Diary of a Professional Commodity Trader Lessons from 21 Weeks of Real Trading by Peter Brandt
Post on: 6 Июнь, 2015 No Comment
About.com Rating
Peter Brandt has recently written a book titled Diary of a Professional Commodity Trader: Lessons from 21 Weeks of Real Trading. As the title indicates, Brandt is a professional commodity trader and this book provides a unique look into five months of real trading in his life. This is a unique perspective as many trading books only provide the best chart examples and after-the-fact analysis. Brandt provides a real time account of actual trades – the good, the bad and the ugly.
Peter Brandt has traded commodities and the forex markets for more than 30 years. He has achieved a 68 percent annual rate of return during his career. Novice traders might think that he is taking on a great amount of risk to achieve those returns, but that is not the case. There is no magical trading system here either. In fact, Brandt simply uses technical patterns that you can find in most basic technical analysis books. The key to his success is strictly managing the risk on each trade.
The first two sections of the book go into the trading strategies that Brandt utilizes as well as his trading plan. I noticed throughout the book that he has a fondness for head and shoulder patterns as well as triangle patterns. The remainder of the book is a five month depiction of actual trades that Brandt placed. He gives the reasoning why he entered the trades along with placements of protective stop losses and his profit targets for each trade.
From there, you will see how he manages each trade until the trade is ultimately closed for a profit or loss. Brandt also tells what was going through his head when he entered the trades and while he was managing the trades. As you might guess, there are some entertaining thoughts in the book, as anyone who trades commodities daily can relate to. Emotions play a big part in trading commodities.
One thing you soon realize when you read the book is that Brandt loses on a lot of trades. The key is that he manages he losses so they are small. As long as he does that, he is confident he will have more than enough profits from his winning trades. There will eventually be some very large winning trades, which are often necessary for the above average returns. Those are very important points for new and struggling traders to realize.
Diary of a Professional Commodity Trader: Lessons from 21 Weeks of Real Trading by Peter Brandt is a unique look at trading that very few trading books offer. It should give readers a better idea on how professional traders approach trading. A very small percentage of an account is risked on any given trade and monthly P&L statements are what matter. You only have to make a couple percentage points each month to make very respectable returns.
The book almost has the feel of a documentary rather than a glitzy movie where all the lines were rehearsed and major editing was done before final release. This is a good thing. When it comes to your money, would you rather learn about trading commodities from a professional trader who gives you the good, the bad and the ugly – or would you rather learn from a “Hollywood” production where reality is a little blurred by showing only prime chart examples that don’t represent real world trading?
Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy .