The book has something for both the experienced trader and someone who is reading for a mere insight into the trading world. It gives both a summary of the hard work and knock-backs one experiences when starting out and advice on how to ensure your career is one that flourishes and enables you to achieve long and short-term targets alike. Throughout the book traders give their own unique take on: keys to success, trading techniques, risk management, and the best psychological approach to trading. When reading other books which focus on an individual’s career, you find the same key lessons are repeated throughout. In this sense, Market Wizards gives the equivalent to several books worth of content. Specifically, it provides key lessons on those aspects that are important to consider when expanding your trading knowledge.

Like many of the other best trading novels, Market Wizards leaves you with a sense of inspiration; you now know what it takes to improve your all-round trading! It is a comprehensive guide on how to prepare for what lies ahead, using the experience of some of the best traders as your foundation. By leaning on their experience, you can learn vital lessons from the information the market will throw at you on a daily basis. The book is neatly constructed in a question and answer format making it literally “full of answers”. Each clearly labeled chapter covers the traits or style of each trader meaning you can delve into those sections most relevant to you. 

The overriding theme of the book is that despite the differing trading approaches of the traders, each one has similar underlying principles. These are easy to grasp as each trader makes repeated reference to what they feel made them into the traders they are today. The book is written by active traders which gives a real credibility to the content you are reading. It is also riddled with trading psychology and ‘the trader’s mindset’ which means the reader with the ability to spot weaknesses in their own psychological makeup will be able to replace these with the strengths described by these successful traders.

I recommend this book as it provides a well rounded guide to what is required to become a successful trader. It obviously focuses on discipline and familiarity with the markets, but also provides an analysis and evaluation of a range of trading approaches and underlines a series of essential psychological rules.

Many technical indicators have been developed to clarify the relationship between supply and demand. Unfortunately for the new trader, there is an abundance of overcomplicated trading literature which covers the more “exciting” trend or momentum indicators as both traders and academics alike attempt to discover the holy grail of market mastery. However, in our experience, when asked what specific indicators they use, elite traders answer “the simplest ones”. One such group of simple yet highly effective indicators, the least talked about member of the indicator family, is volume. (more...)

Following on from Mind over Markets, this book delves deeper into the auction process and its graphical representation in the form of market profile. This representation is a technical analysis tool used by many market participants across all time frames which organises and structures the market using three key parameters; time, volume and price. (more...)

In this book the author Brett N. Steenbarger explores in detail some of the trappings of the human mind. The idea that psychology plays a pivotal part in being a successful trader isn’t a novel one. This principle is littered all over the pages of almost every trading literature out in the marketplace.

What sets this book apart however is the level of detail the author goes into to explain the actual thought processes that occur when negative impulses are triggered and the provision of a plethora of techniques to interrupt the emergence of such impulses.

The central idea proposed is simple: behaviour is patterned. The author submits that negative patterned behaviour can be interrupted and there are specific effective techniques that can be utilised to achieve this. The author also encourages the reader to form an “Internal Observer” for the purposes of continuous self-monitoring. The idea here is to be constantly aware of one’s emotional state. As these concepts are discussed in detail the reader is also encouraged to embark on a journey of self-discovery and analysis in order to explore the best trading style suited to his psychological predisposition.

Personally I found this book to be very educational in fostering the understanding of the human psyche. The techniques proposed have certainly helped my trading by leaps and bounds. For example, I have come to understand that often a person’s negative patterned behaviour can manifest itself physically, which is why I am more acutely aware of my posture when trading because it helps me observe my emotional state.

In short this book is very easy to read with a narrative that is delivered through a series of some interesting anecdotes. Although slightly lengthy in certain sections, it is also packed with ideas, advice and techniques to help the aspiring trader achieve a higher level of performance. A must read.

Futex Academy give this book a STRONG BUY recommendation

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Way of the Turtle

The Turtle experiment which forms the subject of this enlightening book began as a bet between trading gurus Richard Dennis and William Eckhardt over 20 years ago. Dennis’s hypothesis, in contrast to his colleague’s, was that he could transform almost anyone into a winning trader. (more...)

“Realize that you are playing the coldest, bitterest game in the world...Almost anything is fair in stock trading. The whole idea is to outsmart the other fellow.”

For anyone searching for a holy grail in trading, this book is definitely not for you. However, anyone looking to understand market dynamics and the drivers of supply and demand within a market, I would recommend that you read this book immediately. (more...)