Diary of a Professional Commodity Trader by Peter Brandt

Diary of a Professional Commodity Trader: Lessons from 21 Weeks of Real Trading is general master-plan for a successful Forex trading system. Peter Brandt is an experienced trader and an author of several trading and psychology-related books. In this work, he makes emphasis on the commodity and currency trading (despite what the title would suggest, commodities here also include some of the Forex currency pairs). The book is divided into four chapters. The first one is an introduction to the authors principles and ideas. Unlike many other books on Forex, it doesnt make an introduction into the market itself. The second part is dedicated to the actual characteristics of the successful trading plan for commodity markets with a lot of chart pattern examples and various how-to s. The third part is the actual five months of trading applying the principles laid out earlier in the book. The final part, the fourth one, offers a wrap-up of the whole book, summing up the example conclusions and offering some ideas for the assessment of a trading system performance.

4 Review

This book is highly enjoyable. The day you will get hold of it, you will surely love reading it. You will feel like going through it again and again. This book is an experience of one trader and shows how a trader who didn’t know everything came to know various technicalities of trading over a period of few months.

Even if you use trend following techniques and your approach is different, still you will appreciate Mr. Brandt words of wisdom, which he has generously shared in his book. You will learn a lot from his hard earned experiences. These are some lessons from a sincere, passionate and humble person who has referred himself as just any other student who is learning market.

Everyone wants to adopt the path of least resistance and you will surely find some really great tips in the book. Also, you will understand that traders should not hesitate at all to take a signal or suffer a loss on predetermined basis.

Brandt has also pointed out that each trader is required to prepare some answer for trading size, attitude, risk and success traits in advance. You will enjoy the in depth analysis of the trading in the past year, which is then followed by the authors trade by trade commentary. There are no secrets, however, every speculators needs to focus on making money, while being willing to spend minima in the form of losses and not vice versa. So, risk management comes handy here. (As part of human conditions, it’s better to be pennywise rather than being pound foolish)

Brandt’s clearly states that he is not giving any secret mantras of success for trading futures, which will make his book among the best sellers. Instead he is giving good lessons which are highly relevant and time tested. Like it happens in markets, many people will not agree with this, still those of you, who will read it with little patience, will surely understand what this book is all about.

Lastly, as it happens in trading or in life, if you are persistent, patient and willing to put in some extra effort, you will surely be rewarded in delightful ways.

If you have been a fan of Mr. Brandt and you love reading his books then the first thing that you do when you see his book is to read it. He is really one person who knows how to make money with charts. The Diary of a Professional Commodity Trader does not talk about only 21 weeks of trading, but it is a complete mentorship program for traders who know various technical methods to make the decisions on trading.

So if you don’t know what to do when you are confronted by a trading range then you should refer to his book. He says selling weakness or buying strength in the trading range is not a good idea at all. Just memorize these words and never break this rule. If you want to know his views on chart patterns then he says that simply drawing boundary lines on a chart is not exactly technical. In reality, market doesn’t pay heed where one draws the boundary line. This simply reinforces the belief that resistance and support leaves are useful only for those trades who are able to identify them. For trading disciplines, these numbers are very important.

This one is truly a diary, a true and honest description of the experience of the trader. No hocus pocus and no magic at all. It is just the hard work of the author providing some outstanding results. Every person into trading should read this book and should try to relate their experiences.

This book is a story of a successful trader. Prechetr of Elliott Wave International has recommended this book to the readers. In this one, the author is conveying his own learning and experiences after analyzing many years of commodity trading, though having a look at traders over six month period. This thing makes it a very interesting book to read. This book is not an essential must read, however if you are really serious about trading, then you can learn a lot from this book. Your learning from this book will depend on your weaknesses as a trader. This book deals with both investment psychology as well as author’s views on several charts. In case you are into day trading then this books is not really relevant as the author prefer for a long time horizon.