The Four Key Pillars of Factor

The Factor Report provides periodic special Alerts focused on futures and Forex markets (with secondary attention to equities and cryptocurrencies). The specific markets covered by the Factor Report depend upon the markets Peter Brandt is trading or considering to trade for his own proprietary account.  Peter is, first and foremost, a market speculator, as he has been forty-five years.

The Factor is founded on four major pillars or themes:

• Classical charting principles – Peter is widely considered as the foremost authorities on applying classical charting practices to futures and forex market trading. Peter has proven classical charting to be an outstanding method to identify trades with an asymmetrical reward to risk profile.
• Active and aggressive risk management – Factor considers risk and trade management to be a far more vital contributor to outstanding performance than is trade selection. What a trader does with a trade is more important than what trades are selected. Risk management begins with capital preservation. Factor advocates a wide range of strategies and practices to cut losses short and allow profits to grow.
• Trading as a business – “The process of Trading” – Too many investors and traders approach market speculation without the rigorous discipline needed to grow a business. Many traders tend to be haphazard and random in their speculative operations. Factor advocates for the organized and routine repetition of best practices. Reduced to its minimum function, trading is a matter of entering orders. A trader is a glorified order enterer. The management of order flow brings together all pertinent components of market speculation – trade selection, timing, leverage and sizing and risk and trade management.
• The human aspects of trading – The biggest enemy of any professional market speculator is self. Successful market speculation is an upstream swim against human nature. Overcoming the emotional pulls of fear, greed and false hope requires constant vigilance and self-awareness. A theme of the Factor is the need for all traders to recognize themselves as a detriment to their own success.

These four themes are interwoven into the process by which Peter analyzes trades and executes his trading endeavors.

Peter recommends that Factor members NOT trade any of the themes he trades for at least one year, instead just following his comments on risk management and the human factor. Peter thinks that members should consider their Factor membership as just one more trade (most members have lost the cost of a one-year membership on many trades). Then, at the end of one year a member should make one of three determinations:

1. No longer be a member.
2. Continue to be a member in case Peter has an idea or opinion on a market you are following with your own approach.
3. To attain more education on classical charting principles, risk management, the process of trading and how to neutralize self-sabotage.

Peter NEVER recommends that a member would try to simply follow his trades without applying their own methods and techniques. The flow of information within the Factor Report makes this all but impossible. More importantly, Peter believes that trading tactics MUST be developed independently by each trader.