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Registered User
Joined: 6/6/2005
Posts: 1,157
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I'm reading this book for the second time and just wanted to post up a note about it in case anyone's looking for a new trading book to read. It's not so much a how-to book as it is a complete deconstruction of this guy's psyche as it relates to trading. He was a future's trader in the pit and made and lost a lot of money and is pretty insightful about his mindset,.
One thing he focuses on is finding the loser in a trade. He claims not to have been successful until he began to emotionally deconstruct each one of his trades to see if he was about to take a loser's position or a winners position.
This was pretty eye opening for me. I don't know about anyone else, but when I take a position I tend to think that the market doesn't exist until I place my trade -- LOL. Pretty self centered, but it's pretty true. Yes, I underswtand that the graph I'm looking at represents actual positions but to me it was just a graph.
What this book has helped me do on this second reading (I didn't really "get it" the first time around) is see that there are always many trades in progress. Some of the traders will be currently winners in a trade and others will be losers in the trade. With my soon to be trade will I be buying from the losers or being sold to by the winners, the goal of course being to find the loser and buy from him just as he's giving up on his position.
It's a cut throat view of the market and the writer isn't always pleasant about his description of it and he makes no excuses for his ego, which can get in the way of the writing sometimes, but I have learned a lot about how I feel when I am in trades, how mistakes happen, how we exaserbate them, and how we can improve (through honesty)
While the guy does have a pretty healthy ego he also recounts times when he was the loser (many times early in his career). He talks about working at a trading company and losing for months when one of the other traders came up and gave him a check for $5,000.00 as a thank you. This other trader had been watching him and taking the opposite position to his trades all month. That's what gave him the idea of looking for the loser.
When I look at my own early trades and I imagine taking the other side I can only laugh as I see how successful i would have been! Heck, even if I would have taken the opposite side of my early trades in the Zanger challenge! If you look at it this way, then making money in the market should be easy - because losing it is so easy.
Anyway, enough of my rambling. just thought I would put up a book title in case anyone is interested.
David John Hall
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Registered User
Joined: 12/2/2004
Posts: 1,775
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Sounds like a great read on the mind game we all struggle with as traders, thanks for sharing. You might be interested in a book I read, similar genre I think, Trading in the Zone, by Mark Douglas. The book is purely about taking emotion out of trading as has detailed psychological trading lessons to practice every day during actual trading environment.
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Registered User
Joined: 6/6/2005
Posts: 1,157
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Hi fpetry,
I love Trading in the Zone. It's my favorite trading book outside of How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market. I have so many passages underlined I think I'm going to have to get a new copy of it. LOL
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Registered User
Joined: 12/2/2004
Posts: 1,775
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QUOTE (davidjohnhall) Hi fpetry,
I love Trading in the Zone. It's my favorite trading book outside of How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market. I have so many passages underlined I think I'm going to have to get a new copy of it. LOL
Come to think of it, you may have been the one who originally posted on it and got me to buy it:) Oh yea, love the Darvas book too, one of the more fun books to read.
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