[biznerd]

This is not a very good analogy.

* You are one individual that averages 6 trades in month . GS has hundreds of traders, many of which do average that amount in a week (if not a day). The law of averages applies to GS, while your experience is anecdotal evidence.

In fact, if after 3 years with an average of 6 monthly trades you haven't liquidated a single negative position I'd say that most probably are making a classic investment mistake - holding onto your losses too long.

* GS trades much more volatile investments than you - futures, derivatives, etc. Traders have a much shorter time-horizon than you as well. You sell when you need the money while they're trying to meet their quarterly numbers.

[tamas]

Wow, apparently I expressed my point poorly, as you guys seem to pick up that I'm advertising how awesome I am and how I kick GS' ass on the markets.

What I wanted to say is that it's hard to find an index that went down during Q3 so those hundreds of traders could actually manage to not lose money but only one day, so that post and the comments really seem to be... subjective and biased.

As your note of my "strategy" being a mistake, I'm actually fine with my results and I'll keep going long, thank you.

[loganfrederick]

You make a good point about comparing their performance to the index. If the market as a whole is rising, and there are always other people willing to take the opposite position of you (or Goldman), it is conceivable that you could only have one negative day.

If this was during a negative quarter for the market as a whole, that'd be a different story. Like the other poster noted, the likelihood that Goldman would consistently be on the positive side of millions of trades for ninety days is probably pretty slim.