Peter L Brandt has one of the best audited records that has been allowed to be known by the public that I've seen for an individual trader. Compounded annual growth rate of 41% over 18 years. Anyone else see anything better? Oh and surf, if you are reading, Peter likes to use Classical TA for trade identification although that is just one piece of his overall trading plan.
I'm not defending surf but his debates has always been about "retail traders" and about traders that say they use TA and nothing else although he does make a ton of blanket statements and then begin clarifying his position via the above when debates get heated. With that said, I've never consider Peter Brandt to be a "private trader". I always thought he traded the accounts of others (never his own private account) and worked with institutional traders. Simply, in many ways he acted in a way like a fund manager although I've never seen that word "fund" or "manager" associated with his name.
"Factor LLC is the organizational entity through which Peter L. Brandt trades his own proprietary accounts and provides personal opinions about futures, forex and equity markets via social media channels, including email" I thought I heard him say in an interview that he never got paid 2%, 20% like normal hedge fund managers and relied on his individual trading profits as his main source of income so that is where I may have gotten the idea he was "private". With that said, if he is posting his ideas via blog or subscription i guess it's not so "private" .
This is quite incredible. Is it because he is managing a small fund? But with 41% CAGR over 18 years, even a small size becomes huge. Even more amazing if he managed to achieve this in recent years given the slump in commodities. Went to his website http://peterlbrandt.com/ and learnt that he trades in commodities.
Based on the fact that with annual 20% compounded return once can make 4000 times of initial seed, over 45 years, 400M might be the largest capital if average seed can be 0.1M by saving. See 1.2^45 = 3657.262 from 30 to 75 years old. If you revolve the credit card (with APR 20%) from 30 to 75, then you have to make the CC company 4000 times.
I don't understand why people speak about the slump in commodities. There is no slump at all, at least I don't see it. I make much more profit than years ago and average profit per trade is much bigger. So no slump at all. Maybe the explanation is that a few decades ago trading was quite amateurish. That explains why at that time much more people made money. You didn't have to be bright or smart, almost everybody made money. But the market got more professional over time. So traders need much more qualifications to make money. There is no slump, the market is making a selection between real traders and occasional winning traders. You can compare it with the evolution in Formula 1. Schumacher was 7 times worldchampion between 1991 and 2006. He retired but came back in 2010. Surprisingly he was never able to compete with the others anymore. The competition was completely changed and he did not have the qualifications to be successful in this competition.