How people actually describe “beating the market”?

Immortal: How people actually describe “beating the market”?
Can a person who trade options with return over 100% per year be considered successful in beating the market, even though the options is a high-leveraged derivative and the underlying stock’s return is actually lower than the market return?

Answers and Views:

Answer by Robert M
yes

Answer by Hops Aficionado
My definition of “beating the market” is any time the overall return of your portfolio is above that of the S&P 500 index, regardless of what investment vehicles you used to create the returns.

Anybody who makes over 100% return for the year would definitely be considered successful (or extremely lucky).

Answer by Diagnostic Ddt
beating the market is winning against all odds.

Answer by Never-Again
People who try market timing and winning over the market averages rarely keep winning very long.

Answer by FuturesandForexTrading.com
Yes, if the person is trading options and has a 100% year, then it can absolutely be considered successfully beating the market. That is assuming the benchmark index (Dow Jones Industrial Average or DJIA). A benchmark index is when you choose that index as the standard against which you can measure your own and other’s performance of their portfolios over time.

Therefore beating the market just means to beat whatever the DJIA did for the year. So for 2010, the DJIA was up around 11% for the year. So any return above 11% would be considered beating the benchmark.

Answer by Rolf Golf
Beating the market actually means making a return higher than if you would invested in the overall market. If someone buying options of the same level of leverage on SPY is also making over 100% per year, then you are only making a market return.