IS this Karen Supertrader story legit?

[Martinghoul]

Coming to this thread late... Are we sure Karen isn't HowardCohodas?

 

[pboyles]

Why is someone so 'successful' courting such publicity? No doubt the Super Karen Trading Academy will be launching soon.

 

[cablemonster]

Coming to this thread late... Are we sure Karen isn't HowardCohodas?

Yes she attended flight school and has a concealed firearm about her person. Maybe Howie had a sex change.

 

[A Dashing Blade]

Ok. I understand you need to have things spelled out several times.

How do we measure how close the SPX price action is to a normal distribution? It's called SKEW. . . .

And that's where I stopped reading.
Kurtosis, is, I believe what you really meant

Interesting your use of the personal pronoun(?) "we" there as well. I really hope you're not working on a quant desk!

 

[Original Options Trader]

hi jerry
I have been trading options for a while and I am looking to share ideas. i am not into the theory like these two guys but I am doing ok, selling premium.

 

[mike8man]

Trader - made $41 million profit in 3 years option trading - YouTube

Anyone have any thoughts on this woman? I smell a rat....

Its interesting reading this thread a year or so later after two further interviews with her.

She is being interviewed by her broker, the guy who sold Think or Swim for some $600m to Ameritrade, so I can't imagine she is lying and he is condoning it.

I had a poor options trading year last year, 2013, and she had an average year for options traders - 27%. BUT they represented $51m trading profit. How a retail investor copes with that level of trading I find amazing.

 

[tar]

Its interesting reading this thread a year or so later after two further interviews with her.

She is being interviewed by her broker, the guy who sold Think or Swim for some $600m to Ameritrade, so I can't imagine she is lying and he is condoning it.

I had a poor options trading year last year, 2013, and she had an average year for options traders - 27%. BUT they represented $51m trading profit. How a retail investor copes with that level of trading I find amazing.

Her story is based on hearsay and interviews there're no audited track record , for all we know she could be trading on a demo . And even if she's really producing such results , that's normal , all options writing methods if traded professionally will produce some sort of income until ...

 

[tar]

Check for example some signal providers at Zulutrade , some of them have survived 4 years trading forex using martingale-like averaging down strategies , we all know they all will eventually pay everything back and more and indeed many of them already did ...

 

[mike8man]

Her story is based on hearsay and interviews there're no audited track record , for all we know she could be trading on a demo . And even if she's really producing such results , that's normal , all options writing methods if traded professionally will produce some sort of income until ...

I don't think her story is hearsay, simply because it is her broker who is interviewing her and he knows the detail of her performance and wouldn't ruin his reputation by falsifying the content of the 3 interviews.

 

[tar]

I don't think her story is hearsay, simply because it is her broker who is interviewing her and he knows the detail of her performance and wouldn't ruin his reputation by falsifying the content of the 3 interviews.

Not enough , you need an audited track record for her to verify her story , just because the broker interviewed her doesn't mean that much , she could be really producing for example 25% annually but what about her MM , max DD .. etc , so that's only half of the story , assuming its true ...

Thats why i gave a real example from Zulutrade :

Half story : He made 29000 pips in 4 years trading Forex .
Full story : He made 29000 pips in 4 years averaging down 30 times , with a max drawdown of 16000 pips .

 

[tar]

Mike, I agree. I wouldn't pay too much attention to the juvenile post from tar - I think if there's any 'hearsay' and 'demo trading' it's more likely to be from his direction than hers. As you say Tom is pretty well respected, and I was told he did due diligence before interviewing her. For info, Karen is NFA registered and I've seen copies of her SEC filings from Jan this year, which whilst in itself obviously isn't proof of returns, did show figures for the funds. I've yet to see tar's similar filing

The numbers are impressive, but clearly her returns are a function of her AUM, portfolio margin, and probably very good risk & money management. Frankly most retail traders wouldn't have any of these.

You don't get it , a one month performance isnt telling much check my example from Zulutrade , i am sorry to burst your bubble but either you have a verified track record for her or not ...

 

[tar]

"we were checking the plane ticket prices to Mexico"

http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?p=3946598&highlight=mexico#post3946598

 

[tar]

Actually I get it very well. Also I have no idea why you refer to one month's performance (she has traded far longer than that), or why you say you are "bursting my bubble" and why I should have a "verified track record for her" as I have no affiliation to her. I am purely pointing out that she has way more credibility than you will ever have. Simples.

Without a track record we go back to = hearsay , which was my point hence the title "IS this Karen Supertrader story legit?" . Simple .

Many traders are concerned about CAGR but not CALMAR ratio , whats the point of making 50% a year if you are doing martingale ?
So to know the exact details behind her "story" we need to look deeper , and that's the whole idea of track records , ok her broker is saying she made 25 or 50% a year or whatever , but then what ? If i want to know the other statistics should i call her broker as well ?

 

[tar]

I also disagree with your next statement, I think most professional traders do utilise metrics for risk-adjusted returns. If you're so obsessed with hers, why don't you contact her yourself? Anyway, we're way off topic here, so I'm done with wasting further time on this...

I was commenting on words like "impressive numbers " and the like , already seen a couple of threads about her in discussions boards , that's what i meant by traders are concerned about CAGR but not CALMAR ratio , what looks pretty could be in reality very very ugly , and so we're back to the benefits of track records ....

 

[mike8man]

Not enough , you need an audited track record for her to verify her story , just because the broker interviewed her doesn't mean that much , she could be really producing for example 25% annually but what about her MM , max DD .. etc , so that's only half of the story , assuming its true ...

Thats why i gave a real example from Zulutrade :

Half story : He made 29000 pips in 4 years trading Forex .
Full story : He made 29000 pips in 4 years averaging down 30 times , with a max drawdown of 16000 pips .

Surely your point is covered since the Broker and Karen are not talking about pips but account size. OK, this might be gross or net, but either way, $600K to $200m account size in 6 years is an amazing growth.

 

[tar]

Surely your point is covered since the Broker and Karen are not talking about pips but account size. OK, this might be gross or net, but either way, $600K to $200m account size in 6 years is an amazing growth.

MY point isn't covered , hence these numbers does show growth but not risk . And anyway these numbers aren't verified AFAIK , please correct me if i am wrong and provide a public track record , plus are these numbers from pure growth or it does include deposits from investors ? I've seen different opinions in this regards ...

 

[tar]

Case in point :

A forex system developer , turned 30k to 2.5 M in few years .

Full story : A forex system developer turned 30k to 2.5M by averaging down and hold and hope , aiming for high win rate 90% and his max DD at the time was around 80%.

Fast forward : System went to zero .

 

[terminator8]

I understand this has nothing to do with Karen but I found the discussion between rb107 and Shakone fascinating. So I thought I would add my two cents without any ad hominem attacks please. Below I have curated quotes from both of you.

1. Randomness is based on Brownian motion which exhibits a normal distribution since the universality between Brownian motion and a normal distribution are closely linked.
2. Randomness is based on Brownian motion which exhibits a normal distribution. The fact that there are numerous other distributions is not proof that randomness is uniquely Brownian
3. If you chose to look at the test results of others in charting the SPX distribution on a daily basis (not annual), then you will see that it resembles closely a bell curve (with high tops at the center, and long tails). Does the high tops and long tails exclude the use of the probability model? Imo, and from my experience, NO. One other point: the longer the time-frame (daily vs weekly vs monthly vs annual) the less random is the distribution which diminishes the applicability of the probability model.

1. So random does not mean normal distribution.
   
2. The fact that there are other distributions should be enough to indicate to you that something random does not need to be normally distributed. Do you get this or not? Why would anyone refer to these distributions if everything random were normal? To believe this indicates a serious flaw in your understanding of randomness and probability.
3. Randomness is not based on Brownian motion. Get this first. The study of probability and random behaviour existed hundreds of years before Brownian motion was mathematically modelled. So stop spouting nonsense.
4. You stated a probability that was based on it being normally distributed. You now accept that it is not normally distributed, since you're mentioning skewness. That means it differs from normal distribution. It has skew. It also has fatter tails. As a consequence this means that the probability does not need to be 84%. Concentrate on this. You're using an assumption which doesn't hold.
   
5. You then admitted that it might be close to normally distributed. I said good, you're getting there in terms of 'close' and asked what the accurate probability is. You haven't answered what this probability is. You seem to have just given up and decided that the incorrect assumption (normal dist.) will do for you as an approximate. Not the worst estimate in the world, but not accurate and not something you'd want to risk money on.

There are two issues here: randomness and normal distribution. Shakone and rb107 are actually both right and both wrong at the same time! (there is never anything clear cut with nuance unfortunately...)

Random walk converges to a Wiener process (brownian motion) if the step size tends to 0. If the random walk has a step size that varies according to a normal distribution then it is a Guassian random walk.

So right here, you guys are talking about two different things: Shakone is talking about the general random walk whereas rb107 is talking about a specific case of the random walk.

So rb107 is wrong in the sense that assuming random walk = brownian motion but your point on asset prices being random (and testing through skewness) in the short-term holds and is correct.

So Shakone is wrong to say randomness is not based on brownian motion when it actually is from a mathematical modelling point of view. However, Shakone is right to say that randomness does not imply normal distributions because we do not know what the distribution of the incrememnt ACTUALLY is.

BUT all random processes are modelled assuming a normal distribution.

Thus, it is a debate between empirical data (rb107) vs theoretical mathematical modelling(Shakone).

 

[mike8man]

I have also seen these up and down exponential curves of traders success followed by failure. BUT as I'm still on the up exponential curve - its been 15 years so far, I believe I can stay there providing I keep 70% spare cash (in case I need to roll my positions). Cash in the account is so important in order to manage otherwise damaging market moves. I also believe that it is important to trade different markets so that negative moves in one market may not necessarily affect all of my trades.

Case in point :

A forex system developer , turned 30k to 2.5 M in few years .

Full story : A forex system developer turned 30k to 2.5M by averaging down and hold and hope , aiming for high win rate 90% and his max DD at the time was around 80%.

Fast forward : System went to zero .

 

[mike8man]

Surely your point is covered since the Broker and Karen are not talking about pips but account size. OK, this might be gross or net, but either way, $600K to $200m account size in 6 years is an amazing growth.

Karen's latest interview (Aug 14) is posted here: https://www.tastytrade.com/tt/shows/tasty-extras/episodes/13310?locale=en-US

In percentage terms she isn't doing that exceptionally well, for an options trader, either last year (27% I think) or this year - 11% YTD Aug 14. However, when 11% net profit = $30m, that one heck of an account size to manage, with some 500 to 1000 contracts placed each time she trades several times per week!!

What is not clear is how she grew her account size so dramatically, by hundreds of %/yr between 2008 and 2013.

Any ideas or info from anybody?