About Brad

Brad Schaeffer was born in Baltimore, MD in 1967. His father was a Marine lieutenant wounded in the Korean War, whose battles with PTSD prompted his interest both in psychology (particularly as relates to war) and human behavior. He grew up in a Chicago suburb and attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

After college he became a commodities options trader on the open-outcry floors of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and New York Mercantile Exchange as well as an equities options trader on the American Stock Exchange. He now runs a private energy fund and lives with his wife in a New York City suburb where he can occasionally be found playing guitar and piano in local bands.

He is the author of three acclaimed books: the World War II novel Of Another Time and Place, Kindle bestseller The Extraordinary, which tackles autism and PTSD, and Life In The Pits: My Time as a Trader on the Rough-and-Tumble Exchange Floors, his raucous memoir of his time on the commodities trading floors.


Brad’s latest book, A War For Half The World: Why the Real Battle for the Future was Fought in the Pacific, is a historical non-fiction review of the Pacific War, its causes, many battles and events, while offering the thesis that, although the European Theater is the more well-known, celebrated, and commemorated in the Second World War, the Pacific Theater was the more consequential to the modern world. It will be published by Knox Press/Simon & Schuster in February 2027.

He is also a prolific columnist whose eclectic writings can be found on the pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, New York Post, National Review, Daily Wire, The Federalist, The Hill, Washington Examiner, The Blaze, ZeroHedge, and others. He has also appeared as a commentator on markets and history on CNBC, Fox Business, and WW2TV.