Come Into My Trading Room A Complete Guide to Trading

Posted by admin on Saturday, May 2, 2009 · 2 Comments

You can be free. You can live and work anywhere in the world,
be independent from the routine and not answer to anybody.”
With those words I began my first book, Trading for a Living. One of
my great pleasures in the years since its publication has been meeting
and becoming friends with people who became free thanks to successful
trading.
Several times a year I run a Traders’ Camp, a week of intensive
classes at remote resorts. I enjoy my campers’ successes. A stockbroker
became a full-time trader, closed his business, and moved to Rio to
pursue a life-long interest in Latin women. A psychologist became
such a successful options writer that she paid for an early retirement
for her husband and moved with him to the Virgin Islands to become
an expert in what she calls synchronous hammocking. A man bought
a mountain in Vermont and trades from the house he built on its top.
I wish all students could succeed, but it’s not that simple.
How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb? Only
one—but the bulb has to want to change.
To succeed in trading you need several innate traits without which
you shouldn’t even start. They include discipline, risk tolerance, and
facility with numbers. A big fat guy who is often drunk and can’t kick
a cigarette habit is unlikely to make a good trader—he lacks discipline.
A nitpicker who obsesses over each dime is too tense to live with market
risks. A daydreamer who cannot do simple arithmetic on the run
becomes lost when prices change rapidly.
In addition to discipline, risk tolerance, and ease with numbers, successful
trading requires 3 M’s—Mind, Method, and Money. Mind means
developing psychological rules that will keep you calm amidst the noise of the markets. Method is a system of analyzing prices and
developing a decision-making tree. Money refers to money management,
which means risking only a small part of your trading capital on
any trade; think of the way a submarine is divided into many compartments
so that it won’t sink if one section becomes flooded—you
have to structure your account this way. Psychology, trading tactics,
money management—you can learn these skills.
How long will it take you to become a competent trader and how
much will it cost? What rules do you set, what methods do you use,
and how do you split your trading capital? What should you study first,
second, and third? What markets should you trade, and how much
money can you expect to make? If these questions interest you, you
picked the right book.
You can succeed in trading. It has been done before, and it’s being
done right now, today, by people who started from scratch, learned to
trade and are making a good living at it. The best ones make fortunes.
Others fail, out of ignorance or lack of discipline. If you work through
this book, ignorance will not be a problem, and you will hear me yell
at you again and again, pointing you towards disciplined, responsible,
professional trading.
Trading is a journey of self-discovery. If you enjoy learning, if you
are not scared of risk, if the rewards appeal to you, if you are prepared
to put in the work, you have a great project ahead of you. You will
work hard and enjoy the discoveries you’ll make along the way.
I wish you success. Now let us begin…. …