Rambling Random Ruminations of a Relic - a series Hey, Gen Z and younger Millennials—especially those of you who trade the markets. I get it. You’ve been screwed by the Boomers. Expensive education. No clear career path in your chosen field. Student loans. Another internship that leads nowhere. Close-to-minimum-wage work—not a living wage—waiting tables or doing something similar. And when you finally find a job, the owners expect you to work your butt off. What’s with these four-day, nine-hour-a-day jobs, anyway? Owning a home is not even imaginable. Marriage? Why would you want the lives your parents had? As an early-years Boomer, I fully acknowledge the disaster created for you by your parents’ and grandparents’ generations. You have every right to be angry. But I am seeing more and more of you come into equity and futures trading with expectations that are absolutely off-the-charts insane. You poo-poo this claim!!!! Many of you are chasing stories about turning $5,000 into $5 million in five years. The Market Wizards stories are incredibly compelling. One of the things I am most proud of during my 51-year career—supporting my family and building wealth—is having been featured in Market Wizards. I remain deeply honored. You might be a three-standard-deviation wonder. I am cheering for you—I truly am. Welcome to trading. It has been a thrill and an honor to trade my own money as my full-time occupation since I was in my 20s. I am now within spitting distance of 80, living in a body that betrays the fact that I once had a Division I university ice hockey scholarship. I strongly believe that the pursuit of becoming one of the three in 1,000 will ultimately reveal the full character and integrity of those three. Am I advising you not to invest in stocks? Nope. I am advising you to prepare for a career with a future, work hard and save as much as you can every month. Then I would advise putting 80% of those savings into SPY, 5% into Bitcoin and 15% into gold and silver. There is big money to be made in precious metals—but the move does not need to begin next week, Mr. and Ms. FOMO. There is a very strong chance that, 30 years from now, you will wish you had annualized 20% to 30%. You will recognize that your dream of doubling your money every year originated in Fantasyland. Please believe me: I am NOT, NOT, NOT trying to insult you. I believe in you. My grandchildren are Gen Z. Your generation has enormous potential for wealth and happiness. So, what is my advice to you???? You probably won’t accept it now, but print this X post and place it in an envelope marked, “Open in 2060.” Believe me—life goes by faster than you can possibly understand right now. If you want to learn trading—and I mean consistently profitable trading with your own money—it is possible. But you must get the idea of doubling your money every year out of your mind. Instead, think in terms of reaching 20% annually during years four and five, measured from the first year you begin trading. The best living investor/trader, in my opinion, is Stan “the Man” Druckenmiller. The best trading operation? That’s easy: Renaissance Technologies. Both have hovered in the 40%-plus zone over long periods. Let me square with you on this next statement: If you can learn to average even 30% annually over five years—with a Calmar ratio of 2.5 and without much variation across several hundred Monte Carlo simulations—you will have no trouble becoming a millionaire-plus, if money is your thing. More importantly, you will feel an enormous sense of accomplishment. Also, in my opinion, futures markets are far superior to equity markets for building an account and supporting any reasonable lifestyle. Why futures? Lots of reasons—more than enough to explore in another installment of “my story on X.” But I mean trading with real money. Not the pretend “prop shop” nonsense. If that is what you have in mind, unfollow me immediately. I have nothing to say to you. There are micro and even smaller contracts available these days, especially if you live outside the United States, where CFDs are permitted. Traders with access to CFDs have an advantage over those of us in the Stars and Stripes gang. I believe the CME even offers a one-ounce gold contract. And as more hard assets are tokenized, still more alternatives to traditional futures contracts will become available. I believe it is entirely possible to succeed in futures trading—if you enter the business with the right expectations. For your first three years, your primary goal should be simply not to lose money. If you accomplish that, you will already be way ahead of your peers. I mean WAAAY ahead. If you can survive three or four years in futures and still have your original money intact, then you may indeed have a very bright future in futures. One warning: DON’T EVER pay some service to provide you with signals, setups or whatever else the YouTube and X Wonder Kids of the Century want to sell you. You have to do this on your own. There is no other way. If there were, I would tell you. Please believe me. Perhaps I will wander deeper into this tunnel in the future. But that’s all the rambling for now.

#ascendingtriangle# is a bullish chart pattern. It can form as a continuation as well as a bottom reversal. It's upward sloping lower boundary gives the pattern the bullish bias. Patterns are repetitive irrespective of time, geography, exchange or instrument. This ascending triangle is from 1986. Peter Brand's identification of a bottom reversal. From his book Trading Commodity Futures with Classical Chart Patters.

Dear Z gen aspiring traders/gamblers Would you board an airplane if you knew that the chances are about 300 to 1 that the plane will crash, you will die? Yet all Z gen gamblers think they are among the 3 in 1,000 BTW - trading futures is gambling

The math behind trading/gambling is so fascinating If you have a win rate of 50%, are you aware that your very next trade has a 20% probability of being among a cluster when 8 or more out of 10 trades are losses?

This is where the 30-Yr U.S. Bond came from The down cycle is OVER The trend is higher Seriously, would you want to lock in U.S. govt debt for 30-Yrs at 5%??????? U.S. Bonds back to 7.5% please ↗️↗️↗️

Interest rate fears People have become used to historically low interest rates Our mortgage on this home in Northern Minnesota in 1982 was 14.5% T-Bills traded briefly at 17%-plus The 30-Year belongs at 6%-7% People, get used to higher yields $ZB_F $US30Y

30-year Treasury yields climbing to Valhalla. My friend (and legendary trader) @PeterLBrandt thinks that the next upside target may be... wait for it... 7%. 👀 Lesson: War is expensive... and very inflationary. cc: @LukeGromen

Analogs speak loud There is a strong history among commodities that parabolic advances, once violated, produce 80% declines. That would be Gold to $1,120. Don't think that will happen, but a 50% decline brings price back to $2,800 or so

The markets have produced countless famous traders. Very few have produced work that remains worth studying decades later. That distinction matters. Performance can inspire. Principles can outlive a career. We’ve spent time reading Peter Brandt’s Factor reports. What stands out isn’t the predictions. It’s the discipline behind the observations. Markets change. Technology changes. Participants change. Yet the hardest part of trading has remained remarkably constant: The ability to think clearly when uncertainty refuses to cooperate. Decades in the market don’t automatically create wisdom. Documenting those decades with intellectual honesty does. Thank you, @PeterLBrandt, for continuing to demonstrate that professionalism is measured not by how loudly one speaks about markets But by the consistency of the standards brought to them. If you’re serious about building a long term trading career, study the work of people whose principles have survived multiple generations of markets. Explore Peter Brandt’s work and join the Factor community → From everyone at DCRET, thank you for continuing to raise the standard of professional trading.

Most people overestimate talent. They underestimate architecture. Architecture is what remains after motivation disappears. It is the structure that protects your decisions from your emotions. Professionals don’t rely on willpower. Willpower is inconsistent. They build environments where good decisions require less negotiation than bad ones. That is why two people with equal intelligence can produce entirely different careers. One trusts discipline. The other designs for it. This is the hidden difference between amateurs and institutions. Amateurs depend on how they feel today. Institutions depend on standards that survive whoever walks through the door tomorrow. The same principle applies to a career. If your success depends on daily motivation, your future is fragile. If your success depends on systems, your future becomes resilient. People admire extraordinary performers. History remembers extraordinary systems. The greatest edge isn’t becoming a stronger decision maker. It’s building a decision architecture that remains stronger than you on your weakest day.