Sim trade for payout prop firms—it's gaming, it's not trading. I'm not sure it's legal. It's very comparative in the United States to what we have as poker; they're all in the same bucket. Sim trading for payout, I think, is really stretching the legal boundaries. But some of these firms actually move these traders into a funded position where they're trading real markets now. A lot of them say they do that and they don't, which, to me, is fraudulent.

First futures trade, 1974; first profitable year was 1979. I figured I've traded 25,000 trades in my career. How much had you gotten your capital up to leading up to '87? Probably up to 10 mil. There's a lot of studies that show people that day trade are far less successful than position traders, swing trades, because it's a different world. My recommendation to people is not to be a day trader in the first place. I just think day trading is a trap. If you don't know this, you shouldn't be trading. The more you're obsessed over details, I think the better off a person's going to be if he's pursuing a life as a trader.

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Welcome everyone back to the Words of Wisdom podcast, still the number one trading podcast in the world and the fastest growing, thanks to all of you and our incredible guests. We're still on our incredible US podcast tour, and it's our final podcast here in Arizona. And the podcast tour wouldn't be possible without our sponsors, Tradezella—the very best trading journal for in-depth analytics, back testing, and so much more. So make sure you check them out in the description. Huge thank you to them for helping us reach these incredible traders. And this is one of the podcasts that we've been so excited for throughout this trip. And from Unknown Market Wizards—a prolific author within the trading space as well—has over 700,000 followers on X, which is incredible as well—blows me away—and he also made a 600% record year in 1987 and had a phenomenal career—a 50-year trading veteran—it's the one and only Peter Brandt.

Thanks, RZ.

Great to be with you.

Great to have you in Tucson. Thank you.

No, I really appreciate it, and I appreciate us being able to come and visit you in your your home state. Um, incredible space, incredible place, should I say? Uh, but Peter, I really I want to go straight into a topic with you because I know it's one that you feel very strongly about and had very a lot of communication online about as well—different, you know, people agreeing, a lot of people disagreeing as well in terms of the new prop firm uh that are available now. You know, some will call them evaluation firms. Why is it that why is it that you feel so strongly about those?

Well, there's a couple reasons, and thanks for the question. It's great. I could, you know, we could do our whole thing today. I I could go on with this at so many different rabbit trails in a sense. I like the idea that people who are aspiring to be traders have a venue where they can go and trade more money than perhaps $1,000 that they have in their bank, right? Is they aspire to be traders. I think it's so awesome that so many, especially younger people, aspire to the to the world of market speculation. You know, I just think back to when I got in it—uh, my goodness, I started at the board of trade—there was third of the floor of the border of trade were World War II veterans. And so that's how long I've been around. And so we have this whole generation of people excited about trading that is fabulous. I have really two issues with this kind of uh sim trade for payout system—this new proliferating uh world of prop firms. The first one is I'm not sure it's legal. Now the reason I'm not sure it's legal is I I really find that it's very comparative in the United States to what we have is either online uh poker. We have online poker in the United States; we also have online betting in the United States for sports. And uh, really when I look at that industry, I say they're all in the same bucket. And and so uh so I just think that it's a stretch to say that this is a legal operation. Now I think the day will come when some federal regulator is going to come in and agree with me and say we cannot have sim trade for payoff. We can have sim trading, which I totally agree with. I I totally support the idea of sim trading, but sim trading for payout I think is really stretching the legal boundaries. And if it's stretching the legal boundaries and we come to the point where regulators say this is an unregulated industry, they need to pay state taxes because that's what the other uh online gambling or gaming sites do. They pay a significant amount—for instance, state of Illinois—to have an online uh gaming operation. State of Illinois, if you're online, it's a million dollars a year. And so it's significant. And and there's also uh significant tax, state tax implications. And so what you have is an industry that's run a wild with wild claims, exaggerated claims that are undocumented uh I think promotional activity that's really questionable. So I just say, fine, if you want to do sim trading for payouts, let's make it like sports betting; let's make it like online gambling, and let's have these these firms be properly regulated and properly taxed. Then I'm fine with it.

There's another reason which really is is a significant thing to me, and that is when these people go on and pay their $200 a month to have this simulated $100,000 account, let's say they're forced into a box. You know, the thing that I've learned from trading, from knowing traders, from being at the board of trade where I'm in a building of trades, I'm riding on elevators with tradings traders, I'm eating lunch with successful traders as well as commodity corp as well as my connection with an awful lot of the market wizards Jack's interviewed—71—not two people trade alike. They they are they're lone rangers; they develop their own approach to trading. And to do that, you have to trial and error. Where I look at the sim world, and they're kind of forced square pegs into square holes—round pegs—restrictions—how many days a month do you have to do? Five days in a row with a $200 profit, so on and so forth. So yeah, it's it's gaming; it's not trading. Let's call let's not call it trading; let's call it gaming; let's call it for what it is. Now where I'm supportive of the industry is in those cases where somebody proves they have talent in trading according to the rules and they've at least figured out that because what that tells me is you have an individual who's a problem solver—m—he has figured out how to game the system, and he has made money. And if he is successful for that, there are some tra some of these firms—an awful lot of them don't—but some of these firms actually move these traders into a funded position where they're trading real markets on real exchanges through real brokerage firms. Now a lot of them say they do that and they don't, which to me is fraudulent, which comes back to kind of my first opposition to the thing—is highly exaggerated claims. But then I'm fine; I am great with that—move these people in. And I think the third thing, just bouncing off of it, is claims. You know, let let these firms, like they do in the UK, for instance—these Forex firms in the UK are reportable; they report to the government what percentage of our clients made money, what percentage are profitable after a year, what percentage are profitable after two years. And in you know in the UK, they have to they have to actually claim some statistics—not in the prop world today. And my guess, my guess is for every a thousand accounts that are open with these prop firms that maybe 1% are profitable at the end of the year; maybe half of 1% actually can be moved into live funded real market, real futures trading. I just think those numbers need to be disclosed. And so you clear all of that up, I'll endorse the first firm that does that. And there are some firms moving in the right direction. I'm not going to name them because then I exclude ones that maybe are that I don't know about, of course, or maybe I name one that has fooled me and they're really not trying to clean up their act. So I don't want to name one, but I think if these firms go there, then that's prop trading, but it's gaming; it's gambling; let's not call it trading.

Definitely. I think you make some very, very, very valid points. And I think I loved how you started with the fact that it is a great opportunity and that you know you understand why traders can go for it and you know it's presenting something that they wouldn't ordinarily have. But equally, I definitely agree with the point where the rules force traders to act in a certain way, and as you mentioned and as we all know, trading is very nuanced, very personal, and therefore by doing that, it can be forcing a lot of traders who maybe shouldn't be trading that way and probably a trade trying to force a way of trading that is against their personality traits and their personality and the their setup in life as well and their routines etc. to where they're not going to really see change because they're really trying to force something that is being enforced on them. Um, but equally, it's kind of like if that's the rules and you don't have an edge that fits those rules, you probably shouldn't step into that anyway.

Well, you know, I'd like to see these are simulated accounts; you can't lose simulated money, but yet they're still forced to day trade. Why are they forced to day trade? Because I believe that most of these firms have put together uh uh rules that are optimized for the traders to end up paying their 200 bucks a month in fees and not getting anything back. They're optimized for failure. And it's also not a zero-sum game; they're trading against the house; they're not trading other people's—it's not like a real exchange. When I buy something—when I buy crude oil—somebody sold it to me, and so there's somebody on both sides of my trades. They're the other side of these trades are the house themselves. So they're betting against the house. And so I just think it to some degree is a rigged game, and that to me I just find personally offensive—somebody who's basically made their living for 50 years trading real markets. And you know it's a good point that they can move into a world potentially that they couldn't move into—the long road. You know, I look at my experience back in the 80s where I grew an account, but the minute I started trading real pop money—prop money—which was commodity score—all of a sudden my AUM relative to my own capital is 10x. And so you know that gives me opportunities to do things. And so I'd really like to see some of these firms say, "You can trade whatever you way way you want; we're gonna have SIM trading; you can pay us for a SIM account; there's no payouts, but you can experiment and you can really find a way for you and a process that works." And that may not be day trading because quite frankly, there's a lot of studies that show people that day trade are far less successful than position trade or swing trades because it's a different world. And so why not stack things uh toward the advantage of these new aspiring traders? Let them trade that for a year; let them figure out a trading approach; then let them see if they can actually qualify for real money trading—a way that they want to develop that really fits them—that's that's their own, you know—let them be the tailor for their own clothes and wear those out and go styling.

I like—

Yeah, I like it. And I think that traders—it'll be interesting to see like there should be an option really where if a trader has developed a system and edge and can prove that edge, then you know a firm would hopefully—because I think where you where you were correct in particular as well is the miscommunication of of their intention—yeah, because a lot of the time they'll promote themselves like we're here for profitable, you know, we want profitable traders; we want to help traders—when it might not be—not that they all will have a very negative spin like, oh, we don't care about traders, but it's more so they understand the model. And if that was true though, they would have options where you know if they have a profitable trader, they're not trying to restrict them; they're trying to help them; they want them to grow, and they want to be able to collaborate so that they benefit off the back of that trader because finding a trader of edge is, you know, is it's like finding gold; it's it's it's something that's unique. The world needs traders. I mean, trading and prostitution are like the two oldest professions, right? So yeah, let let's keep them—well, unless we keep trading legit.

Yeah. No, I love that. And uh, in terms of that though, as you mentioned like when you started you had to build your own capital, and though it takes a longer period of time, how important though was it like how helpful was it to actually go through that process—no matter how long and painful—do you think it really is what built you into the characteristics?

Yep. Yep. I I mean, if you talk to Jack—the interesting conversation to Jack is kind of describe some of the commonalities of 71 traders that you've talked to—and a lot in a lot of traders you've talked to that eventually you didn't put in the book but you've heard their story because I know a lot of these people—there are some commonalities of that 71, and I may be off—maybe 71 plus or minus some number—uh, but of those 71, there's probably less than a handful of guys that hit the ground started trading and instantly hit it. They hit a market; they had the skill; it just was so natural—just like in sports, just like in soccer or American baseball or tennis—there are some guys that just they have it; they have the gift, and they hit the ground running. And so of the 71, you might have had two or three—Jack would say there's might be two or three that were profitable in the first year, and they never looked back. But when you take the rest of them, they're more similar to me. I blew up accounts; I blew up I don't know how many accounts I blew up—maybe three—and this is real money accounts—the money I saved up, I and I deposited in a brokerage firm and basically went from trading beans and having the margin to trading beans to finally having to trade oats and then close my account. And and so I think that's a more common route is somebody is trying to figure out and solve the problem—what does that problem look like? What hurdles do they need to get over? What things do they need to figure out? What do they need to internalize? What are their inner battles? What are their in inner demons? And how do they deal with their inner demons in trading? And I think that takes three to five years. I think it takes three years to pick up the scent for most people is, okay, I have a sense for where I might go. You know, I I want to be a chartist; I want to trade global macro; I want to trade stocks; I want to trade futures; I want to trade forex; I want to have two-day holding periods; I want to be a long-term position trader. I think it takes three years to pick up that scent where you go, I I have a sense for the direction I'm going. And then it takes another three to four years to work out the process. So we're dealing with five to six years. And that's an exception because most traders who put real money on the table to trade blow out that money before they reach that five or six-year mark. Yeah, the money's gone, and they raise a little bit more money, and the money's gone. And so they never last long enough to figure out the game; they're blown out before they figure out the game. I was really fortunate because I went to work for a grain company at the time—at the second largest grain merchandiser in the world, next to Cargill—and uh and so I brought in some clients with me; that was the deal—Peter, here's your phone, here's a desk, here's your chair; you want to get into the trading business; everybody gets in at the same point; you either run orders on the floor or you try to bring in customers that can do business through our grain merchandising network, and that's what I did. And so I was lucky for those three to five years—again, first futures trade, 1974; first profitable year is was 1979—wow. And during that time, I wasn't a guy working out of my mommy's basement uh you know having a job at Starbucks to get money for for the side. I mean, I had some—now it took me a couple years to really develop this business, but I had fairly good size income coming in from the fractions of a cent per bushel of corn that my c that I would get uh for customers I was bringing in the door. And I had some nice customers that were trading two, three million bushels of soybeans or wheat at a time—you know, 100 bushels, 100 contracts of silver and so forth. And so it was from that income that I would find $10,000 and put it in the markets and blow it out—10,000—blow it out. And so a lot of people don't have that. And so I had income to come in and replace and give me the money for the next account that I'd blow out till I figured out and had a sense for where I was going to go. That was 1979, and that's when I kind of had a sense that I know what kind of trader I'm going to be. I can envision that; I still have a lot to learn; it's still a steep wall that I have to go up. And it was really then—1980 was the first year that I had really a meaningful profit—meaningful profit—and really felt like, hey, it's still going to be a battle, still a lot of risk, I still have to guard my capital, but I have a shot at it. And then it was October 1981 before I resigned all my accounts—actually, I sold my accounts, my grain accounts, and started my own account—started Factor LLC—is incorporated—Chicago Board of Trade—and went all in. And it was my money, and it was only my money, and here we go, boys.

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There we go, straight into—go heading in towards that deep end. Before we go into that more—um, as you mentioned that 3 to 5 year period to really get a sense for things—like what do you think traders in that period of time should be focused on—maybe to at least keep that 3 to 5 years true or even try and shorten it a bit if they're focused—because what I would say is the difference between then and now—there's pros and cons—like the pros as you say is you weren't at home; you were around you know phenomenal traders; you were in the business, so you had access to cert certain information and be able to observe other traders, so that's a benefit. But one of the negatives being though that or say negatives at that time is if you were to try and learn alone and outside of that environment—maybe near near impossible—maybe because of the information that wasn't available compared to now—like the independent—

But maybe there's too much now. That's an interesting point. Yeah, so like what? What are your thoughts? What should traders be focusing on to at least hit that 3 to 5 years? But if you were to say, hey, things that could help maybe bring it down, what would that look like? Okay, expectations. I, I'll just go through a list and hey, I'm winging this; we haven't talked about this, so I'm making this up as we go. Expectations, you know, guys coming in, and I think expectations have partially been spoiled in an unre— unex— in really an unrealistic way through crypto. Guys buy these junk coins, and they do 10x on whatever they put into it in three months, three weeks. So you have that expectational thing is they think, okay, they're going to come in, and they're going to kill it; they're going to 10x on their money every year forever. Well, the reality is you work out the numbers, and if they do 10x every year for 10 years, there's no more money for anyone else in the world. So you have an expectational problem; you don't, you don't think in terms of 10x; you don't even think in terms of 2x. Yeah, just be realistic on expectations. So that's one thing.

There's a lot of information; there's a lot of social media, and so there's a lot of people. I had mentors at the board of trade. I fortunately had two or three guys; I don't think I would have made it the way I did, Riz, without a couple of guys that were willing to invest in my life. You know, I borrowed money; one was uh, one of the best traders at the board of trade happened to take a liking to me. You know, he might have hated my guts. You know what happens then? Yeah. And so, you know, you go on this timeline, and you hope certain things fall into line in a timeline you go on where, where you hope that things come out the right way. Would you say that that he took a liking to you maybe because of the work ethic you might have shown? Yeah, and the value you were providing to others as well. Uh, yeah, I mean, I think so, but he saw that I wasn't just interested in the money; I wanted to learn the business. 'Cause when I went into the business, my goal was really to have it be my career, not to make a fortune. I just thought what guys at the board of trade were doing was really, really cool. You know what a fun job if you can figure out a way to make a living as a trader and make that your career like these guys were. I mean, these traders have been down there for 20, 30 years. How cool is that? You know, markets open at 9:30; they're done at 1:15. Um, you have to come in in the morning for your out trades, but you're done for the day. That's a cool job. And so I was interested in the job; the job to me was an intellectual challenge. And so I didn't look at it as I'm going to make a fortune; I looked at it as like I really want to learn this. And I think he sensed that as here's a kid—I was in my 20s—yeah, here, here's a kid that really is interested in the business for the business sake.

Do you think that's important for the traders out there as well? If you're, if you're in it for the money, forget it; you're not going to succeed. That, that's what I'd tell somebody. If you're looking at this, is this buku bucks? I want to trade because of the buku bucks. I'd say you, you know what, become a banker. You know, maybe major in library science. You know, do find something else to do because unless you're willing to say I want to do it for the excellence of everything involved, yeah, and not just the money, you're in trouble. See, I think that, and I think that the pro—there's too much information; we, there's too—we're overwhelmed with content. So you got to figure out who you're going to follow in social media because there may only be two or three people that you want to stake your money on. My opinion is anyone that shows a screenshot of their latest big day is the person you want to unfollow. And so if somebody's showing screenshots of their $100,000 day, this—the biggest day I've ever had—unfollow immediately; unclick; don't, don't follow them again because you've got somebody out there scamming you. Is follow people who really seem to be providing good information, good guidance to help you excel as an individual trader. I, I'm going to do the plug right now because I, I spent some time watching your podcast because I was going to do one with you. You have excellent guests; you know, you would be a source of somebody I would say to new traders. Words of wisdom; it's a must. There's a few others; again, I'm not going to name them because then I don't, you—there are some I don't name. Oh, cool. But I'd say find five and stick with the five. Then I would say if you're going to hop around, you've got to figure out a way—if you're going to be a trader, your goal is I want to trade—you've got to do two things in thinking about how you're going to trade. You got to figure out how you're going to trade, and that takes three years. Figure out the markets you're going to trade; what's your time frame; how you determine your trades. But you got to figure out two things: you got to figure out a way to cut your losses really quick; you can't take big losses; big losses will kill you. And you have to find some way, some mechanism that allows a profitable trade to, to, to be, to be open the next day and then the next day. So I squeeze, and then the next day, I, I mean, it's, it's—to me, when I joined the board of trade, all the old veterans, cut your losses short; let your profits run. Cut your losses short; let your profits run. That's a fine thing to say, but you got to—that's a skeleton; you got to put meat on those bones. It has to become real, and it has to become part of a trader to understand really what that means. Because if you can figure out a way to cut your losses really quickly, you have a chance to have whatever capital you're putting into the game be around in three years when you pick up your scent and to be around in five years when you finally think you have something going for you. And to let your profits run because that is a necessity, and that comes back to the problem I have with the prop industry today. Let your profits run means what? Now an hour? I mean, for sure, by the end of the day you got to be out. Well, by the end of the day, that's not let your profits run. And does that mean cut your losses within a minute and let your profits run for an hour? That's not quite the standard that I'm thinking about here. Yeah.

Well, what do you think? Were there any things that you could say for traders out there that could help them to implement those, those sort of principles of cutting losses earlier and, and being able to hold winners? Yeah, well, my recommendation to people is not to be a day trader in the first place. I, I just think day trading is a trap because when you think about it—now I'm, I'm talking about real trading here; I'm not talking about sim for payout; I'm talking about real trading, real money, real markets, real brokerage firms, real, real floors—computers, no floors anymore—yeah, but yeah, I, I mean, so you've got to, you got to figure out, okay, how are you going to approach this thing? How are you going to, how you going to select a trade? And the reality is in the social media world today, most of the emphasis is what trade do I get into? That's the emphasis. Here's a chart; here's a good trade; here's a chart; gold's going up; here's a chart; crude's going down. Is that's what people are, are, are globbing on to. And the reality is the trade you put on, that's the least important component of trading in my opinion. If I were to rank all the things that are really important for a trader to figure out what tra—what trade to enter is really pretty much toward the bottom of the list. And it's all the things that come after the trade; it's your sizing; it's how you understand risk; it's how you're cutting risk; and it's how you're managing your, your head. Because the reality is that everything about a person's character, no matter who you are, is out to sabotage your success if you're a trader; it's out, it's out to force you to do the wrong things. You know, you're, you're, you're constantly battling your, your, your inner demons as a trader. So my advice to people is don't be the day trader, but be a swing trader or be a position trader. And in the process of doing that, turn your computer screen off during the day. Once you have a sense of how you're going to trade, develop that—not dependent upon what happens to price from the open to the close at whatever time zone you're in. In my time zone is four o'clock, right? Four o'clock, I have a half hour, hour break before markets reopen again, and you go in a night session. But for me, what works for me, and to some degree you got to find out what works for yourself, you got to figure out as a person, how are you going to solve this problem? How are you going to, how are you going to be a problem solver? For me, my way of solving the problem was I'm going to put my orders in at four o'clock in the afternoon for the next day, then I'm going to turn off my computer screen, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna invest in my process rather than invest in the next trade that I'm going to do because the next trade I'm going to do is really irrelevant. Trades are unimportant; trades are simply a—the next data point in a series of data points subject to random probability. And no, you know, let's say I'm right 50% of the time, generally. I may not 52 one year, 53 the next year, but 50/50. What that means is I may think I know what a market's going to do; I may absolutely be positive I know what a market's going to do, but in reality I don't have a clue. And if I go into a trade, and so my presupposition to tell staff is you're just going to have to assume the next trade we do is going to be a loser. If you assume that the next trade you—we're going to do is going to be a loser, you've got—you're starting off with the right foot.

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And as part of that though, sticking—focusing on that process—and interesting about day trading as you mentioned is that I have come across a lot of day traders who, who perform very well, um, but also swing traders, but also scalpers, also all, all different types of traders. As you mentioned though, like what works for you, and what I've noticed is that I have come across obviously the opposite too, where someone's trying to be a day trader, it's not working; someone's trying to swing trade, it's not working. And after speaking with uh, a few trading leading psychologists like Dr. Brett Steenbarger and Randy How, um, you know, Steven Goldstein, for example, there's what they really deduce and put it down to in the end is like your personality as a human being; is it better suited to day trading? Is it better suited to swing trading? So, for example, someone who thinks really quickly, reacts really quickly, they obviously shorter time frames makes more sense for that individual, totally, because they can react on that sort of pace and probably would, you know, overtrade as a swing trader, for example. I, I agree. And, and that's why, you know, again, I, I would emphasize, I know it works for me, and I am not in a position to say I have the right way. I have the right way for me; it's not the right way for other people. But no matter what your way is, if you don't cut losses short and you don't have some mechanism to let a profit to run a little bit, the probability, the statistics, no matter what your time frame is, no matter how quick you are, no matter how long you hold positions, the reality is all boils down to a game of statistics. Trading is a game of numbers; it's, it's a game of mathematics. And the mathematics are—no matter what your time frame is, no matter how active you are—if you don't cut pro—losses short and you don't have some mechanism for profits to be larger than your losses, and that's all they have to do; they just have to be larger than your losses by some, by some percentage. And that, that's the most important thing.

Do you feel like to be able to achieve that, not only the things that you listed earlier in terms of like how to—what to focus on, but do you feel as you mentioned just now, statistics, do you think you need on your edge or on your strategy, you need to have the statistics that then will sort of indicate to you, okay, this trade usually, if this particular trade has been on longer than three hours, it's going to hit stop loss, so therefore I can look to cut this one sooner versus vice versa? Like if you have a trade, let's say the data says if it's not really had a much draw down, that's normally a trade that's going to continue to run, so let's hold this. Do how much does statistics and data collection play into trading? We have a spreadsheet we use. Um, the spreadsheet—I wasn't really into the data part of trading, you know, for really decades. It's really only about 15 years ago that I just started having this voracious appetite for data and to become really data driven in my trading. And we have a spreadsheet that has a quarter of a million cells. Wow. That we use to answer some of those questions, and, and those are important questions. And again, it comes down to an individual. You know, do you, do you, do you go by time? If a trade's not working in a certain amount of time, you get out. Those are, that's those are data points a trader can develop. There is a point in time for all traders, RZ, where you have to say, I'm going to settle on something. I, I've done this enough where I need to settle on some approach. It's a foundation; you're, you're, you're, you're pouring—you're pouring a foundation for a building, and you say, "I've got to settle on some rules here; I, I've got to come to terms with some of these questions that deal with how do I trade?" Where you develop that and you know that you're going to cut losses short; you know, you have some provision for letting your profits run, whatever your time frame is, you got to commit to do that because unless you do that for a year to two years, you can't build on it. So build your foundation. You know, most people, they'll change the way they trade based on the outcome of the last trade. Well, the out—, you know, if I'd only done this the last trade, it wouldn't work, so I'm going to now do that on the next trade, and it doesn't work, so they keep flipping around from, from place to place. So I think the data that people look for really have to be individual. I know my data points; I look, you know, I look for expected value. We, we measure win rate—not this important, but it's just a metric we do—we measure gain to pain ratio, which Jack Schwager is the master of metrics, and we've worked with Jack on metrics. We do profit factor; uh, we do average gain, average loss; and we know time frame; we, you know, for instance, we do not carry losing trades home on a weekend. We're, we're swing traders, but if a, a position is a loser on a Friday afternoon, we're out of it. Um, if, if we have a loss in a trade for two straight days, but it hasn't hit our stop loss, we're going to cut, we're going to cut and run. Because here's the interesting thing is if, if I were to take, you know, back in the days, we used to get, we used to get printouts of every trade; every trade we do was a piece of paper. Wow. Or at least every day was—that day might have had more than one piece of paper. Well, let's think about that for a minute because what I'm going to tell you is going to be true no matter how you trade—no day trade, swing trade, position trade—what I'm going to share with you right now is going to be true for no matter who's listening to your podcast. So back in those days, we have a trade; I have a sheet of paper; we have a trade; I add a sheet of paper; I have another trade; I add a sheet of paper; and I end up with a, with a pile that goes up to the ceiling. So I don't know what's his ceiling—seven, eight foot tall—eight foot tall ceiling. So I have eight, I have eight feet worth. Now I can take that whole pile and I can say I know how much money, net profit—say that whole pile of paper is a million bucks; there's a million dollars that came out of that pile of paper. But then the next thing I say, so okay, I want to reduce that pile, and I only want—and I'm going to put the biggest profits at the top, the biggest losers at the bottom of the pile. All I know is it's a pile equals a million bucks, and I'm going to start taking pieces of paper off the top and keep taking pieces of paper off the top until I get my million bucks. And so that's it. And I have talked to traders after traders, no matter what they do, and say—and I call that the Pareto factor, you know, the old Vilfredo Pareto, Italian philosopher, economist—is the Pareto factor, 20% of events produce 80% of outcomes. Yeah, 20%, 80%. Every real trader I've ever talked to, and they may not have thought about it, yeah, but when I explain it to them and say, do you have a Pareto factor in your trading? They go, totally, because no matter how you trade, that's true. But the interesting thing about that is if you take that 20%, so we're talking eight feet times 20, we're talking a certain number of inches, and you start taking a look at those trades—at least for me as a swing trader—those trades worked right away, and they never looked back. Yeah. And if I were to take those trades and then, and then subdivide them, and the important thing is you have plenty of data; you got to have a lot of data to really be mathematical and statistical and looking at your trading. And I take a look at that data and I say, how many of those really good winning trades would I have lost had I got out of them any day that they had a losing at the close? I don't lose much; they still pretty much are there. And then if I take these trades down at the bottom and say, what would have happened if I would have gotten out of them the first day they had a loss? It changes the whole net of the whole column of paper. Wow. And so that's kind of the way I think of trading is probability, and so I'm real probability, uh, uh, sensitive. And I think the degree—you know, I talk to new traders, and I say, "Have you figured out your profit factor?" It's an easy thing to do; I'll send anybody who wants to keep profit factor, I'll send them an Excel spreadsheet; they can keep it up themselves, and it automatically will tell them their profit factor. And I'll say, "Do you know your profit factor?" And they look at me like deer in the headlights. What's that mean? What's a profit factor? I go, "If you don't know this, you shouldn't be trading." You know, go learn what this is, and then start trading.

Do you feel like through that process though, as you mentioned, like being meticulous and really trying to learn and observe the data, that's what really makes a difference between someone who's maybe profitable short-term and, and lucky to a sense, in being profitable as, you know, like you—some people can have a good month, two, three, but that's the difference between those who do that versus the long-term 50-year veteran at this point, but like the long-term careers with consistency as well is being meticulous and consistently reviewing, uh, you know, your data? Well, I, I think it's meticulous about every aspect of trading. I mean, I mean, it's just not your data; I mean, your data is basically—you go to a doctor, and they take your temperature and your blood pressure, and they might take blood and do a urine sample—and just—we become an X-rated program here now when I say that—but yeah, you know, it, it's, it's meticulous about every aspect; it's meticulous about your mental state; what are you doing with your mental state? If you talk to Brent Steenbarger lately, talked to Stephen lately—who's your coach? You know, all athletes have head coaches; most good traders I know have the ability to access a head coach. I've accessed Brett in the past, Stephen in the past when I've kind of felt like I'm hitting a little bumpy road and I need to kind of talk through things. I mean, I don't lay on their couch, and—but you know, I'll have a conversation with them or shoot them an email, um, just to express myself, to get it out, right, to get out what's going on with me. But yeah, so, but it's meticulous about—I know you give me a date in the future that's, let's say a Friday two years from now, if I'm still trading on a Friday, and give me a time, and I'll tell you what I'm going to be doing relative to the markets. I'm meticulous about my schedule; I'm meticulous about how I enter orders; I'm meticulous about how I keep price charts; I'm meticulous about how I enter orders; I'm meticulous about keeping data; I'm meticulous about as many aspects of trading as I possibly can. I want to nail down; and so that level of being meticulous really applies to just about every aspect of a trading operation, and that's what I would aim people toward—become obsessed over details. The more you're obsessed over details, I think the better off a person's going to be if he's pursuing a life as a trader. Definitely. And this, you know, in that period of time between—in the 80s when you first started to really start feeling that consistency growing—it led to, I believe it was 80—1988 where you had 87—87, sorry—big year, 600% return. Yeah, huge year. What, what was the momentum? What was the key catalyst for achieving that in that year? Uh, two things: first, taking risks that scares me today. I, I mean, when I think about it, uh, I mean, I look back and go, yeah, I—they could have carried me out on the stretcher on…

Some trades I did because I don't think I really, back then, understood risk the way I do now. And I think to some degree I got lucky, just the way that some guys are getting lucky in crypto today. Mhm. And the guys that realize in crypto today that they happen to be in the right place at the right time and learn quickly that there's downside to what they're doing have the ability to survive, where a lot of guys that are making big money today will lose it all. You know, they're going to lose it all. But the guys that that that figure out, "Hey, I can lose it all, so now how do I think about it?" And so I, yeah, I I took risks that I think, you know, right now when I take a trade, I'm risking at most, at most, 1% of my capital, 100 basis points. And so, you know, in $2 million, I'll risk $20,000, and so at most, but normally it's going to be less than that. Normally it's going to be 6-10, 1% to 8-10, 1%. But back then I was risking 500 basis points on the trade, and in some trades a thousand basis points on the trade. And I just happened to be kind of lucky; I caught the stock market in early 1987 on the upside trade; I caught crude oil; I caught heating oil; I happened to catch some currency trades in the in the 80s that were big, big trades. And I caught them with big size, but with big size comes downside. And uh, and so to some degree the trading gods were—I'm not going to take credit for my own intelligence; it wasn't my own intelligence that did it; it wasn't my own hard work that did it.

What gave you the conviction for the larger size? Was it people around you? Was I was in my 20s and felt like I I had, you know, I I was invincible, just like these guys today. Uh, you know, I had good years: 79, 80, 81, 82, 83. I had some good years, and I think to some degree I was betting big because I happened—those were great years in the futures market. I mean, anyone that goes back and looks at the charts of the 80s in the futures market goes, "Whoa, would I have liked to have been involved in those markets?"

Had I been there, let's say 2010 to 2014, I wouldn't be talking to you today; I wouldn't be sitting in this chair, because there were terrible markets; there were not—there were no trending markets. All the trend followers in futures lost money in that 2010 to 14 period; they all lost money; a lot of them just closed up shop because they couldn't make it. We didn't have trending markets; we didn't have markets that followed through. So I happened to be fortunate enough to be in some really, really good markets; I caught some good markets. And um, you know, I I owe it to that. But and then I think it was later that I realized, you know, I'm I'm real—I really keep track of drawdowns. I know my Keelmar; I know my MI show. Um, you know, I I know my my three-year rolling Kelmar, my five-year rolling Kelmar; my I can do my my uh profit to drawdown for every year in my trading; I know what it was. And so, you know, I'm aware of what 38% drawdowns were, and I know what they did to me. And it came to the point where I said, "I don't want to be on this roller coaster," because you have a big run and you lose 30% of your capital, and you have another big run and you lose 35% of your capital, and you come to the point where you say, "It is no fun having to make the same dollar over and over again; this is not fun." Yeah, you know, I made it, but now I have to make it again.

Is it extremely volatile with the emotional curve? Like, yeah, I think so, you know, because I think there's a level where it's almost exponential. You know, 5% drawdown, 10% drawdown is more than twice as bad emotionally. Uh, you know, a a six-month peak-to-valley drawdown is more harder than a three-month peak-to-valley drawdown. So there's an exponential curve that's probably different for different people that you go, "I gotta do something because I don't like these drawdowns." I I I don't mind losing months, losing trades, losing weeks, and I've had four losing years, really. They're no fun. Uh, and you go, "I I don't like having to make the same dollar over again," and to not make the same dollar over again, I need to either change my risk parameters or I need to completely change the way I trade. And for me, I was comfortable with how I traded; I liked how I tra—I still trade the same way today for the most part.

How much had you gotten your capital up to leading up to '87? Uh, probably up to 10 mil, really. Wow. And then, yeah, you had that phenomenal year in '87, then '89. Well, yeah, and I I had some bad years, and I hit some bumps, and I burnt out. Uh, I mean, you know, 94, 95, I kind of went flat; I burnt out because we had gone to forex markets, which were 24-hour markets. And at this point I hadn't built a trading firm; I mean, it was kind of me against the world. Yeah, I had a a a gal that worked for me in the office and did stuff for me, and my wife helped me with stuff, but you know, I was just kind of a sole proprietor trading; I really hadn't started a trading firm as such. And so, you know, I'm I'm calling Commodity Corp, which had its own forex desk, and I'd say, "Okay, here's the band I have tonight for the German mark; if we go outside this band, call me." You know. And so it comes to the point where your wife says, "You've got to move out of the bedroom because I need sleep." Yeah, you know, you're getting called every night because Forex markets are moving by past your band. Yeah. And back then we did have 24-hour markets unofficially in gold because Hong Kong was trading gold at night, and so you kind of had a quasi—I could place orders; I could do gold trades in in Hong Kong. But and so you come—you know—so I kind of got burned out; I took 10 years away from the markets, you know, 95 to 20—95 to 2006.

What did you do in that time? Were you just retired? I started nonprofits and funded nonprofits. I I kind of got into the nonprofit world; I needed a break. And at first I thought, "Riz, okay, I'm going to take two, three years off; I just needed a sabbatical." Yeah, right. I'd been doing this for 20 years—20 years at this point—and I needed a sabbatical. Money wasn't an issue for me. Um, you know, I wouldn't have necessarily had to go back to work. But uh, yeah. And I thought, "What can I do?" And so I beca—I be—I actually even became an NGO at the United Nations. Really? Yeah. And I went to United Nations meetings around the world. You know, I've been to Cairo; I've been to different United Nations meetings. I have a bad—I still have my badge, my United Nation NGO badge. And so I was funding organizations that needed money that were nonprofit organizations I believed in; I thought we're doing good work, and I did that. And I thought I'd do that after two or three years, and I ended up doing that for 10 years. And then I thought, you know, maybe inflation—maybe I don't have as much—maybe I actually do need to put a little bit more money in the bank. And that was scary because I start back in 2006 and I go, "I'm not sure what I used to do still works," right? I mean, that that was the scary part is that because all my capital at that point went passive for those 10 years; I didn't trade futures bars; didn't have a quote machine; didn't have a computer. And you know, I'm going to start charting again because the markets had changed; we'd gone to Globex. You know, all my markets before that I'd call down to the floor; I had brokers in Florida that I knew that I trusted with my orders. And so, you know, back in the commodity corp days, maybe I'd do 150 gold, and so I'd want somebody in the COMEX that I knew personally to work that order that could say to me, "Peter, let's uh let let's back off for now; I think I can do a better job on this order if we wait 10 minutes; I think I can work this order; give me some time to work the order." Mh. Um, and so that was gone; there were no more pits; the pits were going away. Yeah. And all of a sudden I'm doing it on a computer on Globex, and now I've got charts on a computer; I'm not doing my charts by hand anymore on graph paper, right? Is is this all going to work again? And I didn't know that at that point, but I was willing to give it a try.

And did it end up working? Uh, 200—2007 I had a great year. 2008—2008 was my last 100% year. Wow. You know, 2008 I had a 2x; that's my last 2x. I thought I was going to have one this year; I really thought this year I was going to have a 2x, but I I it tailed off. I thought in May, June, "I'm on track," you know, "I'm on track to do—" Why did it tail off? Do you feel markets—or—I think markets, yeah. Uh, I mean, I I hit some really good markets early in the year, but that's the way it is, because I, you know, not only does Pareto apply trade by trade, yeah, but I probably can go back week by week and find that 20% of the weeks produced 80% of the profits. I think it's quite a a universal principle from your profit amounts from even the uh stocks or or uh your pair or or whatever it is that you're trading; usually they say the same thing, like 20% of your profits will only—sorry, 80% of your profits will come from just 20% of the the stock. And for me, it's really 15-85; if I go through the years, it's 15-85, so that's close enough; I think Alfredo would be okay with that if I use his name. But so then the issue then is what do you do with the 85, because you don't want the 85 to overwhelm the 15. So how do you get the 85 to scratch—you understand scratch—straight? How do you get the loser—a few small winners to offset the losers so that in the end it's only the tip of the iceberg that you care about? Yeah, yeah. And because you got to go through a lot of grunt work with the 85, don't you?

100%, and I think it's important to recognize that what a lot of people I think fail to to understand is you still need to take all the other trades, like even if you had the just 20% of trades that gave you this bulk of profit, those 20% of trades are going to be, you know, fewer uh, you know, less occurrence. And yeah, you could sit there and say, "I'll just wait for them," but that—I think there's two problems with that, and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is one being that your mind isn't as sharp in the markets because you're not as active as you you probably should be. So when the opportunity comes around, when you're meant to potentially size in more or at least execute properly, flawlessly, um, you might hesitate because you haven't been active; you haven't been taking trades—like essentially like ring rust for boxers—similar principle. But then, secondly, also is that you want that capital, those buffers, to be able to, you know, size in on those trades, whether you size in more or not, but at least having the option or at least being in a position where you're not in necess—let's let's say drawdown or or just a very uh flat base—you've actually got a buffer of profit from those other trades that you've taken that might not be part of that 80-85% of profit. Um, that would be my fault. What are your thoughts on that?

No, I think I—no, I think that's spot on. I I think you you nailed that actually, because for me, um, the hard part for me is the interesting part for me is my expectations of a trade are probably inversely correlated with the outcomes. The trades that I have the biggest expectation for are usually the biggest duds. The trades that I kind of were blasé about—"I don't know, oh, I don't know if this is going to work"—are the trades that end up being Paretos. I've heard that a lot. Yeah. And uh, and so you got to take them. I mean, last week I shorted Bitcoin last week, yeah, on the charts, and I told people on social media, "I'm getting—I'm going to get sucked in by a bear trap here." I knew I was going to get sucked in by a bear trap here; I I mean, just knew it instinctively; I knew this trade is going to be a loser, but I got to take it, because at what point do I say, "I'm going to trust my judgment more than I'm going to trust my process?" I've got to trust my process, knowing that I'm going to have to go through junk in the process, right? The process is going to grind; it's a grind. You know, I I I love traders who I would consider to be grinders; they're grinders. Yeah, they're grinding it out, definitely. And uh, that they're not spectacular; they're not the—they're just grinding. And part of grinding is you just got to take them when they come. Now that doesn't say that I may not go on vacation for two weeks and not even pay attention to the markets; you got to do that. Uh, but what it does say is, and it doesn't mean that you're not going to miss trades; you're going to see trades; you're going to miss trades. Hey, everyone misses trades; that that's the way it goes. But what it means is when you see a trade—for me, when I see it the day before, because my rule is if I see a trade during the day, I can't trade it; I I got to wait till the close and then try to do it the next day, because that prevents—that's my buffer from FOMO. Interesting, right? I got to have rules that keep me away from myself, because I'm my own worst enemy, and I think that's true of a lot of traders; they're their own worst enemy. Yeah, the who they are wants to sabotage what they're doing. Interesting. And so if I see something—someone shows a chart on social media and I go, "God, I missed that boy; I missed that." That that happened recently in aluminum; I look, "Oh, man, why didn't I see that? I haven't been charting aluminum; why didn't I see that?" But if I happen to see it, I got to take it. Now maybe I don't take it with 80 basis points of risk; maybe I take it with 40 basis points of risk or maybe 30 basis points of risk, but I got to take it, right? That makes sense, right?

No, it does; it does. And what I was going to say in terms of off the back of that is the risk side, because you know you had that really, really big year, which had elevated risk uh market conditions on your side, and you know the youth on your side, you know, the the being more risk-averse, etc. But I know that throughout your journey, I think increasing risk was something that was kind of difficult. Um, and what's interesting through this tour—is—not only just through the tour but generally as well—is there is a quite a balance to be fair; there are those who are really adamant on static risk—you know, stick to the one or two percent, whatever it may be, but stick to that—but then, you know, recently, especially on the tour in particular, the dynamic risk has been quite a theme among some really, really incredible traders, is—and uh, SMB Capital, for example, huge on uh really sizing into those if you have a lot of big—what—what your thoughts in terms of that? You know, let's let's take it two approaches: let's say for the beginner trader who—or when I say beginner, maybe not brand new, but someone who hasn't found their edge just yet—like where what should they be looking at, um, versus the person who's more intermediate?

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I I think you got to really understand your trade to develop the instinct that here's a trade that has a little bit something special to it, right? Here's a trade that—not all trades are—not all trades are created equal. Okay. And um, that's a great saying, actually; I heard that one. I I kind of think—I kind of sometimes think, "What if I would have been the real gambler," you know? I that that's a timeline that I didn't live in, so I can only imagine, but what if—what if I would have, you know, what if I would have taken all my profits, separated them, and said, "I'm going to bet 20% of my profits on the next trade," right? Um, what does that timeline look like? I don't know what that timeline looks like; there's no way to know what that timeline looks like. But when I went into the business, my goal in the business was to be a career trader, to be a craftsman. Okay, I wanted to be a craftsman, and I I I didn't want the guy that had this um, you know, I didn't want to be Michael Marcus, where I turn into a million; that was never my goal. You know, it was never something that I thought about. I knew guys that did that; wasn't thought something I thought about. I talked to a guy today that turned 70,000 into three million. Wow. Um, in in four years. Four years. Mhm. So I don't trade that way, but I think for—I'm excited for guys that do trade that; I I'm glad I know guys that trade that way, right? Um, it's fun to know them; it's fun to go out and have dinner with them and hear their stories.

Do you feel like it comes down to maybe personality? Totally. Yeah, totally. Uh, you know, I came from a really poor background; I I mean, I came from a single-parent family on food stamps, where if I wanted to get something at 14 years old, I had to go pass out flyers for the local grocery store. You know, so that's a world I came up into, so I knew no money. Uh, and even when I switched from what had been my job for a couple years prior to trading—I was in advertising—I think when I went to work at the Board of Trade, I don't know, maybe we had a couple thousand dollars in the bank. Uh, I mean, that was it, you know. And you got married young, um, and we didn't have money until probably I'd been in the business for two, three years, and definitely not until 1979, 1980, when I really started—my training started humming. So do you feel like that's the association to risk comes from that? Do you think? Yeah, I think so. I, you know, I I have a Substack; my Substack is RiskAverse Trader. I'm a risk-averse trader. And so I'm not saying that everybody should be risk-averse. I mean, for me, okay, everyone keeps track of their—I do not look at my balance; I try not to look at my balance; I don't want to look at my balance; I haven't looked at my balance in probably three weeks because I I want to focus on the market, and I'll let my balance surprise me later. Yeah. And so one thing I tell people is you got to decide, are you looking at your balance for really intellectual progress reasons? Are you looking at your balance because you're nervous? And if you're obsessed with looking at your balance, that's probably a bad tell, right? I mean, there's certain tells that says, "Well, maybe you shouldn't be doing this." That's one of the tells is you're obsessed with knowing what your account balance is, because I don't really care; I mean, it'll take care of itself if I do the right things. And so, you know, and and so for the IRS—Internal Revenue Service, which is our tax entity for the federal government—I have to report my profits made during the day; then I have to re—also report profits based on changes in open positions, right? So you have realized profits; then you have open profits, unrealized profits. And for the IRS, I have to show what was my unrealized profits last December 31st; what is it this December 31st? So there's a formula that go by. So for the IRS, my open profits are important; for me, I don't want to really pay my attention—my open profits. So I—when I keep my balance—I keep my balance based on an NAV against subsequent open trade results. And so I know what my NAV is, and all of a sudden I have a 200 basis point profitable trade that closes; that's what it is. And so I look at my drawdowns based on sequential close trade in NAV. For me, I would be panicked if I had a 5% drawdown; it would send me into a state of shock. You know, I'm comfortable with 2-3% drawdowns now. And so I think that reflects—now there's some guys I know that, you know, "You're a wimp, Brandt; what a wimp you are; I mean, seriously, if you're a real trader, you got to let it roll, baby." Well, I don't want to let it roll; you—you know, at a stage of my career, fast approaching 80 years, you know, being in the business now 51 years, I don't want to be on that roller coaster anymore, but yet I want to make money trading. Yeah, I because I want to, you know, because I want to make money doing something; I want to trade because I love trading; it's intellectually—it's a challenging game for me; it—I love—I love the process of trading, and if I'm good at it, I'll make money at it. But um, but for me, I don't like the sea—I don't want to be on a roller coaster anymore. But I do think that if somebody really wants to grow an account—they really want to goose an account, right?—RZ—I mean, they want to take a hundred grand to two million; they'd like to do it in five years—um, they're going to have to take some risk. Yeah, I mean, that's the reality; they're they're going to have to be willing to sit through 20, 30% drawdowns on a pretty routine basis, because I think Jack Schwager would say there's a formula—I mean, you just have to go based on your your gain of pain and your profit factor in your Kelmar—yeah—is that you're a great trader if your rate of return is four times your worst drawdown; that's world-class, right? I mean, you're—it's outstanding; it's extraordinary if your drawdown is only one-third of your rate of return. And so if you want to do 100%—you—30%; that's that's outstanding. You know, 20% is world-class. And so yeah, you got to be willing—you want to shoot for the moon, you got to white-knuckle it sometimes.

And you think some people are just ingrained to to not be able to change? Yeah. But I think there's also that balance—there's that balance between being willing to to roll the dice and being—but also also that balance between wanting to exploit the game and knowing you could get hurt, right? So you're always kind of looking for the shadows in the corner. Yeah, is—you know, there's some people that just want to wreck; they're reckless, and even if they make money, they're going to recklessly lose it. And there's certain tells—you can see them on social media—you can say, "Boy, you're an accident waiting to happen," because they have all the tells of an accident waiting to happen, where there's some guys that they're going for it; they want a big year; you know, they want to go from a hundred grand to three million in three, four years. Yeah. But they also know they—they—there's times they got to really be guarded. And so that there's that balance in personality, right there, right? And you've seen that; you've talked to so many traders; you've seen it. I think also it's it's uh a huge part of that is whether you increase risk or not is is the mindset behind it; is being a performer—like a high-level performer in the markets—similar to yourself—like the reason you still do it—I

Would you imagine it's less so the financial side, more so the performance? Like just the the the passion for the performance and constantly performing well in the market. That doesn't necessarily mean winning all the time; it just means that you're constantly trying to optimize, improve, and essentially beat the market. So it's not even performance against anyone else; it's against the market itself.

Well, no, I I'm not—it's not me against the markets; it's me against me. It's me against my rules. You know how uh I keep track of something that I call leakage, and I I formally keep track of that. That's a stupid trait; it's it's leakage, right? I want I want I want to keep my leakage to a thousand basis points a year, and and and I'm pretty brutal in evaluating myself on that because, you know, I'll be stupid; I'll oversize a trade; I'll break a rule. When I break a rule, can I monetize what that breakage was? Yeah, right. Uh, and could I keep track of it as a as a measure of accountability for myself? Uh, because you're right, I mean, it's just for me. I just want to be excellent at what I'm doing.

Uh, I mean, a lot of people have said, you know, I've always taken money out of my account as a prop trader. I've lived off of my account. So, to some degree, I haven't compounded my account, right? I haven't compounded my account over the years. You know, I've taken money out; I bought real estate; I've not been in debt since 1987. I haven't owed a penny to anyone; I buy homes, and I pay cash. Uh, I don't like the idea of debt ever. And so, for me, my prop account has always funded my life; it's funded college educations; it's funded IRA accounts; it's funded pension accounts and nonprofits; it's funded nonprofits. So I'm always withdrawing money. You know, and again, you talk about time—what what if my timeline would have been—I'm not taking it on; I'm just going to let it roll. This was an ask—you how important is it to actually pay yourself for all the hard work and all the all the things that you're doing?

Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. So, you know, it hasn't been—there was a point at which I knew I had my account to grow. You know, when I went in, it was $88,000. That's what I started with—$88,000 in n in October of 1988. It was the initial deposit into my brokerage account at the time was Gelderman; it was my broker, which sold out to Revco, which went broke and bankrupt, which, you know, whatever. But, you know, I knew even then that guys that were the real deal at the board of trade were trading a million bucks. And so, yeah, I'm still kind of a rookie, even though I've got my own shop, even though I know I need to make money, you know, I need to pull out 40 grand this year to live. How am I going to do it and grow my account? How am I going to live off this money and grow my account? How quickly can I get to a million? Because at a million back then, I I figured, okay, I'm I'm not a real deal now. To put it into context, probably a million back then would be about equivalent of maybe five million, I would say. So, you know, but at that point, yeah, then I can actually—now I'm just not a trading; now I'm a trader, right? And I can consider myself a trader, and I can have lunch with any guy here at the board of trade, and there we're two traders having lunch together.

How did you handle those pressures, those thoughts, like as you mentioned? How did you handle like uh one being around other traders who were performing at higher levels? How did you handle knowing, "You know, I need to pay myself this year; I've got these bills I need to pay"? To make this—as we know, those sort of pressures on trading can usually be the reason why people underperform and and uh have the the psychological problems.

RZ: I was lucky because I had that income stream, right? I had that income stream all, you know, all all the way up to when I said, "Okay, 81 income streams gone." So through in through then I had the income stream, and um I can't imagine what that would be like—a guy happens to put together 100 grand; he's going to trade, and he's got to pay for his—I wow, I, you know, that wasn't my timeline in life. So, but if I try to put myself in that position, that's not that's not a very good place; I would not want to be. You know, if if someone says to me, "Peter, when do I know it's time to quit my job?" Right? And I—boy, I've been asked that so many times—"Hey, I've been trading; I've been trading five years; I've been doing pretty good; I love it; I love trading; I want to be a trader; I'm an engineer at XYZ Bridge Corp Builders. When's it time?" My answer for them is, "Say, you got to make sure that your you got to make sure your account's all profits—not your wife's money; it's not your inheritance money; you didn't take a second mortgage on the house; it's not your savings. Your entire account is your profits, number one. Got to be profits. Number two, the entire amount of your account has to be backed by two years' worth of savings to pay your bills. So that's separate from your account; you got to have enough money separate from your account before you quit your job."

Mhm. And so you—two years? Two years to pay all your bills—pay your kids' dentist—heaven—all the—

Yeah, all of it—all in. And then your account's separate from that, so you don't have the pressure of having to take money out of your account right away. Every month you're taking out six grand to pay your bills, and so—and then the amount of your account has to be three times what realistically you think you can make a year over the next three or four years.

Interesting. And so, you know, if you're going to need a hundred grand to live on, you need $300,000 of profit before you quit your engineering job. So that's your task; you got to get there. Now a lot of people are saying, "I don't need to get there; I can pay 200 bucks a month; I have a SIM account for payout." Is on—that's a $2 million account—good luck, buddy. Yeah, hey, and if they can—Hey, all—I I got to be clear on this, RZ—all the more credit to those guys that do it. I I want to know him because I think it would be cool to know these guys. There's one trader who I know you've had interaction with, um, and I think there's maybe just the classic social media thing, yeah, of uh not knowing the person and so on.

You know, Trader Kane.

Yeah, I I know it. Yeah. But you know, Trader Kane, like we've gone back and forth—I know I know—and I'd love to say to you though, like, you know, I know Trader Kane through the podcast, and uh, you know, I've verified everything with him. Yeah, I'm not picking him anymore because I think he's probably got something going good. I'm—now, personally, I understand why you would feel the other way originally, yeah, because of like you said, these companies and how they set up, um, you know, as an example, you know, as we talked about earlier, like, you know, they want profitable traders; they want you to profit, right? But then when he made that amount, um, he's not allowed to trade with them anymore; they paid him, which is great—you're gone. Well, they don't want to do SIM; they want to move him into trade for real; they don't want him to do that.

Well, I mean, there there is one—I I'll name it—from Topstep here that it's in in Chicago. I mean, their rule is they want to move people from uh SIM for payout to live funded accounts because they know they want to have traders; they don't want to have gamblers bleeding them on big months, right? And I understand that's a smart business decision; I give them credit for that business decision. But yeah, I mean, it for me again comes back—71 traders and market wizards—I don't know anyone, including myself, that's that's pumping my performance online. I've never mentioned on on Twitter my my rates of return; I don't mention it because, for one reason, I think it would jinx me. I I think I I have that feeling. I I think good trade guys that I know are traders—they go, "I'm not going to tell anyone that I made 100 grand last week." I I don't want to tell anyone that.

To play devil's advocate on that, I think there is benefits to it happening when good people, you know, whether it's Kane or whether it's like Umar Ashraf or whether it's Lance Brightstein, like these verified traders—people who have verified their performance—the reason I say that is because if let's say they aren't the one showing—whether it's profits or percentage or just trades—yeah, then all that's left—and I've always said this as well, like, you know, when people try—some people try and make the argument of, "If you're profitable, why would you have a community or discord or sell something of some kind?" And I always try and make the point that if they don't do it—if the real traders who actually are performing well and doing really really well and verified, of course—if they don't do it, if they don't show them, if they don't help, you know, try and spread awareness and and maybe have a discord of whatever it may be, then all that's left are the snake oil salesmen. You know, so I understand your point.

Great point. Great point. I do understand your point, 'cause I I've, you know, the jinxing side of things, I understand. And then also it's like, what are you trying to achieve? There's a bit of ego there maybe or whatever. But I do think that there's two really beneficial things: is one, it allows people to come across real traders—people who are verified rather than the the lifestyle stuff. But then, secondly, I think there's a good, you know, kind of what's missing from the trading world that used to take place—like being on the floors, being around other traders, having access to that. Now it's, as you say, everyone's at home, you know.

Yeah. And therefore, by real traders share—especially on Twitter—it's a big thing on Twitter or X now—or YouTube—or YouTube as well. Yeah. But I think the thing with X is there's uh it's like conversational compared to YouTube.

Yeah, yeah. So I I agree—they're a social interaction—sometimes good, sometimes bad. Yeah, I I don't allow people that are not verified to respond to me anymore because they're all trolls. I mean, if I say, "Only verified can reply," 90% are—I can actually get engagement, right? Real engagement. Where if I say it's open to the world, 90% are, "You need to retire, old man," whatever. Yeah, come on, really. And so that's why I say, "Hey, hey, Elon Musk is my hero. I think Elon Musk is one of the greatest men alive today, and I think Elon Musk saved free speech in America and is trying to save free speech in the world." And my attitude is, "If you can't pay whatever it is—eight bucks a month or whatever—to have a verified account in Twitter and to support free speech, you don't deserve to be heard on Twitter."

Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, it is fair. Um, but yeah, I think just to go back to that point—the collaboration aspect and being able to communicate together and uh, you know, it's really helping other verified traders or at least other traders who are trying to get go down that route to be able to learn—encouragement, you know. It's someone's doing it; there's hope for me, right? I see someone doing it; they're willing to share. And I think that's generation—it could be generation—nobody in my generation is going to be Trader Kane, but I I think that's a Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z generation thing is, you know, you you you wear your leather jacket out in public, right? I mean, you show your tan legs off whenever you can. So I think that's a generational thing, and and so, hey, I'll—more credit to them. I I I I there are certain people who maybe I was critical in the past; I'm no longer critical of; I'm no longer going to take a shot at them because I think all the more power to them. I think it's great. Again, I love the fact that we are in a world of this world of speculation. Yeah, market speculation is attracting so many people; I think it's fabulous. But I what I'd like to see—and and I'm okay if they brag about it—is let these guys prop trade the way they want to prop trade. You know, if they're SIM traders, yeah, let them let them learn; don't force them into a box. I think so. I agree. Let them trade however they want to trade because if they lose money, they're losing paper money; it's not going to cost the firm anything. Yeah, and the firm can keep charging them whatever—50 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month—they can charge them that till the end of the world, and and it's just a computer thing. And but let them try to learn a way to trade that they trade and just say, "Hey, so you got a a quarter million dollar prop account; you're paying us 100 bucks a month. Hey, if you lose it all, you lose it all; that's that's on you, buddy. Then if you want to open another one and keep paying us 200 bucks a month, that that's fine; we're we're game for that." Yeah. But now if you start one and you make money and we move you to a payout for SIM, then you've got it—that payout—that's your money in real trading now. You know, you you've made—and some of these firms have transitioned to that—yeah, you make 100 grand; now guess what? You've got 100 grand; you're trading micros, and this is your money to lose now. And but you can trade it. But I'd like to see them then be able and still not have to trade to to fit into the box, but they've got that 100 grand that they've made; they can't take it out—maybe they can take some out—but they have to—so they make 100 grand payout; they can take 50 out; then there's 50 left. Yeah, but now they got to trade that 50—that's theirs to trade; there's no more SIM for payouts; now they have to trade real; they have to trade micros; you know, they have to trade micro NASDAQ; they have to trade their own—they have to trade their own money. And they can trade however they want, and if they lose the 50, that's on them. And if they lose the 50, then they pay—keep paying in and move back into SIM for payout; we restart the clock, right? That's a world of SIM trading that can say, "Peter Brandt endorses that." Peter Brandt will endorse and sponsor—not for money, because I won't take any money for a firm that I have something good to say about—that's just always been my policy. Yeah, I, you know, whatever research we have, we buy; we don't say, "We want your comp service," we don't do that. If we want research, we pay for research. But it can be, "Hey, I'm going to I'm going to endorse this firm; I'm going to speak at its conference; I'm going to do what I can to help it because I believe in its cause." There's not one yet that I can believe in its cause. There are some that are skirting with that; they're they're flirting with some good ideas—slowly, slowly—hopefully, you know, this conversation will help.

In particular, uh, one thing I'd love to ask you about in terms of your own uh trading is you are really big into technical analysis and and chart patterns—charting. What was it about the chart patterns that that resonated with you?

Okay, so we're 1975, 76, 78—opening accounts, blowing up accounts, opening accounts, blowing up accounts. And I'm doing—trying to be a fundamentalist in grains; I'm looking at supply and demand tables; I even buy this little cycle finder that looks like a gate for a miniature Chihuahua, right? I'm looking at seasonals; I'm looking at spreads; I'm trying everything. I I mean, I'm literally I'm I'm in the clothing store, and I'm trying on suits and, you know, Velcro pants. And um a friend of mine—another guy—said, "Peter, I'm buying you a book," and he buys me the fifth edition of Edwards and McGee—Technical Analysis of Stock Trends. I still have the book, as a matter of fact. I've since bought the original—not even the first printing, because there was—it is the printing—wow—you know, leather-bound by John McGee—signed—autographed by John McGee himself.

Wow. You know, and I looked for years before for that—went through our bookstores—but I finally found one. And so I get this book, and I read this book, and I go, "God, does this make sense? I get this, you know. Here here is a way to understand the markets; it gives me a way to say, 'Here's where I'm going to get in; it gives me a way to say, 'Here's where I think I get out if I'm wrong.'" It gives me a way to say, "Here's where I I I might expect a market to go; I can say, 'Here's where I think corn can go. If I buy corn at 320, I have reasons to think corn goes to 370.'"

Mhm. And it's like, this makes sense to me. In this 1978—early 1978—I just I consumed the book; I just voraciously ate the book. And it—then I never looked back; I became a a classical chartist. And in the book—in the preface of the book—it references a guy by the name of Richard W. Schabacker that all of this work was was formulated by Richard W. Schabacker in his 1934 book—Technical Analysis and Stock Market Profits—that never had a second printing; it never had a first printing; it was only manuscripts back then—since had a printing. And uh and I wrote the forward for the hard cover—recent hard cover reprinting—first hardcover reprinting of Richard Schabacker's book. I wrote the forward to, which I consider to be such an honor, of course—great honor. British publishing company did it. And so I, you know, uh, but all of a sudden—but then that's just the start, because then you got to learn what patterns you like; what's a good pattern; what patterns work for you; what patterns don't work for you.

That was one thing I wanted to ask about—the patterns. So, on the surface, it's easy to literally look at the surface and go, "Okay, this is a head and shoulders, and this is a channel, and so on." But are you looking deeper than just the the the physical appearance of the chart?

Uh, for me, price is everything, right? Uh, I don't use indicators; I do use some indic—I mean, I have a moving average; I use a moving average, but I don't use it systematically, you know. For me, it's a proxy for trend. I don't like trend lines; I think moving averages are are proactive trend lines; they're active trend lines in effect, right? Um, but just drawing a line in a chart—you throw a chart book in a monkey cage with a ruler and a pen; sooner or later, you're going to have a trend line that makes sense. So—but—and and so you got to kind of learn what's the personality of a pattern, you know? What patterns kind of—you think head and shoulders stop in Bitcoin? I knew was lying; I had to take the train, but I really believed it was lying. And uh and so you get a feel for what works for you, and and then what time frame works for you. And for me, it was weekly, daily charts—weekly charts give me give me an idea; daily charts give me timing; uh, daily charts give me risk points. And so, for me, it ends up being, you know—and it's trial and error, right? And Riz, it's just you're winging it to try to find out what about the charts work. And so I will use Commitment of Traders uh reports coming out from the CFTC—who's long? I don't want to trade—I want to trade with the commercial. When the commercials have a big long position, I want to look to be long. Uh, I don't look at RSI, stochastic—all of that—for me. So if you have your pattern, you then are just laying it with confluence, such as say the the COT reports. Yeah, maybe that'll just—it give me extra confidence, right? It gives me a level to say, "Okay, I'm going to lean into this thing a little more than normally I would."

You know, is it a case where you are identifying the p these patterns um in the learning phases is so identifying these patterns and then off the back of that you're picking up on the the pattern of the pattern if that makes sense—so like personality of the pattern?

Yeah, that's a better way of saying it—yeah, the personality of the pattern—where those traits are common and reoccurring. Uh, and then so when they—and it could be, as an example, you know, off the top of my head, let's say, for example, you're already in a bullish market; a particular pattern presents itself, and based on the personality from the past—and this is where data collection can really help—is when it's presented itself in this market condition um with other characteristics and maybe some supporting confluences—it becomes a a trade—where—yeah, it becomes a tradable market. And so that's a trade for me, right? It presents itself as a trade; it's it's all of a sudden—Um, I communicate to the people I communicate to—is I'll say, "This is a chart of interest; it's an interesting chart; it's kind of cool what's going on here; it's cool; it might be a chart of educational interest"—this—we're looking back, and we can learn something from what happened here—"it may be a a chart of tradable interest." If I say to somebody, "This is a chart of tradable interest"—which I don't do on public Twitter, by the way, you know; I I I'll never say that—that's kind of more private communication—"chart of tradable interest," they know I probably have orders in. Yeah, I'm not in it yet, but I'm I I've figured out a—I'm going to be in it if certain things happen. Or a chart of positional interest. I'll say to somebody, "A chart of positional interest," they know I'm in; they know it's a trade I'm in. And so I look at that, and I think it's trial and error, and certain patterns work for certain people; it's a personality thing. I know for me, I have a co—I have a cohort uh that lives in Europe that keeps pretty good track of how patterns do.

Mhm. You know, he looks at charts kind of the way I look at charts, because the reality is I could look at a chart, and God, if I look at this chart long enough, I'll find a reason to trade it. And so I want to look at a chart and in one second know that there's a possible trade for me; I don't want—guys, you just say, "I'm going to go home and study my charts." I'd go, "Huh? What what do you mean you're going to go and study your charts? What's there to study?" Um, and so it gives you something to trade or it doesn't give you something to trade. And so for me, there's certain patterns that I really like; I like ascending triangles; I like rectangles; I like charts that have a horizontal boundary—not a diagonal boundary; I look for charts that seem to have some symmetry within it; there's some balance in the different parts of the ups and downs within the trading range; I look for charts that the congestion area is less than 15% of the net asset value of the of the asset, right? Um, I look for charts that are a a minimum of 6 to 8 weeks and a maximum of 26 weeks, with a sweet spot of 12 weeks.

Yeah, yeah. And I wanted to ask you actually just in terms of time frame wise, like how do you—was it ever a struggle to get used to holding trades for so long and and managing trades as they, you know, going—because during that time period you're seeing P&L go up—

No, not really, because it—put myself back into context—back when retail traders in 1975 were paying $50 to $100 around-turn commission—yeah—commission, and you—

Know now they can trade for free. And with some FCMs, we'll let them pay for a fee because the FCM selling—they're selling liquidity, right? But you know, right now, I—we pay three bucks around. I have no problem paying three to five bucks around, turn—I mean, that's just the cost of doing business. But back then, people didn't day trade for the most part. If you're on the floor, you day-traded. If I could go on the floor, I was trading for next to nothing. But the minute I left the floor, I'm paying more, and the minute I decided to relocate my family to Minnesota, I'm paying even more. And so, for me, as an off—you know, and I went off-floor because I wanted to trade more than grains. And so I wanted to trade sugar; I wanted to trade gold. They weren't CBOT trades; I didn't get CBOT rates. I did day trading; it was not feasible for me. So I—I think speculators back then, if you weren't on the floor, you by default held positions overnight because otherwise the—the—the—yeah, I—I mean, too—yeah, I mean, if you figure out back then what Paul Tudor Jones was making per contract might have been 70, 80 bucks per contract on average is what he was making. You know, you add 50 bucks commission on that, and all of a sudden your profit's gone—is gone. So I, you know, I became a position trader because that's just what you became back then—is you became position traders. So it's all I've ever done; I've just learned to hold trades.

What would you advise someone out there, or people out there, who are trying to swing trade, and that's their struggle—though their struggle is handling the P&L, handling the hold time? Yeah, what do you think you could say to them?

Well, I mean, the first thing you say is you're going to have to learn because it comes back down to Pareto; it comes back down to cutting your losses and having a mechanism by which a profit can become larger. You got to figure that out; got to figure that out. If you don't figure that out, go home. And so what it means is you've got to find some ways to be willing to postpone the desire to take the profit that's sitting there. And for me, that was restricting myself to only enter orders at one point in time, right? Is I either got on—I got out of a trade when I was stopped out, or I got out of it when I'd hit a target. Now I could move those stops, right? I could progress those stops in the direction of a trade, but I couldn't react during the day because I just felt like I am going to defeat myself if I keep looking at markets; I will find a trade that I shouldn't get in, or I'd find a reason to get out of a trade that I should stay in. And so what do I do? How do I—how do I battle those inner demons? The first thing is you got to recognize it is an inner demon; it is you yourself trying to sabotage your success, right? And so I—and I'm not saying that has to be universally applied to other traders because it may not have to be, yeah, but I am going to apply it to myself—is I've got to find a way to keep a trade. The only way I can keep a trade is to have rules. So I had to develop a rule; I have rules; I mean, I've got—I've got—I've got rules for just about everything. Um, you know, I got rules when I can move a stop and how I move a stop and where I move a stop. And so my accountability is to my process, not to the outcome of the next trade. And so I have to look and say, I'm going to trade—I figured I've traded 25,000 trades in my career; that's what I figured. Now that's trades; that's not contracts. So got you—got a multiple of 25,000. So let's say I've averaged—even five contracts—so I've got twund—I've got a database in my head of 125,000 contracts. And so I have to think, what's my best practices? And I—it takes time for a new trader to develop a list of what works for—what worked for you. Someone says, "How should I trade? What's already worked for you?" Yeah, think what's worked for you; think what's not worked for you.

You think a problem as well that traders face is that they're seeking perfection? Yeah, you don't see—you seek—you seek progress, not perfection. You know, uh, and you seek—and that progress—I think that what you said there in terms of process, focusing on the process—that's been a big thing of the—the verified traders that we've spoken to over this—this tour is that for them to reach seven, eight, nine figures in profits, it's always been that they focus on the process of doing that. Yeah, it's all the P&L; yeah, it's all process; it's—this is a process business and not a trade business. It's what happens over hundreds of trades and hundreds of contracts. It's not changing your trading sty—it's not optimizing. Someone said, "Peter, why do you use an 18 and 8 and 18-day moving average or 8 and 18-week moving?" I don't know. Have you ever uh examined what it would be if you got into trades only when they closed above your line instead of in-day? No, not really; I haven't really looked at it. Uh, have you ever considered using a 50-day mov? No, not really. Why? I don't know; I—I don't know because what I know is what I know, uh, and and you can't optimize; cannot optimize; you cannot—that's why—that's why, to some degree, guys that run computer programs against indicators end up being frustrated—is they're looking for perfection—is what set of indicators or combinations of indicators against this database produce the best metrics for me? That doesn't work. Now there's a—there's some value to that; I don't want to say there's no value to that; there's some value to that because it starts to put you on a track, but at some point in time you got to commit and say, do the—I allow myself to tweak my rules once a year. Interesting. You know, once a year, I'll say, you know, is there some area of my trading that maybe I want to mess around with a little bit? You know, for this year, I'm trying to cut my trading frequency down; I—I want to keep—you know, I did 250 tanches last year; I want to reduce it to somewhere under 200 tanches this year. And so I have to do some tweaking to get there. Of course. Yeah.

Final question for you, just because of the wealth of experience in particular, um, and I think it's important for traders to know because it kind of goes off the back of what we were just saying where people are seeking—searching—sorry, for per—they're searching for perfection, um, and as part of that, you know, they're always trying to find something that once they have it, that's it; they can stick to that for the rest of their career. Yeah, wow. And I want to ask, in terms of as you've noticed just from all the technology differences and, you know, the fees we've talked about, have changed—how important is it or how many times have you noticed that little tweaks had to be made to your strategy to keep up to date with conditions and markets themselves and the uh volatility and uh different, you know, factors that are in play from one decade to the next or one cycle to the next?

That's a brilliant question. Thank you for the question; that's a great question. I mean, again, I can only answer for myself, but I'm going to assume that what my answer is going to apply to a lot of those 71, right? It's going to be—it's a market wizard response; pretty market—good market wizard response. You always have to be aware; you have to be aware of what—what's happening in the elos; what's—we have more false breakouts today than we did—uh, you got to be super aware of what elgo tra—what the elos are going to do in overnight markets when becomes thin—can when thinner conditions come up—uh, you—so you always have to become aware of those things and make little tweaks. And so you have to evolve; you have to evolve. But you can't make just wholesale trades based on your changes based on your last trades. I've got to change something because in 2024, if I would have done this instead of that, it dramatically changes my results. No, you can't do that. And so your changes have to be based on some principle or some guideline; it has to be based on a something that deals with common sense principle as opposed to something you fine-tuned. And—and that I think is the key. So yeah, my training is different, but here's an interesting thing—someone—this a couple of years ago, I gave a speech to what's CMT now; it's, you know, it's certified market technicians—is—is the group; it wasn't always CMT; used to be market technicians, MTA. I gave a—a pre—uh plenary speech to the MTA meeting, Coral Gables, Florida, in 1991 that I gave—one Paul Tudor Jones gave one—and uh, I had forgotten about that; someone sent me a copy of my speech, and I'm going, "God, that's where that describ—" I haven't changed a lot. Yeah. And so I think the changes for me seem to be significant, but if you just read a speech, you go, "That's pretty much describes Peter Brandt today," right? But to me, I've—you know, it's nuance; it's nuance stuff—is what you do, yeah—is you do little nuance changes. Maybe you use coot a little bit; maybe instead of changes to coot, I'm only going to pay attention to coot when it becomes a two standard deviation measure, right? One standard deviation, I could care less what coot is; two standard deviations, I care a lot about what coot is. You know, and—and so you're looking for that, or you—you switch something up that gives you a mean reversion alternative to your trading—is, you know, last year I didn't trade mean reversion; maybe the markets have been cooking all year, so it felt like it. Yeah, yeah. Maybe you got to put in something that gives you some sort of nuance for mean reversion instead of just purely momentum. Yeah. And so you make a little tweak; that's momentum versus mean reversion, but it's a little tweak, but you commit to it, and then you want to learn from it. Yeah, right; you want to learn from it, but you don't make that change necessarily because last year's data indicates that that's would have optimized your profit, and that's the big significance, I think, and in my—in my—in the way I view it. Yeah, yeah. So rather than—it's—it's identifying rather than say, "How do I make more profit all the time?" and then making changes, it's more so, "What opportunities aren't presenting themselves as much or presenting themselves in a different manner because of x conditions or—um—whatever it may be—whatever factors in play at that time," and then, as you say, small tweak. And that's why I love the small tweak because I think people, retail traders, when they hear like, "Oh, you—you know, conditions might mean I need to change strategy," they assume it's like throwing out everything and starting a new, when in reality you'll never get there; you'll never get there. You throw out the old to get the new; you will never get to where you say, "Hey, I've got—I'm a candidate for Market Wizards." Yeah, you'll never be there. And so I mean, like, for this year, I—I added a tunch for 2025; I added a tunch that supplies my daily chart rules to a weekly chart rule, and I'm taking 50 basis points bet on it. I don't know how it's going to do; I—I could, but I think it'll do okay, but I'm interest—what I'm interested in is if I do that, how are the metrics going to compare? So it's curiosity as opposed to trying to seek—I—I'm really curious; I've never done it; I'm really curious with what will happen to that. And so I'm keeping computer records of how that does, and I'm really interested in how the metrics of applying things to a weekly chart are going to compare, at least for one year, because I won't be able to apply it and say that will be the metric comparison forever because it doesn't work that way, right? So yeah, Peter, it's been an absolute honor, and I'm sure we could do this, you know, for way more time as well, and uh, I really appreciate you agreeing to do this as well, and I know the—the audience have loved it. Any links for Peter will be in the descriptions below, so make sure you check those out, and uh, hit subscribe, drop a comment with your biggest takeaway from this episode. The tour continues; again, a big thank you to Tradzella for helping us make that happen, and until next time, everyone, take care. Thank you. I want to encourage—I just want to end—just encourage these new traders—they're just starting out, you know, dig in there; there's going to be a whole generation of Peter Brandts and Jack Schwaggers and Paul Tudor Joneses and Bruce Kovveners yet ahead, and you might be one of them. And so I don't want to ever discourage new traders from pursuing your dreams in markets. You're welcome in the markets; I love that you're in the markets. And hey, I look forward to the success you're going to have. I love that. Thank you. We'll—we'll cut it from there. Last final words.

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Prop Firm Traders NEED To Hear This Warning - Peter Brandt

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