Brian Schad
About the Author
I grew up in Northern California. I saw my mother and father work hard to send my younger sisters and me to private schools. I started working at a very young age and knew once high school was over, I would be on my own. I started planning for my future in my mid-teens.
With a background full of precise critical thinking, decision making, and risk, I successfully learned to trade the commodity futures markets while stationed in San Diego as a Navy Instructor. In the Spring of 1994, my luck turned for the better – but not with the help of shamrocks. It was “coffee” and a chance meeting with the author of a book I was reading – by Larry Williams – that catapulted my trading abilities by leaps-and-bounds.
In the same tour as a Navy “BUDS” Instructor, and near the end of my Navy career, I also had the great fortune to cross-paths with the legendary market researcher Tom DeMark just after reading his initial breakthrough book, The New Science of Technical Analysis. His family happened to be vacationing at the historical Hotel del Coronado near my training facility and we all went on a tour of the Navy SEAL spawning grounds that August weekend which is something they sure enjoyed. Wonderful, wonderful family. Both Larry & Tom have influenced my trading knowledge 100% and without their contribution to this industry, I don’t know where I’d be (well, I do…US Secret Service, FBI, ATF, etc, etc.). It hasn’t been all blue skies and green lights though, believe me… I’ve experienced set-backs in my trading just like anybody else: the first in 1995, March of 1996 (both with my favorite market – 10yr. Treasury Note futures), and then again in 2006, 2011, and most recently in 2015.
I separated from the Navy in 1996 on a Friday afternoon and left a 12-year military career with “nothing” but memories and ambition to prove myself in a completely new field of decision making and financial risks. I went to work bright and early the following Monday morning at a brokerage firm – Opportunities in Options – just north on the California Coast in Ventura County. This was David Caplan’s options specialty firm where I honed my option trading experience and knowledge. I put in 13 hour days and even worked Saturday mornings to excel in this field. Although I later admitted to myself I was on the wrong side of the telephone, I wouldn’t trade the time I spent there for anything. I needed to see “the other side” of the trading industry for myself, and what I learned was priceless.
Watching the markets trade tick-by-tick in the capacity of a commodity broker, you tend to see trading patterns unfold continually and frequently. One day while in my usual commodity broker routine, I felt I needed to provide more professional guidance for my customers because some of them were quite “trigger happy.” I put what I had learned from Larry (up to this point) and my own special market observations on paper to create my own unique rules for market entries and exits – or dare I say “insertions” and “extractions?”…because my Navy instincts were merging with my market convictions.