike Brookwater, that was like 4k a year. We looked at property there, but its a little far out of the CBD for our liking.
> 
> Maybe the mods can move to a proprty or general chat thread? Before i get banned




I don't think I'd put the Pacific in the same league as Brookwater though.


----------



## luutzu (20 September 2016)

Aren't golf reserved only for old men and pretentious (young) a-holes? 

Better put on a smile to go with the insult


----------



## CanOz (20 September 2016)

luutzu said:


> Aren't golf reserved only for old men and pretentious (young) a-holes?
> 
> Better put on a smile to go with the insult





Golf is anyone's game in Australia, its where i learned how to play. Its a great sport for any age. Not elitist here like it is in Asia!


----------



## aBadTrader (20 September 2016)

Haha I opened up the property investment discussion here it seems.

I believed 100k invested in the account risking 0.1% per position would be sufficient to be able to earn $100 per business day (considering weekends are closed and to be honest I like it closed on the weekends). But this also depends on the strategy and the method and risk management so all that aside, I thought having 100K with that position size per trade would be a good way to go rather than, say, trying to do that on a 10k account.

But again, I am just asking the question I am not making any definitive statements on position sizing and expectation on return - merely asking.

Maybe one day I will change my handle to AGoodTrader. A man can dream.


----------



## hamli (20 September 2016)

Easily with $200,000 without dropping a sweat, utilising 25-35% of capital (in case of large drawdowns due to to market moves) in a portfolio margin account trading leveraged products such as options & futures. Definitely doable with less, just with a bit more work.

But why only $100? Why not shoot for the stars.


----------



## InsvestoBoy (20 September 2016)

CanOz said:


> I know some guys that post on here or have posted on here that return 4 figures a day and more on 100k + accounts. They are the exception and most of them are pros or have been pros. Minwa's record is on here as well.
> 
> Peter2's strategy swing / breakout trading returns over 30%. So 100k account there would yield 30k annually before tax. I know of a pattern trading strategy that returns between 10-20% annually, before tax.




That would be pretty amazing if they can do that consistently. 
1.I am not really sure it makes sense, if you were returning $1000/day on a $100,000 account, then in a year your account would be $350,000?
2. I took a brief look at peter2s thread, it looks great but I doubt it could consistently generate that kind of return year in year out forever. He seems to have his head screwed on straight and I am sure he would acknowledge there must be rough patches sooner or later.
3. There is a pretty big difference between 10% and 20% per annum returns! In either case are those merely backtested returns or actual forward tested returns after accounting for stuff like slippage and brokerage?

Obviously leverage is a factor in all those magical sounding returns! If I stump up $100,000 to buy a $500,000 property, do you calculate the rental return of $500/wk ($26k/pa) as 5% per annum or fool yourself and calculate it as 25% per annum?



Value Collector said:


> $100 / day = $36,500 / year.




Isn't it more like a previous poster said, $25,000 a year? There aren't 365 trading days in a year, only something close to 250 (250 * 5 == 260, minus some days for holidays). I normally count it as 21 trading days per month multiplied by 12 to give 252.
---


Anyway, to answer the original question, try to think about it. 

First of all, like pretty much everyone here is saying, you're just not going to pull out $100 per day consistently like that. There will be losing days, and losing streaks of multiple days or weeks or months. If you're looking for an *average* of $100 per day *over the long term* then it's better to try and figure out what percentage of your initial investment can return in a year, *over the course of stretches of several years at minimum*.

There are a lot of successful traders/investors/whatever, but one with the longest and most consistent track record is Warren Buffet who's average is 20% per annum in growth of his Berkshire Hathaways book value with the judicial and creative use of cheap "in house" leverage. So you might hear people talking about 100% returns per annum or 30%, but you have to wonder if they could really carry that out over the long term (decades). Probably not! Trading is like everything in capitalism, if there was someone generating huge profits consistently, other people would try and replicate their strategy, which would in turn cause the profits to approach the cost of capital. You can see this over the last 5-10 years with the advent of High Frequency Trading that replaced Market Maker humans both of which used to be essentially a license to print money and is now super highly competitive, a lot more robots chasing the same dollar.

If you were as educated, resourced, trained or capable as any of those market participants who move really slow (like Warren) or really fast (like HFT market maker robots), over the long term, maybe you could make 20% per year over stretches of years. Since you have basically none of those attributes, what can you honestly and realistically expect to return? 10%? 7.5%? 5%? Or worse, like many in your position, negative values that quickly destroy your starting equity?

Are you even set up as a corporation to avoid paying CGT on anything you held for less than a year? If not, how would your profits look after paying 50% of them to the Government? 

So many businesses (and make no mistake, trading is a business) fail every year, one of the primary causes is undercapitalisation. If you only have $10,000 of starting equity, you're going to need to generate a 30% return just to "break even" after you spent in on new monitors, data and trading software. You wouldn't be able to take on leverage, because your equity would be too small to make sane position sizes. There are many more problems that come from undercapitalisation.

For me to comfortably and emotionlessly return $25,000 per annum I would need something like the $730,000 Value Collector mentioned, that would be 3.4% return. Seriously! Because you are fooling yourself if you think there is no discomfort or emotion when you're trading.

The real question you should ask, yourself, is "how much experience do I need to develop in this expertise before I can generate $25,000 per annum from $100,000".


----------



## InsvestoBoy (20 September 2016)

aBadTrader said:


> Haha I opened up the property investment discussion here it seems.
> 
> I believed 100k invested in the account risking 0.1% per position would be sufficient to be able to earn $100 per business day (considering weekends are closed and to be honest I like it closed on the weekends).




That's crazy thinking. $100,000 * 0.1% = $100.

So you would need to take a position every day, risking $100, and be correct 100% of the time, to make $100. If you lost a bet, you would need to make another two correct bets, or win twice as much...

This is just simple maths stuff, instead of asking on a forum you should sit down with a piece of paper, pen and calculator


----------



## hamli (20 September 2016)

InsvestoBoy said:


> For me to comfortably and emotionlessly return $25,000 per annum I would need something like the $730,000 Value Collector mentioned, that would be 3.4% return. Seriously! Because you are fooling yourself if you think there is no discomfort or emotion when you're trading.
> 
> The real question you should ask, yourself, is "how much experience do I need to develop in this expertise before I can generate $25,000 per annum from $100,000".




Mind as well say take out a term deposit ... and forget the additional market risk to make that extra 0.4%. Ho Ho Ho.


----------



## Trendnomics (20 September 2016)

This thread is a good example of how much Australians love property. :

Amazing how the average Australian takes on so much leveraged risk for so little yield and on top of that, expects to get rich from it (yet every other man and his dog is invested in property).


----------



## fiftyeight (20 September 2016)

Speaking of making a $100 working from home.

I work a 2/2 roster and therefore I have a lot of time off. It also allows me the freedom to live anywhere in OZ or SE Asia.

My wife though has a regular 9-5 which limits our choices. She has good HR job now, but we do not need my wife to earn a lot of $$$ to survive. We would happily take a big pay cut for freedom.

How are people making money online? In my circle of friends, the working from home thing has not really happend...

Google just comes back with a bunch of scams haha


----------



## Wysiwyg (20 September 2016)

InsvestoBoy said:


> That would be pretty amazing if they can do that consistently.
> 1.I am not really sure it makes sense, if you were returning $1000/day on a $100,000 account, then in a year your account would be $350,000?



Yeah Tim Grittani has gone on with it. Had another stellar month for 212k gain in July which he documented on u-toob. You either got it or you haven't. I haven't and know it. :


----------



## cynic (20 September 2016)

InsvestoBoy said:


> That's crazy thinking. $100,000 * 0.1% = $100.
> 
> So you would need to take a position every day, risking $100, and be correct 100% of the time, to make $100. If you lost a bet, you would need to make another two correct bets, or win twice as much...
> 
> This is just simple maths stuff, instead of asking on a forum you should sit down with a piece of paper, pen and calculator




You are assuming that the profit target on each position is the same as the amount risked. What if the trader was allowing winners to run further and ruthlessly cutting losers, would the average win, then, still equate to the average loss?


----------



## Gringotts Bank (20 September 2016)

I better edit that out...

A normal day job is always a good backup ABTrader.


----------



## InsvestoBoy (20 September 2016)

cynic said:


> You are assuming that the profit target on each position is the same as the amount risked. What if the trader was allowing winners to run further and ruthlessly cutting losers, would the average win, then, still equate to the average loss?




I'm not making any assumptions, $100 a day is the amount the OP wishes to pull out of the market. They said they thought $100,000 account size risking 0.1% of that per trade would be reasonable. That's also $100. 

So, given the first trade, if it's a win they can go home (+100). If it's a loss, the next two trades must be successful at 1:1 Risk:Reward ratio(-100, +100, +100), or the second trade must win twice as much as the amount risked (-100, +200). That's exactly what I said in the last comment. It's crazy to think in such terms "I am going to pull $X out of the market every day" :screwy:


----------



## cynic (20 September 2016)

InsvestoBoy said:


> I'm not making any assumptions, $100 a day is the amount the OP wishes to pull out of the market. They said they thought $100,000 account size risking 0.1% of that per trade would be reasonable. That's also $100.
> 
> So, given the first trade, if it's a win they can go home (+100). If it's a loss, the next two trades must be successful at 1:1 Risk:Reward ratio(-100, +100, +100), or the second trade must win twice as much as the amount risked (-100, +200). That's exactly what I said in the last comment. It's crazy to think in such terms "I am going to pull $X out of the market every day" :screwy:




Thanks for clarifying your understanding of this. 

I am of a different opinion to yourself in that I do not consider it crazy to ponder the feasibility of extracting a liveable income from a given sum of money.


----------



## InsvestoBoy (20 September 2016)

cynic said:


> Thanks for clarifying your understanding of this.
> 
> I am of a different opinion to yourself in that I do not consider it crazy to ponder the feasibility of extracting a liveable income from a given sum of money.




It's undeniable that there exist smart people who can make a living from the market. All I am saying is that if you try and frame it as "how much money do I need to extract $X from the market each and every day as if I was a money printing robot" you are setting yourself up for failure and this is demonstrable via basic mathematics.

The law of large numbers dictates that even the best traders (or robots) must eventually have a losing day or week or month. Are you really going to feel no emotion or discomfort after you're down 10% on the month when you had "planned" to make $2100?


----------



## cynic (20 September 2016)

InsvestoBoy said:


> It's undeniable that there exist smart people who can make a living from the market. All I am saying is that if you try and frame it as "how much money do I need to extract $X from the market each and every day as if I was a money printing robot" you are setting yourself up for failure and this is demonstrable via basic mathematics.
> 
> The law of large numbers dictates that even the best traders (or robots) must eventually have a losing day or week or month. Are you really going to feel no emotion or discomfort after you're down 10% on the month when you had "planned" to make $2100?




It sounds like you are a great fan of theory. What typically happens when attempting to impose those theoretical laws upon reality?


----------



## aBadTrader (22 September 2016)

Haha yes - math is not my strong suit, if I had one.

No when I say $100 daily I don't mean a guaranteed one trade win. I meant more $100 daily averaged out over the course of a year. So by the end of the trading year I would have averaged $100 a day. I also had, in my simple mind, the idea that risking $100, or 0.1% per trade was a sufficient risk, depending on market conditions and volatility.

I'm just a beginner. Doing my best to learn, and if the prospect of a side income could arise from it, then why not dedicate time to it 

Sorry I don't mean to sound naive, I just am! haha  I think what keeps drawing me back to trading is the entire idea and function of trading is just so wonderful to me. Much like someone who has a huge interest in motor vehicles, I have this fetish for trading  Whether I am good at it is a story for another day - I don't attest to that. What I can attest to is the amount of help I have gotten from this forum and its members. Extremely grateful for the time spent.


----------



## So_Cynical (22 September 2016)

aBadTrader said:


> For them ore experienced traders here; what sort of account size would you ideally be comfortable with in order to comfortably and emotionless create $100 daily.
> 
> Needless to say that my goal is to generate a side income from trading since I work from home anyway.




Just did my tax so have the numbers, i created $112 per day last FY, 5 day week from 190K

A fairly typical year, i average around 15 - 16%


----------



## ukulele (22 September 2016)

Pretty nice results there cynical!!!


----------



## Gringotts Bank (22 September 2016)

So_Cynical said:


> Just did my tax so have the numbers, i created $112 per day last FY, 5 day week from 190K
> 
> A fairly typical year, i average around 15 - 16%




Well done - what sort of work are you doing to achieve that?  I mean how many hours/month?


----------



## tech/a (22 September 2016)

Unfortunately less tax.
If this is added to your income if you have another source
that can take a hefty whack.

Tax the Bain of my life.
I work out how to be a little better off than most and the
Tax man rubs his hands together as he whips away copious
amounts of my hard earned. (We) become AAA workers for 
the Aussi Tax man!

Fade in Violin and orchestra!


----------



## So_Cynical (22 September 2016)

ukulele said:


> Pretty nice results there cynical!!!




I was impressed, first year of my new strategy worked well, only a few trades that didn't get the CGT discount.



Gringotts Bank said:


> Well done - what sort of work are you doing to achieve that?  I mean how many hours/month?




Thanks - the work really just involves looking at stocks and one thing leading to another, as for time its probably only about 6 to 8 hours a week, if i have spare time i tend to spend it looking at stocks and thinking about whats the best move from here, whats coming up - decision forming.

I usually start by just going over my watch lists and portfolios, looking at what is falling and thus should i be buying that, looking at what has gone up and should i be selling some or all of that, then focus in on a single stock and try to understand why the price is behaving as it is and is that an opportunity, whats the outlook, the PE, the yield etc etc etc.



tech/a said:


> Unfortunately less tax.




Yes before tax - im not in the top bracket (but very close) so will only pay 32.5c in the dollar and only on a bit less than a third of my $112 per day.


----------

