Hi
I have bought 30 books on trading over the last 10 years.The information I got from these books is no better than information freely available on the net.Unfortunately books are written by people who make a living from writing books, they do not make a living from trading.
95% traders lose and these authors are 95% of the club
None of the thirty books clearly explains the way to profitability.They write theories on how to make money, if only these authors knew how to , they do not know how to make money from trading.Their theories do not work.
What is your view?
My favourite and most useful book is "Trading currency cross rates "
Most of the other books were written by useless traders , and I learnt nothing from them.
I submit there's a great variability in the standard of trading books and their usefulness - that's not confined to the trading subject though. IMHO they are
just part of the learning / acquiring knowledge process and until you become reasonably knowledgeable
and have established that you can successfully trade, then it's very difficult to make an assessment. Couple this with all the trading styles / markets (perhaps only one or a few fit your personality) and the hundreds of books out there and you can see the problem.
There are always the standard recommendations - but what if the people who recommend books have long-forgotten what it was like starting out? I found that you just have to get stuck in to
all the knowledge you can lay your hands on, and as you go on and listen to various people and authors you begin to get a sense of what it's all about. Once you start putting some of it in to practice you will tend to learn more quickly - your wallet will help you in this!
My view on a book is: if I get just one idea or it leads me down a new avenue of exploration then it's worth it. But you've got to put in the work (as in any arena) in order to get to the stage where you can make your own assessment of how it could apply (or not) to you.
I'm sure there are many trading authors who are better at writing than trading but if you take this view to its limit then you might assume that there are no decent textbooks out there at all. GBS's "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach." may have some resonance but it's by no means a universal law.
I've read dozens of trading books over the years and disposed of most of them. I found they were useful in four categories and basically in this order - though there is always an amount of crossover:
(1) the technical books - eg how to buy a share, how to read a chart, what is S/R
(2) the management books - eg Risk, position sizing, drawdown etc
(3) the "war stories" - Wizards, Livermores, Leesons etc.
(4) the "psychology" books - ie how to manage oneself to get the best out of your system.
I'm wary of recommending a best or most useful book because my tastes and expertise have changed over the years (I used to like "Noddy" books years ago but find "Big Ears" a bit underwhelming these days). I think if you don't understand a book and you can't logically discuss with yourself its pros and cons then its best to put it on one side for later (possibly because you've reached the limit of your current brainpower or knowledge) - it's surprising what a re-read 6 months later can achieve.
Having said the above, a current favourite is Mike Elvin's [think he wrote a T2W article] "Financial Risk Taking - An Intro to to the Psychology of Trading and behavioural Finance". You don't have to have this book to trade successfully but it is really interesting and wide-ranging, and I suspect that a lot of such knowledge builds up in the sub-conscious and makes things work better.
What I have found is that an awful lot of info that used to be book-only is now on the web & that can save you lots of time and dosh. But be careful - crap is still crap whether it's a fancy electronic manifestation or an authoritative (expensive?) book or a system seller / Guru - you have to be the judge.
