Education

Practical Education
I believe anyone can improve their trading.

If you’re new to trading, or looking to put your toe back into the water, then I believe I can help.

My practical educational services comprise a number of levels;

I compliment the above with;

My Educational Pathway
If you’d like to learn how I go about my business of trading, the best course of action to follow is;

  1. Purchase a copy of my books The Universal Principles of Successful Trading (Wiley, 2010) and The Universal Tactics of Successful Trend Trading (Wiley, 2020). For a small price you’ll know straight away whether or not my ideas resonate.
  2. If after reading my books you wish to continue learning from me the next step would be to take my introductory The Truth About Trading course. The course contains 9 hours of videos and it will represent the best AUD149.99 you have ever spent on your trading education.
  3. At this point you will have both valuable trading knowledge and a practical and serviceable trading methodology. For generally around AUD225 (my books + course) you will be well on your way.
  4. As your account balance grows you should start to acquire/develop additional trading strategies. Trading a portfolio of strategies provides traders the benefit of diversification which lessens the risk of individual strategy failure if/when it occurs.  I make a number of my strategies available from this website.
  5. If you’d like to acquire one of my strategies you have a choice of two approaches. You can either purchase access to my intermediate Pathway to Sustainable Trading course which contains 4 fully disclosed 100% mechanical strategies or alternatively you can purchase individual 100% mechanical models off my site. My Pathway to Sustainable Trading course videos represents the best value as you would be acquiring 4 strategies as opposed to only acquiring one strategy at a time if you purchase them individually off my site.
  6. Alternatively, from time to time I hold Workshops which you can choose to attend. If you’d like to be alerted to when I’ll be holding my next Workshop please contact me by email and request “ADD me to your email list”.

My Books 1: The Universal Principles of Successful Trading

My educational help begins with my book The Universal Principles of Successful Trading (Wiley, 2010). It’s become an international best seller having now been translated into Polish, German, Korean, Japanese and simplified and orthodox Chinese.

It’s inexpensive and within it, I share my philosophy and approach to trading.

And guess what, unlike the majority of other trading book, I don’t discuss/review/explain in detail any entry technique. Not one. In my opinion, day to day combat instructions (setups, entries, stops and exits) are secondary to the importance of understanding and embracing the primary universal principles of successful trading. Like building, you need a strong foundation of trading knowledge before you can hope to achieve and maintain sustainable trading. It’s a good book.

It’s the first port of call for anyone looking for my assistance to help them.

My Books 2: The Universal Tactics of Successful Trend Trading

THE MISSING CHAPTER

With my previous book, The Universal Principles of Successful Trading (UPST), I took a holistic approach to discussing the process of trading that follows a number of immutable core principles. Principles that are applicable to all traders regardless of the market, instrument and timeframe, technique or analysis they follow. Following a good process of trading is primary to the secondary issues of markets, instruments, timeframes, techniques and analysis.

Being a holistic-type book I spent little time on the most interesting part of trading—the analysis and development of trading strategies. I spent little to no time on dissecting market structure, identifying appropriate setups and applying sensible trading plans. UPST is a more holistic, theoretical type book.

This book is a more practical, how-to guidebook on trend trading.

It is a natural extension and compliment to UPST, where I take the principles I shared regarding methodology and apply them in a practical manner to investigate, review and develop a robust trend-trading methodology. Although I wrote extensively about ‘methodology’ in UPST, I did not provide a practical turn-key strategy example to demonstrate my ideas. This book provides the practical turn-key strategy example to do just that, to demonstrate what I was saying. To give you an example of what I discussed in UPST.

I suppose you could view this book as the missing ‘practical’ chapter of UPST that will provide an example of an objective and independent trading methodology.

Introductory Video Course – The Truth About Trading
Building on my books I have developed a 9 hour introductory video course called The Truth About Trading.

It’s an unfortunate fact that much of what has been written and spoken about trading flat out doesn’t work.

In my course I help to shed light on what does work and what doesn’t work in trading. I identify the two key factors that determine trading success and share the singularly most important formulae in trading. Along the way I demonstrate the correct way to develop a positive expectancy methodology that is neither curve-fitted or data mined. To help students navigate their way through the complex world of technical analysis I discuss the strengths and weakness of many popular trading tools before revealing my proprietary Universal Tool Kit. Following completion of the course students will have a good understanding as to what doesn’t work in trading and why and what does work and why. They’ll experience their own personal “light bulb” or “ha,ha” moment.  Coming away from the course students will have collected a number of important methodology building blocks that will allow them to construct their own robust positive expectancy strategies.

For those students looking for additional strategy ideas to diversify their trading they can certainly consider purchasing access to my intermediate Pathway to Sustainable Trading video course (which contains 4 strategies) or they can individually purchase the simple mechanical models I make available from my site.

Intermediate Video Course – Pathway to Sustainable Trading
Building on my introductory The Truth About Trading course I developed an intermediate Pathway to Sustainable Trading course.

It’s a step by step pathway I encourage everyone to follow if they hope to achieve sustainable trading where they can expect to make money not only in the present, but into the future and beyond.

This course includes all the material contained within my introductory The Truth About Trading course.

In addition to The Truth About Trading material my Pathway to Sustainable Trading course teaches 4 fully disclosed turn-key trading methodologies.

If traders are looking for additional strategy ideas purchasing access to this course’s videos represents the best value for money as 4 strategies are included, as opposed to purchasing individual strategy models off my site.

For those students looking for additional trading ideas to diversify their trading they can certainly consider one of the simple mechanical models I make available from my site.

Advanced Video Course – Strategy Building, introducing Universal Bandit and PortX³
My advance course Strategy Building builds upon my intermediate Pathway to Sustainable Trading course and focuses solely on Methodology and Portfolio Construction.

[Note: The Truth About Trading and Pathway to Sustainable Trading extensively cover Money Management and Trading Psychology.]

For Methodology it teaches the process I follow to develop strategies. Taking the tools and strategy components taught within The Truth About Trading and Pathway to Sustainable Trading (and one idea from Universal Trader), my course demonstrates the process  I follow to create models. The course demonstrates and details in depth, by following a sensible process, how I developed Universal Bandit.

Universal Bandit, as students learn, is a pocket rocket short-term 100% mechanical strategy designed solely for the typical private trader in mind.

For Portfolio Construction my advance course teaches students my proprietary small portfolio construction methodology, PortX³. A world class methodology for constructing micro portfolios absent of “data-mining”.

 

My Models
My educational effort continues with a number of simple 100% mechanical models that I make available off this web site. While my Pathway to Sustainable Trading and Strategy Building courses provide the necessary journey every trader should take my models offer a destination. A particular way to trade.

Although I reference my educational methodologies as “models” please understand it’s only a label of convenience.

My models represent a complete education on how to trade a particular part of market structure which include;

  • Retracements,
  • Breakouts,
  • Mean-reversions, and
  • Top and bottom picking.

Each model represents a complete education on;

  • When to trade,
  • Whether to buy or sell,
  • Where to enter,
  • Where to place stops and
  • Where to exit.

The models represent the educational theory on how to trade.

I compliment the theory with a practical “how to” Daily Study Guide.

My Daily Study Guides
My educational services don’t end with the models. It continues with practical live trading through each model’s Daily Study Guide.

Each model comes with a 30-day complimentary subscription to a Daily Study Guide where owners can watch the developer (me) trade their own model in real markets, with real money, in real time. The Daily Study Guide is designed to offer practical educational instruction on how the model is applied in practical day to day trading. Its objective is to help reinforce owner’s knowledge and understanding of the model/methodology they purchase.

Students get to watch their teacher trade what he teaches.

Insights
From time to time I share insights on how I review trading ideas. I hope the practical instruction will encourage other traders to do the same.

Presentations
From time to time I get invited to present to traders.

Over the years I’ve had the pleasure to address thousands of traders throughout the Asia Pacific region including Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, India and China.

But please note that as I’ve got older I’m tending to accept less and less invitations.

Workshops
From time to time I’ll run an annual Workshop where I’ll teach a particular model/s and usually follow it up with 90-days of live trading.

Copyright © 2001 - 2023 Brent Penfold Futures Pty Ltd

Disclaimer: Figures shown on this website are hypothetical showing the results of trading 1 futures contract per signal. $50 has been deducted for brokerage and commission. Please be aware hypothetical, past or actual results DO NOT indicate future success. Hypothetical results may under, or over compensate, for the impact, if any, of certain market conditions, such as but not limited to, poor liquidity, poor execution, competitive or expensive brokerage etc.

Active trading carries a high level of risk and may not be suitable for all people. The high degree of leverage provided by futures can work against you as well as work for you. Before deciding to trade you should carefully consider your investment objectives, level of experience, and risk appetite. The possibility exists that you could sustain a loss of some or all of your risk capital and therefore you should not trade money that you cannot afford to lose. You should be aware of all the risks associated with active trading and seek advice from an independent financial adviser if you have any doubts.

Under Chapters 6D and 7 of Australia’s Corporations Act 2001 I am authorised to carry on a financial services business to provide general advice on futures to Australian wholesale clients. Accordingly any opinions, conclusions and or other information expressed by myself do not contain personal advice. Visitors will need to with, or without the assistant of a person licensed to give personal advice, to determine whether any general advice expressed by myself is appropriate for them given their particular needs, financial situation and investment objectives.