I hope all is well in your world.
With the sun shining, I thought it would be a good time to suggest some holiday reading. Whether you’re off abroad or sticking with Blighty, I hope the following books about trading are of interest…
Holiday reading – books about trading
Good introductions:
The Financial Spread Betting Handbook: Malcolm Pryor. A decent introduction to spread betting, especially for those looking to trade stocks over the slightly longer term.
The Way to Trade: John Piper. How to start trading with the right approach.
The Naked Trader: Robbie Burns. A fairly good place to start for complete beginners. Lacking in the nitty gritty, but rightly a popular read.
The next step:
Winning Spread Betting Strategies: Malcolm Pryor. A good follow up to his first book. The right mix of specific trading strategies professional trading information. Best of medium term end of day traders.
Binary Trading: John Piper. A very good introduction to the niche field of binary trading. John knows his stuff and there is plenty to take away from this, John’s 2nd book on the subject. The first was a general introduction, but you could probably skip to this one.
Come into my trading room: Dr Alexander Elder. Insights from the world of a genuine trading professional. Well written and very useful. Highly recommended.
Systems trading for spread betting: Gary Ford: How to create your own trading system from scratch. Shows you how to use the excellent Ninja Trader. Highly recommended.
Trading Psychology:
Reminiscences of a stock operator: Edwin Lefevre. Fictionalised account of the early years of Jeese Livermore. A great story and apparently a major source for many of the market wizards interviewed by Jack Schwager.
Trading In the Zone: Mark Douglas. The best book on trading psychology available. Highly recommended.
Black swans/ Fooled by randomness: Nassim Talleb. He’s up his own backside and he’s not as right as he thinks he is, but still worthwhile reading these books to understand where many traders go wrong.
Mistake were made (but not by me): Tarvis and Aronson. Ok not specifically trading, but a fascinating book on why we are all so prone to make stupid decisions then try to justify them. Highly recommended read for trading and life in general.
Credit crunch/ general economics
Liar’s Poker: Michael Lewis. Semi fictional account of Lewis’ time at Salmon Brothers. Written years before the credit crunch, this highly entertaining read details the genesis of the mess we’re in today.
When Genius failed: Roger Lowenstein. Details the rise and fall of hedge fund Long Term Capital Management. Again, it shows how lessons are not learned in finance and that memories are only as long as the last bull market . Well written and a real page turner (for a geek like me anyway).
Apocalypse Roulette: The Lethal World of Derivatives: Richard Thomson. Over a decade old but still an enthralling read. All the warning signs were there with the credit crunch, but the danger was ignored by the banks and the regulators. Could have been written last week. Hat tip to the SBC member who pointed me in the direction of this one.
Bailout Nation: Barry Ritholtz. Only half way through this but it is compelling reading and pulls no punches in identifying who was to blame for the credit crunch.
As a little tip, if you want to preview a book, go to www.books.google.com and do a search. Many books have a limited preview available.
System update
I hear that my review of Wilson P’s TenKei trading in the latest WRP has been well received. Wilson has been swamped, in fact demand was so great that apparently Wilson’s paypal account was temporarily shut down! The full review is available in the latest What Really Profits, but in summary Wilson received glowing feedback from my beta testers before he went live. The system is simple, trading early morning moves for a few points and based on the testing so far, works. But what impressed me so much wasn’t the system per se, but Wilson. Tremendous customer service, enthusiasm and energy.
Worth a look. Canonbury boss Nick Laight tells me he’s impressed by TenKei and thinks Wilson is undervaluing it at £97. With a money back offer, it’s worth a look if you’re on the hunt for a starter system.
Other than this, I’ve been keeping an eye on the usual fair from the Forex Mafia ™.
The latest promotions are for the Surefire Trading Challenge, which as I have mentioned before is to be ignored. As well as this, the FAP turbo guys were about to launch FAPTurbo Swiss for a high fee of around $900, but this has been pulled has they ran into problems in testing.
Anything else catching your eye out there?
My trades
As I wrote last week, I got tempted by a small long trade on the S&P 500 on Tuesday and I’m rather pleased with how it worked out. Unfortunately it was more a trade that swelled the ego rather than the coffers because I have been keeping such trades small. Couldawouldashoulda.
Enjoying my forex trades at the moment. I shared with WRP readers a neat mini system for trading forex moves that look like they’ve run out of steam. I’ve been trading this and similar mini systems in conjunction with other inputs and it appears to be working well. I’m working on a range of mini systems at the moment and hope to share my findings with you soon.
This week’s hot trading buttons
Around midday on Wednesday, we get the warm up to US Non Farm Payrolls with ADP employment data. It could be a volatile period with ISM manufacturing and pending home sales following this just a couple of hours later.
Later on Wednesday we have some central banking action with a number of MPC members speaking and the BOE credit conditions survey due. These are followed by the ECB press conference. US Non Farm payroll is brought forward one day to Thursday because of the bank holiday.
Trading wisdom
“The best way to keep money in perspective is to have some” Louis Rukeyser
