What's a Good Return for Traders?

This is one of the most googled questions in trading. And the answer you usually find is either way too vague or wildly unrealistic.

So let me give you the honest version.

What "Good" Looks Like at the Professional Level

Professional fund managers — the people doing this at the highest institutional level — consider 20 to 30 percent annually to be excellent. Most years the S&P 500 returns somewhere around 10 percent. So beating that consistently is already considered exceptional.

It's worth sitting with how high that bar actually is. These are people managing enormous amounts of capital, with full-time research teams and years of track record, and 20 to 30 percent in a year is considered a standout result for them — not a baseline. If a course or a signal group is casually promising returns well beyond that as a normal, repeatable outcome, that's already a mismatch with what the top of the entire industry considers exceptional.

What It Looks Like for Retail and Funded Traders

For retail traders and prop firm traders, the numbers can look different because you're not managing billions. You have more flexibility, more agility, and if you're funded, you're working with leverage. Consistent retail traders who are genuinely profitable tend to target somewhere between 5 and 15 percent monthly on a funded account. Some months more. Some less. Some negative. That's the reality.

Notice that range includes negative months as a normal, expected part of the picture — not a failure. Anyone presenting a retail track record with no losing months at all is either extremely early in that track record or not showing you the whole thing. Real consistency includes variance. It just means the variance stays inside a range you can survive.

The Part No One Admits

But here's the part nobody talks about. The return percentage matters less than the consistency and the risk used to get there.

A 20 percent monthly return sounds incredible. But if you're risking 10 percent per trade to get it, that's not a strategy. That's a countdown to a blown account. A number without knowing the risk behind it is basically meaningless — two traders can post the same monthly return, and one of them is one bad week away from losing everything while the other has years of runway left, and you'd never know the difference from the return figure alone.

A 5 percent monthly return with 1 percent risk per trade, proper drawdown management, and consistent execution? That's actually impressive. That's scalable. That's something you can build on.

Why the Number Alone Is a Trap

This is also why "what's a good return" is a slightly misleading question on its own. The real question is closer to "what's a good return relative to the risk it took to get there" — and that second question is the one that actually predicts whether a trader is still around in two years. A flashy monthly number with no context on risk tells you almost nothing about whether it's repeatable.

Don't chase the number. Chase the process that produces the number safely.

Quick FAQ

What is considered a good monthly return in trading? For consistently profitable retail and funded traders, roughly 5 to 15 percent monthly is a commonly cited realistic range, though this varies by strategy, account size, and risk tolerance.

What return do professional fund managers consider good? Institutional fund managers generally consider 20 to 30 percent annually to be an excellent result, especially relative to the S&P 500's long-term average of roughly 10 percent per year.

Is a high monthly return always a good sign? Not on its own. A high return achieved with oversized risk per trade is unsustainable, even if it looks impressive in a single month. Return should always be evaluated alongside the risk taken to produce it.

Why do so many trading returns online seem unrealistic? Return figures posted online often lack context on position sizing, drawdown, or sample size, and they're frequently the best month cherry-picked from a longer, less impressive track record.

This is general market information, not personalized financial advice — realistic targets depend heavily on your own strategy, risk tolerance, and account size, and it's worth thinking through those specifics with your own research or a financial professional rather than treating any single number as a universal benchmark.