Great post, Are you able to recommend any worthwhile material/books/authors that still hold up today?
Looking for beginners to network with
- Thread starter KingOfClubz
- Start date
The variance can be frightening, I know.
This is a huge issue ... perhaps the issue, at the start - knowing whom to listen to and what to read. "Holla" if a little list of the books I found most useful, myself, out of everything I've read, will help.
Atypically (i.e. in a way that may be of limited - if any - usefulness to anyone else) ...
(a) By reading well-recommended, well-established, mainstream, orthodox trading textbooks, published by well-recommended, well-established, mainstream, orthodox publishers (i.e. "peer-reviewed" and "quality controlled") and avoiding internet "information";
(b) By getting in thousands of hours of screen-time after understanding all the basics of probability and statistics that any trader has to learn, to become profitable (so that my first 3 years' experience was genuinely 3 years' experience rather than the same one month's experience repeated 36 times over);
(c) By remaining aware, at all times, that in a field of endeavour with a huge turnover of participants very few of whom ever achieve profitability, most of the readily available "information", and especially the apparent consensuses of opinion, are always far more likely to be misguided than helpful;
(d) By having expert tuition available (from a successful family member in the trade);
(e) By not trading with real money until I'd proven, repeatedly and exhaustively and exhaustingly, on demo accounts, that I could avoid the five classic mistakes of aspiring traders, which are ...
- Not having a genuine edge (for which a common reason is reliance on inadequate, defective or mistaken "information": aspiring traders quite commonly seek short-cuts, imagining that if they just copy something that "works", they'll be able to bypass most of the actually-required education and experience phases);
2. Confusing entry-methods with trading systems (for which a common reason is the deeply mistaken - but widely-held - impression that if one enters at a good time, everything else will somehow, magically "work out well" even without specifically considering trade-management subsequent to the entry- it won't);
3. Under-capitalisation (for which a common reason is a misguided belief-set about what's typically achievable and over what time-frame: most people significantly overestimate what they can achieve quickly and easily, while significantly underestimating what they could achieve slowly and with difficulty);
4. Excessive position-sizing (for which a common reason is just a general lack of statistical/probabilistic knowledge - most people aren't mathematically gifted, and it's really, really difficult to make a success of trading without some real understanding of the statistics and probabilities involved - at least this one shouldn't trouble you too much, as a +EV poker player);
5. Lack of patience, discipline and "psychological aspects" (on which I'm far too Aspergerish to be able or willing to comment further, myself, as I happen to have more patience and discipline than almost anyone else - and nearly pathologically so!).
Those five may also overlap, to some extent. I can't prove a word of it, needless to say, but I very strongly suspect that combinations of these five reasons, collectively, probably account for about 99% of all "aspiring trader failure".
that is a brilliant post.
These have been the most helpful to me, out of everything I've read ...
Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom (Van K. Tharp - an excellent book in spite of its sensationalised title)
Beyond Technical Analysis (Tushar S. Chande)
Profitability & Systematic Trading (Michael Harris)
Understanding Price Action (Bob Volman)
Naked Forex: High-Probability Techniques for Trading Without Indicators (Alex Nekritin & Walter Peters - don't be put off by the title: much of the content applies to futures/options/indices/stocks, as well as to Forex)
Daytrading (Joe Ross - I originally read the earlier edition of this same book, which was then called Trading By The Minute - don't buy both, because they're 95% the same!)
Trading The Ross Hook (Joe Ross - I come back to this again and again and again. It's "basic" and "fundamental" and "just works" because it's based on totally sound and reliable underlying principles to do with buying the dips in uptrends and selling the rallies in downtrends.)
A Mathematician Plays The Market (John Allen Paulos)
Fooled By Randomness (Nassim Nicholas Taleb - which you've probably already seen)
Why People Believe Weird Things (Michael Shermer) - this book and Taleb's, just above, are hugely helpful - albeit indirectly - for "understanding what's going on in forums"!
And these next three go together ... these are the books without which I probably wouldn't be making a living at all, but one wouldn't want to read them "cold", without having read some other Price Action texts first: the content is great but they're hard to read if you're new to Price Action (don't say I didn't warn you!):
Trading Price Action Trends - Technical Analysis of Price Charts Bar by Bar for the Serious Trader (Al Brooks)
Trading Price Action Trading Ranges - Technical Analysis of Price Charts Bar by Bar for the Serious Trader (Al Brooks)
Trading Price Action Reversals - Technical Analysis of Price Charts Bar by Bar for the Serious Trader (Al Brooks)
The problem with trading stocks is that you need high capital to make money on moves, unless you're trading penny stocks but to be completely honest penny stocks is a scam because it lacks liquidity meaning when you want to sell, you might not always find a buyer. You should consider trading forex, because brokers offer you leverage meaning you can make money with small amounts of money. The hardest part for me when I started trading 10 years ago was that information was scarce, and even when you did come across information,90% of it was either garbage, or it was so called "mentors" trying to sell you the dream of getting rich fast, and duping people into buying their system or course. Think about it, if you can make thousands a dollars a day, why are you selling a course lol. Add me on facebook or email if you want to connect, have been doing this for 10 years and hoping you new comers don't get scammed by these bs gurus selling courses, I went through the same things when I first started, and to be honest, the hardest part of starting to trade is knowing what information is "correct" or "usable". The last thing you want to do is read 20 books and find out none of that stuff is applicable or effective in the markets and you endup just wasting your time.
There is a lot of gold in this post. Some get it after months, some take years, most never do. In the end the only thing we can control is the risk.