Tag Archive for: Education

Trader's Discipline factor Peter brandt

Patience and Discipline – A Trader’s Friend

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Patience … Discipline … Discipline … Discipline … Patience

 

I know my sweet spot. Every trader should strive to know his or her sweet spot.  We should strive to only take a trade when the market set up is in our sweet spot.  We should strive to avoid trades out of our sweet spot.

If you, as a trader, do not know your trade set up with great intimacy, then how in the world will you know if you are exercising patience and discipline?

Once you know exactly what your sweet spot is and is not, then the real challenges begin.
 

The real challenges for me (and it could be different for you) are different
nuances of patience and discipline.

• Patience to wait for just the right set up
• Discipline to sit on the sidelines and not getting pulled into a trade that does not fully satisfy my requirements
• Discipline to pull the trigger when the right trade comes along
• Discipline to remain detached from open positions and properly manage each trade according to trade management guidelines developed over decades of market speculation
• Patience to allow a position with a substantial profit potential the room and time to bear full fruit

 

The above challenges are very, very real. The markets can force a trader to let his or her guard down. The markets are all about forcing traders to make mistakes. Markets are constantly luring traders with such deceptive messages as:

“Trade now and trade often”
“You’re missing out on some good moves”
“The only way to make money is to trade”

 

In fact, there are times when NOT trading can be the action with the best outcome. Trading just to trade often leads to drawdowns. Then comes the urge to find trades in order to recover the drawdown. Often this leads to a worse drawdown. Before a trader knows it he or she can be in a 20% to 30% or greater drawdown resulting from trades that never really qualified as trades in the first place. This is when the the capital drawdown becomes a significant emotional drawdown. Vicious cycles can easily come upon us as traders.

 

 

Factor Membership

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Peter Brandt is a 40+ year veteran of trading. Through his Factor Service, members receive:

checkTrading Commodity Futures with Classical Chart Patterns: A free PDF copy of Peter’s classic out-of-print book
checkWeekend Update: 10-16 pages full of in-depth chart analysis and charting commentary
checkAlerts: Detailed information on specific charts as unique opportunities present themselves
checkMarket Commentaries: Communications on specific topics regarding market speculation and trading distributed periodically
checkWebinars: Monthly member-only webinars where Peter speaks about current conditions and fields member questions
checkKnowledge Center: Fast and easy access to current and archived content from Peter’s extensive library of content
checkAutomatic notifications: Email and social media notifications are sent out when new content is published

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View your Factor Member options here. You could consider your membership in the Factor Service as just one more trade. If the Factor Service is not of value to you, well, it is just one more trade that did not work. Through the Factor Service I endeavor to alert novice and aspiring traders to the many pitfalls you will face – and to offer advice on overcoming those pitfalls. My goal is to shoot straight on what trading is all about. For more information watch my 30 minute webinar where we cover the Factor service in depth.

I hope you will consider joining the Factor community.

Factor Trading - An Introduction

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Winning Trades and Losing Trades - Peter Brandt - Factor trading

Winning Trades and Losing Trades

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Winning Trades are the by-product of Losing Trades

Too many traders have an obsession with Winning Trades.  I hate to be the bearer of bad news to some of you, but taking losses is the primary job description of a market speculator. If Losing Trades offend you or upset your emotional chemistry, if you consider “being wrong” to be a character fault or a “problem” with your trading approach, if you even think that the marketplace cares what you think or what you do, then market speculation is probably not for you. Trading is mostly an exercise of throwing mud against the wall to see what sticks – and most lumps of mud fall quickly to the floor. I have known many extremely profitable career traders over the years and very few of them have a win rate in excess of 50%. Almost to a person, these traders view taking losses (many losses) as the process of finding winners.

I am not offended by being wrong on a market call – it is absolutely not a big deal to me. It is always an amusement to me when tweeters go out of their way to remind me of bad market calls. To be a successful profit taker, a trader must first become good at taking losses. Sorry – both profits and losses are part of trading. I know of no other service similar to the Factor that provides a frank discussion of losing trades, losing days, losing weeks, losing months and even losing years (I have experienced several net losing years along the way). I am in no way embarrassed to be wrong on my market analysis or on trades.

If Losing Trades and being wrong bothers you then trading is not for you. If you become obsessed with Winning Trades and making money back in the same stock, forex pair or futures contract in which you lost capital, then you need to seriously examine if you should be involved in market speculation.

Factor Membership is available and you could consider your membership in the Factor Service as just one more trade. If the Factor Service is not of value to you, well, it is just one more trade that did not work.   Through the Factor Service I endeavor to alert novice and aspiring traders to the many pitfalls you will face – and to offer advice on overcoming those pitfalls. My goal is to shoot straight on what trading is all about.  For more information watch my 30 minute webinar where we cover the Factor service in depth.

I hope you will consider joining the Factor community.
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Is it possible to copy another trader’s exact style?

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In more than 40 years of trading, I have never met consistently profitable traders who did not have a style unique to themselves

Over the  years I have constantly harped that to be successful a trader must develop his or her own unique approach to trading. The Factor is not a trading or signaling service because I do not believe in signaling services. I am privileged to have belonged for years to a private online forum that includes some of the best traders in the world – a number of whom have been featured in the Market Wizards series. Recently the subject of mirroring another trader’s style was a topic of lively discussion within the group. There were some remarkably insightful comments made that I want to share with you. These comments were made by traders whose names you would recognize. Read More