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Differentt Tim
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Scaaless
6/2
20/2009
You can see that how the likelihood of negative returns tends to
reduce when the duration of trade increases.
• For the time period used in this calculation, 47% of the time
daily returns are negative, 44% of the time daily returns are less
than 2%, and only 9% of the time daily returns are more than
2%.
• However, when we look on monthly basis, negative returns
reduce to 32% of the time, while 59% of the time monthly
returns are more than 2%.
Summary…
Another individual can target for more than 2% returns, but decides
to use monthly trading window. This way the chances of getting your
desired returns are increased to 59% (instead of only 9% chance using
daily trades).
Many readers and users alike may say that with proper stock picks
individual stocks can return 10%, 20% or even more. I agree with
them, and I do not deny the possibility of such high returns in short
time period. However, the point I am making here is what are the
“chances” of such high returns? Sure, individual stock picks can have
high returns, but chances become very low. For example, individuals
can surely attempt to target 5% or more returns on their daily or
weekly trades. But then, they should accept the fact that chances are
less than 1% and they are taking more risk than the market itself.