This article is missing a crucial piece of data: what was the initial investment.. earning 500k with 10k initial investment is genious, with 10M initial investment it's just another year on the stock market.
This is a different style of trading than what investors do. He said that he was never more than a few contracts in. A single contract needs $10K day trading margin usually (depends on time frame and specific contract, but it's a reasonable estimate). Therefore, if he was never more than 10 contracts long or short at the same time, the risk was of $100K.
Making $500K on $100K over 6 months is good business.
Especially considering that from it's lowest point in 2009 through the end of 2010, the S&P500 rose by 71%. Need to know what the starting capital was to be able to figure out if his return beat the market.
