Mysterious gains and low annual gains

Thinking in percentages (without thinking about the real money too) only goes so far. Buffet once said he would make a much higher percentage if he had less money.

It's the liquidity in the end and the reason I would never ever trade money for other people. I'm specialised in high leveraged trading of small movements with some momentum and a few other things that don't scale that well. I make serious money, I will however never become as rich as buffet is at least not with that sort of trading. I had days where I made more than your average guy in a year but it's unlikely to ever go much higher than that so with a much bigger account size my percentage return would become smaller and smaller and ...

Investment grade buy-to-let apartment houses in bigger German cities come with around 5% return per annum (based on price and rental income at the time of acquisition) and people still buy them. They aren't stupid either, it's a good return if you want to invest some 7-8 figure sums.

exactly my point !!!

well i do know why i very likely will never reach this as well .. as my psychological side is not strong enough and i usually give back a huge part of my earnings.

but if one mastered the psycology part of trading .. and does scalp 123's all day .. its gonna be hard not to get to 2% if risking 1% per trade

so this gap between retail and prop traders .. plus the mathematical opposide is what basically confuses me ... (and others as well)

yeah that's true as well and answering the institutional question..
of course .. its not gonna be easy to get a fill for a 5pip move with 5000 Lots without the slippage killing it

my personal goal is pretty simple: i will consider myself "Successful" the day my monthly withdrawal (to pay the bills and keep my lifestyle going as it is now) has the same size as 1 losing trade (1-1,5%)

but based on facts, personal statistics and the state of my trading psychology, that will surely take on a few years to happen ..

I concur, I mean it is pointless then if one makes just that annually and nothing trading. Then the person hasn't gotten it right yet in the market.

that is EXACTLY (!!) my point and reason for this topic! if you read above, i was already smashed down by saying 7ish%

some say this is not enough .. (and if you have a 500$ account, i agree)
but sure if you have a 500.000$ account.. this is good enough ... but this topic is about percentages only. (i dont know why peopels start to mix that up)

about the yield, i trade simple 123 setups .. use fibonacci extention as help to confirm the wave does continue (as i completly ignore the overall trend larger than the H1 chart) i use this as confirmation. you can read more about this here: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=606432
i posted screens of one of my accounts where you can see that i made far more than 2% on serval days. by simply follow the rules and use some money management.

i risk between0.5 and 2% in a trade (based on the setup confirmation and the strenght of the trend .. (is no trend = 0.5 .. in a free fall 2%) .. simple.

lets take today .. i placed 17 trades (11 in asia and 4 in UK session and 2 in US session (still ongoing))
the reason is because i had to pickup my daughter from shool, install a new waterpump and have a programming job as well

anyway .. there are easy 25-50 setups every day on the few (6) pairs i do trade trade (4 pairs plus the dax and nikkei in asia session)..
so plain technically i dont see any reason, beside myself, why 2-3%/ day not being possible.

all this combined i had 11 of this trades turned out to be winning trades gaining a total of 8.75%

okay i have to admit .. i was long USDJPY before the news came out in my standard setup, and USDX pushed finally over the 101.439
so i removed the TP and gained 5,5% on this single trade as my 6pip TP went to 22
lucky day

bottom line is simple .. if my psycological anker would not be there draining my account because i'm stupid, that would be possible indeed