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Diary of a Professional Commodity Trader -Book Review

Brandt uses high/low/close bar charts as his primary trading (not, he stresses, forecasting) tools. He is for the most part a longer-term discretionary pattern trader who enters on breakouts that meet his stringent requirements. Since he knows that only 30 to 35% of his trades will be profitable over an extended period of time and up to 80% will be unprofitable over a shorter time frame, he is exceedingly cautious about leverage. For instance, his trading assets committed to margin requirements rarely exceed 15%.

In the first two parts of the book Brandt offers the reader a thorough course in identifying and categorizing trading signals, placing initial protective stops and subsequent trailing stops, pyramiding, and taking profits. The course addresses traders at all skill levels. For instance, he describes his own trading plan as simple, but some of its elements require a degree of judgment and sophistication that can only come with extensive practice. One example: “time phasing is a hurdle all traders must clear in order to be consistently successful.” (p. 88)

The third part of the book is Brandt’s five-month trading diary, and it’s a fascinating read. Not only does it describe individual trades but it shows how good traders evolve. Take month four, where the author is in a drawdown period. He writes that he has always known that there were flaws in his trading plan but that “good times provide cover for the deficiencies of a trading plan.” During tough times “markets have a way of exploiting flaws in a trading plan. … The challenge is to find the fundamental flaws, not just to make changes that would have optimized trading during the drawdown phase. … Almost always the changes [the author has made to his own plan] have dealt with trade and risk management, not with trade identification.” (p. 189) (more…)

Book Review: Hedge Hogs: The Cowboy Traders Behind Wall Street's Largest Hedge Fund Disaster

I’ve recently enjoyed reading Hedge Hogs: The Cowboy Traders Behind Wall Street’s Largest Hedge Fund Disaster, the story of how Amaranth blew up. It’s essentially a story of one man who was successful for a while and took on unbelievable amounts of risk trading natural gas futures while all of his supervisors, mostly the fund’s owner but some others as well lost all control or even desire for control. The book greatly details the actual trades and talks about many related personages, but it left me puzzled about how the trader who was mostly responsible for this disaster lasted this long. He had made a huge amount of money prior to blowing up, and even though he appeared to be quite intelligent the reasoning behind his trades are either inadequately or perhaps truthfully described as being close to random. He suddenly takes a liking to certain types of spreads and just bets on them evidently without much more than a seemingly unjustified belief that they will widen.

At some point he essentially became the market and and had to keep up the spreads by continuous buying until the fund blew up. The main trader and some others are portrayed as sociopathic degenerates driven by irrational beliefs as well as a strong desire to win at all costs. I would be interested to hear some energy trader’s or any commodity trader’s opinion about the book.

Words of Wisdom from :Kroll's book

The Professional Commodity Trader (reprinted in 1995 by Traders Press) to follow him as he traded between July 1971 and January 1974, during which time for the 39 accounts that he managed he turned $664,379 into $2,985,138. He funded his own account in July 1971 with $18,000; eighteen months later it had appreciated to $130,000. Apparently before he “retired,” he was sitting on a $1 million account. What was the secret of his success?

Kroll was a discretionary trend trader in the tradition of Jesse Livermore. He had simple entry and exit rules. To initiate a position he would trade in the direction of the major trend, against the minor trend. “For example, if the major trend is clearly up, trade the market from the long side, or not at all, buying when: a. the minor trend has turned down, and b. prices are ‘digging’ into support, and c. the market has made a 35-50 percent retracement of the previous up leg.” To close out a long position at a profit, liquidate one-third at a logical price objective into overhead resistance, another third at a long-term price objective into major resistance, and trail stop the remaining third. There are three approaches to closing out a position at a loss. First, enter an arbitrary “money” stop-loss such as 40-50% of the requisite margin; second, enter a chart stop-loss “to close out the position when the major trend reverses against your position—not when the minor trend reverses (that’s just the point where you should be initiating the position, not closing it out).” Finally, “maintain the position until you are convinced that you are wrong (the major trend has reversed against you) and then close out on the first technical correction.” (pp. 27-28) He admits that the last alternative can be potentially lethal; the technical correction may not come in a timely fashion.

Kroll offers some advice to the would-be futures trader. He urges the wannabe to play only for the major moves—not for scalps. As he writes, “Riding a winning commodity position is a lot like riding a bucking bronco. Once you manage to get aboard, you know what you have to do—hang on and stay hung on; not get bumped or knocked off till the end of the ride. And you know that if you can just manage to stay in the saddle, you’re a winner. Sounds simple? Well, that’s the essence of successful trading.” (p. 44)

Put another way, when ahead, “play for the big score and don’t settle for a minor profit.” On the other hand, when a trade isn’t working out, “spend your constructive effort in calculating how to close out the losing position with a minimum loss or perhaps a modest profit—and if such an opportunity is offered, take it.” Contrary to a lot of the literature, he also advocates striving for a high winning percentage. The problem with accepting a small fraction of winning trades is that “the winningest accounts . . . still manage to chalk up some mighty big losses—it seems just about impossible to always keep losses small, no matter how hard you try.” (p. 153)

I’ve extracted some words of wisdom from Kroll’s book, but what makes the book so enjoyable is that Kroll takes the reader through actual trades, some winners and others losers, and shows the courage it took to ride the bronco and the acute pain he felt when he was bucked off. It’s a book that you read in one sitting, fully engrossed.

Optimism as a Default Setting

We begin with a story from one hundred years ago…

From My Favorite J.P. Morgan Story by Mark Skousen:

In the early days of the Twentieth Century, when J.P. Morgan ruled Wall Street, a visitor came to the City. He was a long-time friend of Morgan, a commodity trader from Chicago. He was what might be called a “perma bear” following the Panic of 1907. No matter how high or low the stock market went, his outlook was pessimistic. Another crash, panic and depression were just around the corner.
This was his first visit to thew world’s greatest city. He arrived at 23 Wall Street, and was ushered into J.P.’s spacious office overlooking the Exchange on one side and George Washington’s statue on the other.
They immediately began talking about the markets, Morgan being bullish as ever, and his commodity friend being as bearish as ever. “J.P.,” he said, “the news overseas doesn’t look too good.”
“A buying opportunity!” responded Morgan. (more…)

Truth

“Truth kills those that run from it “-Persian proverb

Traders must be able to face the truth.Great traders have learned these lessons early in their careers.Roy Longstreet in his classic book view points of a Commodity Trader started that “the first mistake teaches -then second mistake kills !”

Facing the truth in trading is necessary to prevant the consequences.Truth is necessary at all levels of trading.It is just as important to the novice as it is to the  seasoned veteran.The main difference lies in the ability to face the truth.

Truth seems so somple !But the psyche can do amazing tricks through rationalization.Some of these tricks seen to have no other purpose  then to prevent you from seeing the reality of the truth.The Bible states -“The truth shall set you free “Every religion has a saying echoing the same theme.Overcoming not facing  the truth can be accomplished by writing down the pros and cons of telling the truth.Once it is committed to paper the decision should become self-evident.