This thread is about measuring your trading pay per hour compared to a regualr per hour job or salaried job. We all come from different walks of life and differetn experiences and no one gets paid the same so you must be honest with yourself about trading and the "SUNK COSTS" of money lost and time invested vs a real world guaranteed job.
use 21 trading days per month and 160 hours per month
NONE of this includes benefits or retirement matching or anything else like that

trading costs= data, quotes,news services, paper for printing, and ink

my costs for 3 platforms with quotes are roughly

$ 9, 36, 33 and 25 + 200 = $ 303 per month in fees

add in 40 dollars for office supplies so I am at roughly 343 per month in costs

base per hour pay on a 40 hour week and a 160 hour month

cost per hour =$ 1.90 !
costs per day= $ 15.15
cost per week= $ 75.75
cost pe rmonth= $ 303
cost per year = $ 3,636 so I must make $ 3,636 per year just to break even at the end of the year

now for the sunk costs.
1. lets start at the bottom $ 10 an hour minimum
80 per day
400 per week
1600 a month and this is guranteed
so to be at this level in trading you must make
11.90 per hour
95.20 per day
476 per week
$ 1,904 per month after expenses
$ 22,848 per year

2. entry level career job $ 38,000 (19.80) per hour
$ 21.70 per hour
173.60 per day
868 per week
$3,472 per month
$ 41,664 per year this is what your BROKERAGE TAX STATEMENTS should add up to

3. midlevel gov job/public sector job 60,000 = $ 31.25 per hour
33.15 per hour
$ 265 per day
$ 1,326 per week
$ 5,304 per month
$ 63,648

4. 100k six figures a year 52.08 per hour engineers etc.
$ 54 per hour
$ 432 per day profit
$ 2,159 per week
$ 8,637 per month
$103,647 per year

5. $ 250,000 high level sales person or low paid physician/ well paid lawyer
$ 132 per hour
$1,056 per day
$5,284 per week
$ 21,137 per week
$ 253,647

6. successful biz owner 600K per year
$ 314 per hour
$2,515 per day
$ 12,576 per week
$ 50,304 per month
$ 603,648 per year

7. 1 million dollars a year
$ 523 per hour!
$ 4,182 per day
$ 20,949 per week
$ 83,637 per month
$ 1,003,647

8. one of the largest BOND PIT TRADERS that i know of and what he made on the floor had his trading profits published in the 1990s due to a divorce. He traded 3500 to 10,000 lots a day in the bond pits he made 3 million 1 year and 5 million the next. Many who wanted to make more than this left the pits and started hedge funds or investment funds because they realized that was about the mopst you could do scalping in the pits and it was a TON of work everyday physically and mentally.

lets us 4 million as an average
1. $ 2,084 per hour
2. 16,674 per day
3. 83,373 per week
4. $ 333,494 per month
5. 4,001,919 per year

7. a fund manager with 500 million in assets who charges 2 and 20 lets not use the 2% sicne it is for expenses usually and lets use 10 % return as of late i know sounds low but uncorrelated with markets is his strategy.
50 million total profits x 20 % =10 million income
10 million
1. $ 5,210 per hour
2. $ 41,681 per day
3. $ 208,000 per week
4. 833,637 per month
5. 10,003,648 per year

8. now for a guy who has 5 billion under management who had an incredible year lets say 20 %
income of 200 million for the year
1. $ 104,166 per hour
2. $ 833,333 per day!
3. $ 4,166,000 per week
4.16.6 million per month
5. 200 million a year !

9. some hedge fund managers did make over a billion dollars last year!
1 billion dollars per year
1. $ 520,000 per hour
2. $ 4.1 million per day
3. 20.8 million per week
4. 83 million per month
5. 1 billion per year!!!!!

seeing it this way makes you realize
1. just how difficult trading is to make money and to make serious money is even more difficult and that we give up a lot of time and energy and income to try and become professional traders
2. a BILLION DOLLARS is a ridiculous amount of money!!!

this would mean being profitable every day or every week for the amount of money you need to be making every day in order to make the type of income you want to be making.
if you have 2 losing days a week then you must make up for those losses on top of what you normally would make per week! or per month etc.

it is almost impossible to make multi millions day trading because no one or at least very few take huge calculated risks like the ones that are needed in order to make great money trading.

you can take your trading expectancy and multiply it out in numerous different ways to see how much size you need to trade in order to make that amount of money
also once you grow much bigger the slippage and the mkt itself can and will gun for you at times!!

i did a live trade today in a micro es on this forum and it picked up $ 29 dollars in profit
if a mini this would have been $ 290 had i withstood the drawdown before the rally and not taken profits early since they would have been large vs 29 dollars!

29 dollars = 6 points roughly in the MINI ES.
can you pull out 6 points a day per lot that is 300 dollars or
37.5 an hour
300 per day
1500 per week
6000 per month
72,000 per year

I know some very successful PROP traders who at the end of the year make over a million dollars a year but guess what
they average and I am not kidding and I am not making this up! if they average 2 dollars yes $ 2 dollars a contract for all contracts traded then they consider that to be excellent.

so for them to make 300 in a day they would need to do 300/2= 150 lots per day at a 2 dollar net gain and expectancy per lot!! most of these guys lease seats or are members!!
$ 3,000 in a day = 1500 lots
$ 30,000 in a day = 15,000 lots which is roughly 1 % of the entire ES mini volume per day at 1.5 million contracts per day
you could only have 100 of these people if they were the only ones trading the es mini

30,000 a day x 240 = 7 million a year

10,000 a day is 2.400,000 per year
if we make on average 3 full points a day trading 1 lots all day that would be 150 dollars per day per 1 lot units .. to do this in the micro means you can print 15 dolalrs a day every day no matter what trading 1 lot micros.

if we want to make 420 per day or roughly 100k per year that = 3 lots traded every time with an expectancy of 150 dolalrs per lot at the end of the day

10 lots would be 10x 150= $ 1,500 x240 = $ 360,000
30 lots at a time would cause a lot of slippage so you probably need 4 points a lot expectancy at the end of the day
this would in the minis however be 4,500 per day 22,500 per week 90,000 per month and roughly 1 million per year
acutally it would be $ 1,080,000 per year

now you can say you can make more than 3 points a day but can you do it with 30 micros at a time? which would be 450 per day on 30 micros traded with every trade?

it is fun to do this stuff but it also makes you realize just how much it takes to make it huge in trading and why so few actually ever get this far and it takes a lot of margin to trade 30 lots.

it is so difficult to ascertain what your expectancy is or will be based on your past it is just tough to do because we are not super consistent however to make 100 million dollars a year
trading the es mini and if you were good enough to pull out say 5 points a day per lot that would be 250 dollars

you would need to do this many lots at 5 points a day .. all you need is 5 points! all you need is what i did today on this board with a 1 lot micro ha ha ha
100k = 2 lots a day
1 million = 17 lots a day
10 million = 165 lots a day
100 million = 1650 lots a day where each one makes 5 points. sounds easy doesnt it. since over a million trade per day!!

at 1.5 million lots traded in the es there is an average of (not a good measure) 390 minutes= 3,846 traded per minute. All you need for 10 million is 165 of those to print 5 points everyday!!
can you find 2.5 points 2 x day? 125 dollars?
1 point 5 x a day? 50 dollars then 5 times a day!!