Everyone probably knows someone who claims to be an awesome trader, constantly boasting about their bottom line, or their hit rate or the risk/reward they 'always' get.
We know it's not true and probably just think 'uh huh ?' before moving on. This post is for those boasters, an opportunity to prove it. I call it 'The Hedge Fund Challenge'.
In a previous post I mentioned some stuff about hedge funds, who they are and what they do. The challenge is easy > If you're such a shithot trader/investor/gambler then why aren't you working for a hedge fund or investment bank trading millions ?
Serious retail traders know the only way to make money is to have more money. And when you get to a certain point and you're making profit, you realise the only thing holding you back is the amount of capital you have to invest. That's where financial institutions can be helpful.
The ultimate goal of a lot of traders is to work for an investment fund and trade a $100M+ account. And it's surprisingly not that difficult to achieve ! (providing you can prove you're a successful trader of course). It's a well worn path for many good retail traders.
If you claim to be making 1000% returns every week/month/year then why are you wasting time pissing around with a tiny retail traders account ? Wouldn't you rather be making hundreds of millions a year instead ?
If you're making more than 10% ROI per year, approach a hedge fund and ask them for a job. One years worth of trading history will certainly get you a telephone interview. Three years of trading history with your claimed 1000% ROI and they'll probably give you a $50M account right there and then !
Of course, you have to prove your success, you can't just claim it. You need a record of all the trades you took, the profit and loss. But most importantly, the reasons you took each trade. You can't just say, "I guessed and got lucky" or "I just followed what people on the internets said". You need to be able to prove you made good solid decisions that made consistent profits.
Even if for some reason you can't get a job at a hedge fund or similar (perhaps a criminal record or you live in another country) then sell your skills as a copy service. If you have a proven track record of making lots of money, people will pay a lot of money to copy your trades, even hedge funds and investment banks. You'll earn the same amount of money from renting out your skills, and still work for yourself.
So next time you hear some fantasist boast about how great they are, and how much money they make, and how many Lambos they have (lol) then ask them why they're not working for a hedge fund already and making 100x what they're making now. Why are they selling training videos for $20 each ? Why are they begging for upvotes on internet forums ?
So am I good enough to work for a hedge fund ? Perhaps... but I wouldn't last two minutes. Retail traders have one advantage over hedge funds and that's the ability to set our own risk management strategies. But when you're trading other peoples money, you need to control losses strictly. They'll have a dedicated risk manager who oversees all the trades and if you go over you're limit, you're out. No matter how good you are or how much money you make, it's that brutal.
I'm personally just not good enough a trader to work at a hedge fund. Sure, I can beat a lot of them on ROI but my risk level is way outside what they'd call acceptable. I would be sacked on the first day... I just don't have that level of discipline, I wish I did.
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