2026 Trading goals & plan
What's possible to make in the markets is quite heavily based on the opportunity set in a given timeframe. That said I also believe that if you have a wide range of strategies with significant +EV(expected value) per trade/strategy and proper sizing it's possible to make significant % gains especially if you're trading a sub 8fig account.
Goal: With $3M AUM I aim to make in 2026 over $20M profits net of fees.
Meaning closer to 700% on AUM and considering I'll end up wiring out some it'll probably be closer to 1000% TWR.
Now when I posted my 2025 recap I mentioned I'd start the year with $2.5M and wire out the rest. But what I didn't open up is my new approach moving forward: I will divide my trading equity between high risk accounts and low risk accounts.
High risk accounts: Start of the year AUM $2.5M. On this equity I'll run my small cap algo + take my riskier discretionary trades. I expect high volatility on this equity and aim for a TWR in the range of +1000 to +3000%.
Low risk accounts: Start of the year AUM $500k. On this equity I'll run the new algo strategies I'm developing for mid/large cap companies and ETF's. Volatility will be much lower with a max drawdown expectation between 10-20%. TWR goal here is in the range of +50% to +100% so we're talking about a completely different risk profile.
My plan is to create significant profits with the high risk accounts and funnel those profits into my low risk accounts. Before this year I used to just wire out some of my gains to my bank account so that the money would be "safe" but moving forward my wire outs will instead be changes in my equity allocation towards my low risk accounts where I still aim to significantly beat the markets for long term compounding.
In addition to the approach itself a significant difference compared to earlier years is that I've now wired out enough profits to provide for my family for >5 years if not for even much longer. So when I'm talking about trying to compound my high risk accounts I meant it in a different way than before - now I can actually do it without a second thought. I'm not risking our family's future anymore. I'm highly interested in what I can do in this respect.
For low risk accounts I'm currently developing fully automated strategies and expect to take first trades before end of January. By the end of Q1 I aim to have a portfolio of >30 strategies running online. This part of my trading will not be the main contributor for 2026 but looking forward towards the next decade I expect a significant portion of my profits to come from this area.
And then one of the main limiting factors of my discretionary trading: I will continue to prioritize my time away from the screens high. I've got many priorities & goals outside of trading that will not happen unless I make sure my screentime stays low enough. We only live once and trading is not the only thing I want to do. At 37 years I'm not that young anymore so I can't postpone my other goals forever. Just to give an idea I'm aiming to spend on average <3 hours per day at the screens for trading this year.
As always it's impossible to know what the markets bring and how I or my algo strategies manage that. But honestly the monetary goal I set in this post is lower than what I actually have in my mind. Only time will tell how things will end up, and one of the most dangerous things a trader can have is overconfidence. Let's see. At least one thing is certain: I love this game 😎
I used to think optionality was cheap and commitment expensive. Now I think it’s mostly the reverse.
The very best things aren’t found, they’re built through the magic of compounding + commitment. Work, love, home, investments… when you find a good beachhead, burn the ships.