I have no idea what the average trader makes, but they aim for far, far above 20% per annum.
I can also say that while you may well find some investments which return 20% or more within a year, you're very, very rarely going to get something which looks anything like a consistent 20% per annum over 10 years. Hey, if anyone knows of anything which you can demonstrate is actually going to do anything like that, sign me right up now, but even looking retrospectively you'd struggle to find an example, let alone predictively. It's a lot less realistic than seeking 20% per annum returns as a trader.
AGY isn't going to see 20% returns every year for the next 10 years. I expect that most people here would agree with me that we'll see a lot more than 20% over the next year and probably the year after too, but after that it gets quite difficult to predict.
Regardless, the whole point of trading is to increase your gains to well above what they would be on a long term investment. If you didn't expect to be achieving that goal, you wouldn't be attempting to trade in the first place, so the tax comparison could only apply as a problem to anyone who literally expected to fail.
AGY Price at posting:
27.5¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
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