On May 8, 2018, we placed our first trade in our $100,000 real money account. Now a year is over, and we want to take stock and do some statistical analysis and a forecast for the next 10 years.
Performance
The performance of our real money account was 30.4% in the first year, with a total of 117 trades. Currently, we have 19 trades open, and thus 98 trades have been closed.
The following picture shows a closer look at the asset classes:
- 62 trades with options (63%)
- 20 trades with futures (20%)
- 16 trades with shares (16%)
Performance of closed trades
If you take a look at the 98 trades already closed in detail, you will notice that our trades in futures have performed best in the account:
- Futures have made a total profit of $21,020.18
- Options without income strategies $7,226.73
- Income strategies with options have lost $1,248.15 in a very bad time
- Sadly, share prices also generated a loss of $1,484.04
Overall, we are very pleased with the result, as we were confronted with 2 events that are rare:
- Extremely bad year for our income strategies with the Butterfly
- Realized equity losses in a very hectic market at the end of 2018
Under normal conditions, we could be cautiously optimistic that we would achieve a return of 40% as originally targeted.
Speaking for the first year, we have realized $28,246.91 in our real money account and are currently opening 19 trades with an unrealized gain of approximately $4,930, as shown in the image below:
Best and worst trade
Of course, under 98 trades, there were two trades that were the best and the worst. Let’s start with the bitter pill, our worst trade. We had to realize a loss of $5,167.00 (# 50) in a butterfly on the Russell 2000 with our income strategy in an immensely hectic market phase. This loss was well above our maximum accepted loss, but it can happen in options trading, especially in highly volatile market phases, that you have to bite the bullet and realize greater losses.
But let’s come to a very pleasing trade. In Lean Hogs (HE) we produced a successful trade (# 91), which brought us a profit of $16,226.00.
Average result per trade
If we look at the total result divided by the number of trades, then we can determine the average result per trade:
- $28,246.91 / 98 = $288
Put simply, with every trade, we get a profit of $288.
Comparison to known benchmarks
At this point, we have reported a lot about our real money account, but a ranking of its performance is only possible with a meaningful comparison. Here you can see our account compared to different benchmarks:
Balanced account
We are particularly proud of our balanced account. As described above, we trade many different instruments and markets. In losing our equity positions, our futures in the commodities earn money and vice versa. Of course, options trading, or more specifically the sale of options, is also a great support to generate steady profits.
Outlook
In the coming trading year, we will continue to place great value on setting up our real money account so as not to be surprised by individual events. Here we continue to rely on our steady income strategies, which are likely to perform more satisfactorily. In addition, we will consistently look for extreme areas in the futures markets and use them to our advantage in order to achieve a consistently low-risk and professionally consistent return.
Our goal for the second year is 40%. So our real money account should be over $180,000 by May 7, 2020. Of course, we keep you informed with our monthly updates. All our premium members receive our trades directly in our Slack community.
Should we maintain our “only” 30% annual return, we will end up with $1,400,000 in 10 years:
You can make such a calculation yourself here.
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