Chat With Traders: How a 50-Year Veteran Thinks About Risk Management with Peter Brandt

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RealVision: Peter Brandt’s Mid-Year Market Outlook

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FundSeeder: Peter Brandt on Risk, Discipline & Survival in Markets for 40+ years

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Real Vision: Peter Brandt on Where Markets Are Headed Next

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Factor Member Webinar December 2025

Recorded Live December 30, 2025 Overview 
  • Q&A
Questions from Members  
  1. I wonder why you wrote in your 6-14-25 letter that you have more holding power in SLV than SI futures? And how do you think about the risk of overnight gap and deal with it when it happens? 2:01
  2. What changed in your trading approach post 2013? Did you start tracking win rate, avg gain and loss post that time period? With all the changes you have made since 2013, do you still anticipate having a breakeven or losing year in the future? 7:45
  3. In one of your tweets, you mentioned that you are going to increase your metals position to 20% the reason for it, and how do you research to get to that decision? 12:13
  4. After a period of poor trading, what do you do to make sure you keep your composure? Do you force yourself to stop? Cut size? 15:11
  5. What are your protocols to prevent "death by a thousand papercuts"? Aggressive risk management can lead to a bunch of small losses even if the trade is running successfully. 18:17
  6. Can we talk about a good exit strategy? Are you always exiting at the target 100% of the time in the position? I am experimenting with 50% at target and 50% with a trailing stop of 2 ATR? What are your thoughts? 21:17
  7. I know you are against pyramiding. But why is that so? I have not bad results with early pyramiding. 24:43
  8. Trade Selection Across Asset Classes: There is a vast universe of asset classes today—stocks, commodities, currencies, bonds, and derivatives. How do you narrow this universe and identify where the best trading opportunities lie at any given time? 28:16
  9. What are your preferred strategies to re-enter a trade that stopped you out, like silver or gold trades these days? 31:58
  10. Timeless Market Principles (Then vs Now): Having spent over 50 years in the markets, what core principles of trading and investing have remained unchanged despite all the evolution in markets? Which market behaviors or psychological patterns do you see repeating themselves generation after generation? 34:30
  11. After precious metals are industrial metals to follow? What is your opinion on copper and aluminum? 40:35
  12. Commodities vs Stocks – Key Differences: From a trader’s perspective, what are the most important differences between commodities and equities? 44:50
  13. How do you manage your trade if 3dtsr is triggered while the price is above loss level but below 70% of the target? Have you ever taken multi-year trades like Nickel seems like it's at a long-term bottom, maybe to average in over a few months and hold for a couple of years? 50:15
  14. When is a vertical market over versus in a correction? 53:47
  15. A full rant on silver and the chart you're showing would be great.  Also, you posted on X some time ago; this chart has the potential to be more powerful than silver.  I believe it was the tlt? 55:04
  16. What percentage of your account do you typically risk per trade - around 1%, or more? What were the main drivers that allowed you to shift from an unprofitable trader to a consistent profitable trader? 1:04:02
  17. What position size do you usually use relative to your account balance? For example, do you ever risk as much as 10-15% of your account in active trades? 1:08:18
  18. From your experience, what annual returns (in percentage terms) are realistically achievable for swing traders while maintaining proper risk control? 1:11:48
  19.  What are the bottlenecks that prevent you from meaningfully scaling up the strategy? 1:15:24
  20. I know you assign relatively low importance to trade identification. But if most breakout fails, much more than implied by Factor’s track record, doesn’t this mean your decades of chart pattern reading experience a key edge in avoiding false breakout signals? 1:17:16
  21. I'm new to the service and still catching up on all the online materials. Would you be able to talk about how you set and trail stops, and how, as a trader, we should best develop a process for this? Could you please recommend a trading platform for beginners in futures trading? 1:21:18
  22. Using the March 2026 Robusta Coffee (RC) futures as an example, the 85% of 108-day pattern provided a short entry at 3936.250 with a projected target at 3465.608. The stated risk management rule is that once price reaches 70% of the target, a 3-day trailing stop is activated. 1:25:41
  23. How do you manage your long-term retirement accounts where you can’t do so much active trading or use futures? Do you use different trading rules there?  Any examples would help. Also, do you invest in individual stocks or ETFs? What does your IRA portfolio distribution look like - stocks vs commodities vs crypto, etc? 1:27:07
  24. I believe you mentioned you like to use futures instead of stocks as they give you better bang for the buck. For a beginner who is more comfortable starting with stocks do you think the same trade management rules can be applied to stocks? Any recommendations on how to tweak these rules when using stocks? Any examples would help. 1:30:00
  25. Would you mind explaining how you choose between stop entries and market entries? It seems to me that you typically wait for the daily candle to close before you decide to enter; however with the recent SCHA you placed a buy stop based on the ATR instead of waiting for the candle to close above the range. 1:31:37
  26.  Thoughts on Hogs?  What contract? 1:33:03
  27.  You’ve mentioned allocating ~5% of your portfolio to Bitcoin. What gives you the confidence to size it at 5% specifically, rather than higher or lower? 1:34:21
  28.  In a pandemic-type shock, would you prefer to be 100% in bonds or 100% in gold — and what would drive that choice? 1:35:32
  29. What does your end-of-year/review process look like?  How do you then look to prepare for the next year of trading? 1:36:36
  30. What do you think about AI robots? 1:37:52
  31. You posted a table of performance metrics by year (can’t find it now). The average loss was higher in a couple of years and stable and lower in the others. Did you change something in those years? Performance was impressive those years too, but I'm wondering if you managed risk differently? 1:39:01
  32. Do you find patterns are less clear now, less textbook-like, or not? Or has hour pattern identification strictness changed? 1:44:10
  33. Uptrend → volatility contraction → range breakout. Is this the basis of many patterns? 1:45:46
  34. How do you manage your time during the day to stay connected to the markets without being ruled or adversely influenced by them interday? 1:46:26
  35. If we are expecting pullback in metals and bitcoin, do we sit in cash or are there any other buying opportunities developing elsewhere? 1:51:50
  36. Are you still interested in EEM/SPY? 1:53:58
  37. Do you still plan to release another book? I hope your health is improving! 1:55:19
  38. Based on current market conditions, which classical chart patterns are you watching closely right now on S&P500, and why? 1:57:54
  39. I have a general question about money management - How do you handle long term investments (ie Index Funds) in taxable accounts - do you still sell these when you believe there are major tops?  Or do you leave some investments for very long-term investments?  2:01:54
  40. If you were starting from scratch today, knowing everything you know now, how would you do it? Would you follow the same approach you use now, or would you do it differently? Would you start with a specific amount of initial capital? 2:03:57
  41. From your experience, what’s the biggest psychological challenge for new traders, and how did you overcome it in your early career? 2:07:42
  42. I agree entirely with your stocks-to-commodities rotation thesis. I’ve done it myself over the last 3 months. However, even in the last broad bull market in 2008, so many commodity ETFs underperformed performance in the underlying assets due to roll yields. Do you know any broader ETFs that are good at this / better than the rest? Or just stick to futures? 2:11:13
  43. You ever take multi-year trades like Nickel seems like it's at a long term bottom maybe to average in over a few montths and hold for a couple years? 2:13:54
  44. Any recommendations for teaching kids about money and trading? Mine are 4+6. 2:15:43
  45. Any traders or trading companies you can recommend? 2:17:33
  46. What do you think about options on futures? I've kinda liked buying 6mo calls to have a bit of time and not worry about stops. 2:18:43
  47. Is there a way for US retail to trade futures on things like Nickel, Lithium, Rare Earths, or Electricity Rates? 2:20:02
Follow-up to question #22 Q: Using the March 2026 Robusta Coffee (RC) futures as an example, the 85% of 108-day pattern provided a short entry at 3936.250 with a projected target at 3465.608. The stated risk management rule is that once price reaches 70% of the target, a 3-day trailing stop is activated. However, in this case, RC coffee experienced a meaningful rebound before reaching the 70% target level. In this scenario, should the 3-day trailing stop still be applied, or should the original stop management remain in place until the 70% threshold is reached? A: The decision to employ the 3DTSR prior to the 70% mark WHEN only a 50% position is held is totally optional, but not mandatory. Links mentioned or might be of interest: Read More

Factor Member Webinar October 2025

Recorded Live October 16, 2025 Overview 
  • Q&A
Questions from Members  
  1. Do you have any plans to retire? 2:17
  2. The recent erratic behavior of the stock market made you comment that it is typical behavior at market tops (the market refuses to go up, but people want it to). Please elaborate. 4:24
  3. I'm curious about the MME/MES spread that Peter has talked about, which is forming a long-term potential H&S. It is getting close to breaking out today. Is this something he's still looking at? Also interested in trying to manage a position on such a long-term chart...7:43 & 12:57
  4. Would Peter be able to run through his typical daily, weekly, quarterly, etc. routine? 8:34
  5. Want to know how to aggressively decrease risk from 70 bp to an average 20 bp within a few days of the trade. 14:05
    1. Tweet Peter mentions here
  6. What do you recommend the minimum nominal capital be to be a part-time futures trader? 16:42
  7. How are you feeling these days? Are you getting better little by little? 19:11
  8. Updated thoughts on BCI 20:40
  9. A question for the newer traders: How would you start over? Once you've done enough paper trading and have a clear plan, how would you begin? Account size, asset type, etc. 22:42
  10. Does the MBT chart setup for short below lows? 24:33
  11. Can you go through your coffee trade? 26:42
  12. What are your thoughts on improving community engagement and interaction? Maybe a Discord?31:37
  13. Would love to hear more about your current thoughts on KC. Could you comment on RC London coffee being where the trade is executed, vs the KC chart looking better but being harder to trade? 34:56 (KC Wheat Chart 33:19)
  14. What are your risk parameters for total composite exposure? I know you like to limit exposure to correlated markets, but can you talk about the total composite open risk and what happens if you reach that limit while another trade is setting up? 36:46
  15. I am struggling to move my stops when a trader is going well. As an example, 6CZ5: could you go over it and comment on your logic for moving the stops post-breakout? 40:30
  16. Could you also talk through how to look at continuous versus active month charts? Like, for example, in KC-057, it's a clear H&S on a weekly basis. Put you don't see a clean pattern on KC-202512. Maybe to a lesser extent KC-202603. So how should you think about that from a classical charting perspective? 46:23
  17. What is the 057 futures contract? Is that the most active contract, or is it continuous? I don't see it on Trading View. 48:29
  18. Have you ever worked with or discussed markets with Larry Williams? 50:47
  19. Just wondering how much influence ADX has on you for any particular trade? 52:34
  20. Could you share your views on copper, platinum, and palladium at the moment? 54:21 (Peter also talks about silver)
  21. What is your view on $BTC as we currently trade a tad below $109k? 1:01:25
  22. Would you recommend any different approaches in trading (e.g., risk management, sizing, etc.) when trying to grow an account size vs. when it has reached a level that is comfortable and manageable for ongoing trading activities? 1:07:31
  23. Do you personally update your spreadsheet trade summary and how often do you review it?  1:11:00
    1. Email jolleen@peterlbrandt.com for a metrics template
  24. Can Peter review his trading in $BABA? Stock broke above $120 in Feb 2025 but quickly reversed. It broke above that level again in Sep 2025. Did you re-enter the trade? 1:13:10
  25. Do you think IBKR is safe? We have 80 percent of our money in that. 1:14:15
  26. Have you collected enough statistics to share on your trading based on weekly charts? So far, what's the advantage of trading on weekly charts? 1:15:34
  27. Has Silver broken out on the Quarterly 45-year pattern? Did you get out of your most recent 5-day console silver pennant long? At what price will people sell all their silverware? What will derail the parabolic advance in metals? 1:18:13
  28. Do you ever move stops to breakeven arbitrarily, or are you always picking a technical point on the chart? 1:20:07
  29. Gold just printed 4300. Has it gone parabolic/vertical/blow off top stage? Is it correct to say that the gold market is untradable right now? From a swing-trading perspective, one would need to wait for an identifiable pattern before even considering a position. 1:22:50
  30. Hypothetically, if you are only able to use market orders to trade breakouts, will it still be profitable, even though at a reduced profit factor? 1:27:22
  31. Thoughts on Solana? 1:28:23
  32. Could you walk through an example of re-entering a trade after it stopped you out the first time? 1:28:46
  33. Any comment on 30-year bonds on the December daily chart? You have made some great long-term equity calls in the past $AVGO, $NVDA - why not do more? 1:32:14
Peter's thoughts on being a trader: 1:35:56 Link to Peter's recommended reading list on Amazon  Read More

Chart Fanatics Live Q&A: Chris Camillo, Rande Howell and Peter Brandt

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Cointelegraph with Peter Brandt

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TraderLion Conference – 2025

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