Friday, May 06, 2005

Returns

I haven't finished re-reading the new market wizards since I've been brushing up on my Excel skills, but I wanted to post about some of the returns of these guys.

Nothing really exciting on the markets. My portfolio finished up and LB had a great day (up a little over 8%).
I also bought a suit today for $340, ouch! Although I'm sure that's probably cheap compared to other suits. Anyways, it's a Ralph Lauren and I think it looks nice. I might put up a pic of it later on. I'll pick up the suit on Sunday, since they have to fix a few things (I'm a bit on the tall side).
The one thing that has been on my mind: the job I'm interviewing for has some crazy hours. I don't mind working many hours, but the schedule for this job (for certain days) will be around 5:30am to 6pm. The starting time will always be 5:30. I'm not exactly the morning person! I can go by on 4-5 hours of sleep, but for working I'm used to getting up around 5:30 not being at work!
As for right now, that's the least of my problems: I need to get the job first!

Some Market Wizard Returns (stocks, options, currency, and futures)
Randy McKay: He started his account at $2k and in seven months was up to $70k. He had his first million dollar year after his second year of trading!

William Eckhardt: Since 1978 to the time of publishing, he averaged better than 60%/year with only one losing year.

Monroe Trout: During a five year period his average return was 67% and he was profitable in 87% of all months

Al Weiss: His average annual return exceeded 29%/year and the most he has lost in a year was 17%

Stanley Druckenmiller: Since taking over the multi-billion dollar Quantum Fund he averaged over 38% in his first three years.

Richard Driehaus: For the 12 year period since 1980, he averaged an annual return in excess of 30%!

Gil Blake: In his first twelve years of trading he averaged a 45% annual return. In this time period he never had a year with a return below 20% (his worst year was a 24% gain!).

Victor Sperandeo: Up till 1990 he had 18 consecutive winning years with an average annual gain of 72%.

Blair Hull: He started with $25k in late 1976 and by the start of 1979 had multiplied his stake twentyfold. He then averaged roughly 100%/year in the years after 1979.

Very impressive results; something to aim for!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, Alpha Guy! This week's Barron’s has an article done on billionaire Mark Cuban that you might want to read. Here's where you can find the article - Barrons, May 9, 2005, issue pgs. 23 -27. Or if you get the WSJ Online you can gain access to it there as well.

Also there is another great article on Bill Miller in the June 2005 edition of Smart Money magazine that you may also enjoy. Bill Miller is known for outperforming the stock market for 14 straight years by buying what other people are selling and selling what other people are buying. The article can be found on pgs. 72 - 76.

savingadvice said...

stockdiva!
Thanks for the heads up on the Barrons and Smart Money articles! I'll try to check them out when I go to the library.
Bill Miller is definitely an excellent manager, one of the most famous ones out there. I think he's profiled in another book (Investment Gurus- good book). Also another manager who kind of goes under the radar is Bruce Sherman- I'll try to find an article about him.

savingadvice said...

hey wannabe_ceo,

yeah some of these guy's results are pretty damn amazing!

for Excel: writing/using Macros, hopefully be able to program a bit in vba, then just brushing up on the easier stuff- using array formulas, linking spreadsheets together, using excel to gather data off external databases. The list goes on man! I have one of those fat books, excel 2003 bible, and so i try to learn a few things every night.