Trading for a Living: Psychology, Trading Tactics, Money Management

I'm known as the Simon Cowell of book reviews, so when I give 5 stars people know it's not a fluff review or because the author is a friend or family. And this is a 5 star review. The only people who would say this book is only for beginners, must be beginners or near beginners themselves because they can't yet understand what Dr. Elder is conveying in this book. It's not their fault because you have to have a certain level of experience to even recognize what Dr. Elder is revealing in this book. To the beginner, the actual trading part of this book is just a run down of indicators and how to use the indicators. He does explain how the indicators work in their basic technical form, but that is just their face value. The genius of Dr. Elder is he first talks about how markets works first - ie it's people that move the markets, therefore look at indicators as revealing more clues to price action. Beginners would just see the technical indicator sections of this book as a simple presentation. That couldn't be further from the truth. You have to look at indicators in a way that gives you subtle, but important insights into price action, and use them accordingly. People who say indicators don't work simply don't know how to use them. Hint: Dr. Elder points out the most effective way to use indicators is to use them to find divergence, and there is a lot more to divergence then you might think, and if you really read this book, you will understand what I am talking about. Dr. Elder also points out the fallacy of Gurus. Gurus don't make a living from trading - they make their living from selling their courses and training. One of the most famous Guru was Gann. Gann was nothing but a scammer. We all grew up hearing about the myth of Gann and how he was this amazing trader making millions, and people are still trying to promote Gann as legit so they can sell their own books and courses around Gann's supposed effective methods. Gann was a fraud, and Dr. Elder didn't just analyze his methods and make his own conclusions about Gann. Dr. Elder went to the source and interviewed Gann's son, and Gann's own son verified his father couldn't trade and made all of his money from selling his courses and self promoting himself as a great trader. We should all be grateful for Dr. Elder for exposing this fraud. Gann fan lines are nothing but made up silly fantasy lines. It just doesn't get more advanced than Dr. Elder. Some people say this book is for beginners, yet they can't come up with an author more advanced. Buy this book, read it, learn it, trade, then read it again and you will start seeing things you didn't see before. Great book.

If you read and follow the principles in this book you will make enough money on your trades to pay for this book many times over. I have been active in the market for years (Averaging <20% return a year) and I agree with this author completely having lived out the greed, fear, and mistakes he talks about.Read this book and save yourself a lot of unnecessary losses. The first section of this book teaches you the psychology of successful trading: 1). You must be committed to being a trader for the long haul. 2). Learn all that you can, but be skeptical, go with what works. 3). Develop a method for analyzing the market. 4). Develop a money management plan. 5). Do not get greedy and rush trades. 6). Understand that you can be your own worst enemy through greed, fear, and emotions. 7).You must change to be a winner. He introduces his own trading tactic of "Elder-ray" and also force index, triple screen,parabolic, and channel trading. In the Risk Management section he covers the most important strategy of when to exit? He suggests setting a stop-loss on every trade at it's past days low and if it ticks up to reset a protect profit stop at 50% of your paper profit. He also suggests never risking more than 2% of your account on any one trade, and never losing more than 6-8% of your account in any one month. He makes a great point that all true professionals in any field do not count there money daily. Traders should focus on their trading not their daily paper profits. Buy this book, you will profit from it, whether you are a beginner or an advanced trader, it will make you more professional and logical.

This is the 5th book I read on trading. The author is very entertaining and there were a lot of sections were I actually laughed out loud. The author assiociates traders who loose with alcoholics. He believes that loosers have a condition and can't help themselves from loosing like alcoholics who can't stop drinking. For instance losers will cashed out of profitable positions to fund their loosing ones or when they start loosing they will double up on the loosing position. According the the author 9 out of 10 new traders will be out of trading in less than 6 months because of this loosing mentality. But the market would not be what it is today if it was not for these loosers. You have to decide if you are a winner or one of the looser mentioned in the book. The first third of the book focused on the psychology of trading and it was very well written. The middle third of the book talked about the technical ascpect of the book and to be honest the author kind of lost me there. The technical part of the book was a little much for me, it talked about a lot of system traders used back in the day. I have developed my own system and this part of the book really confused me and I recommend skipping it if you already have a system. The last third of the book talked about money management. This part of the book was good and very informative. I have a rule where I would get out of a trade when I was down 10% but the author recommends getting out of trade when you are down 2% of your over all equity. For example if you have 30k in your account you should get out when you are $600 on a trade. This makes much sense and I will incorporate this stategy in my system. All in all it's a good book and I recommend reading it if you plan to be a fullmtime trader. The technical part of the is a bit much but if you do not have a strategy it might be worth a quick read otherwise i would skip this section. Good luck Dmonk.

I don't think this is necessarily a book for beginners. However, it's a book that beginners should read. You will learn that it's all about hard work, and that the folks who sell you systems are selling you fool's gold. (I learnt this the hard way, and then had it demonstrated by my mentor.) You'll also learn exactly why you will fail, and what to do to turn yourself into a successful trader. One of the best and most comprehensive books I've read on trading - and that's saying something. It was expensive (£55, c.$80) but worth every penny. The author is a doctor who escaped to the US from the former Soviet Union, became a psychiatrist and then a very successful trader. I bought this book for its comprehensive section on trading psychology. Alex Elder tells it like it is, in very plain terms. If you trade, you are your biggest enemy. He tells you what to do about it from within quite a harsh frame of reference: that of Alcoholics Anonymous. It misses out on that fifth star because it has not been updated since 1992. The result is that it's very much a pencil-and-paper approach to trading signals, and there's no mention of the internet at all. That didn't bother me too much, but I think it would make some readers feel a bit robbed. On the plus side, he actually talks through the psychology of all the indicators. For me, that was a huge bonus. Even though I'm not big on indicators, the people I trade against are - so I have to know them and read the moves of the crowd. Actually, I'm going to give this five stars. It's a rare thing for me to start re-reading a book on the same day I finished it.

I loved this book even though it isn't very dip about the subject it is tackling, but great for a beginner, easy to follow and very honest. I practiced with some of the ideas in this book with great results. I recommend, it is great value for money.

Very interesting book, easy to read, simple but serious approach. I strongly recommend it to any one is approaching trading.

Libro in inglese.. bello per chi deve iniziare

I like it