Good book/e-book/course/program on trading psychology?

[fabiansc]

Hi guys,

My name is Fabian and I've been trading for around two years. Unfortunately, up to now I've been studying only from the worst scumbags in the trading world. Two from my country and the infamous Tim Sykes.
After seeing all those thieves, I've decided the best way to learn to trade is to learn a bit of everything and then start to apply and develop my way on my own using a demo.

Anyways, in the part of Trading psychology, I'd appreciate it if you could give me a name of a good book or online course that deals with trading psychology.

If you have something recommended in general for trading I'll be more than happy to hear your advices.

Thanks in advance,
Fabian

 

[malaguti]

Hi guys,

My name is Fabian and I've been trading for around two years. Unfortunately, up to now I've been studying only from the worst scumbags in the trading world. Two from my country and the infamous Tim Sykes.
After seeing all those thieves, I've decided the best way to learn to trade is to learn a bit of everything and then start to apply and develop my way on my own using a demo.

Anyways, in the part of Trading psychology, I'd appreciate it if you could give me a name of a good book or online course that deals with trading psychology.

If you have something recommended in general for trading I'll be more than happy to hear your advices.

Thanks in advance,
Fabian

although it doesn't answer specifically, here's my advice..
I read a couple of books on the subject, one of them being supposedly one of the better ones..Elder's "come into my trading room". It did absolutely nothing for me. I was already by then in a state of doubt, and questioning every trade etc, quitting early, leaving losing trades to run. So when a book comes along and is effectively saying "don't do this" without some sort of methodology to actually get you to stop is pretty much useless. Thats how I interpreted the book. Possibly others found it a great book, but I would doubt that a beaten up trader, became a confident trader after reading it.
What turned my doubts into confidence, and my losing trades into just another statistic (thats all it is now) was finally having faith in a system that worked. This came from trial and error in the entry, stop loss, exit targets etc.
I have absolute faith now in my methodology, and thats the only reason why im no longer beating myself up.
So long story short, take the time in getting a good entry and an exit you are comfortable with, without thinking "I should have exited earlier, or later". rock solid faith that you will be able to enter again, and faith that even 10 losing trades in a row will not stop you from pulling the trigger again. That's what I'd be working on if I were you
good luck though

 

[random12345]

although it doesn't answer specifically, here's my advice..
I read a couple of books on the subject, one of them being supposedly one of the better ones..Elder's "come into my trading room". It did absolutely nothing for me. I was already by then in a state of doubt, and questioning every trade etc, quitting early, leaving losing trades to run. So when a book comes along and is effectively saying "don't do this" without some sort of methodology to actually get you to stop is pretty much useless. Thats how I interpreted the book. Possibly others found it a great book, but I would doubt that a beaten up trader, became a confident trader after reading it.
What turned my doubts into confidence, and my losing trades into just another statistic (thats all it is now) was finally having faith in a system that worked. This came from trial and error in the entry, stop loss, exit targets etc.
I have absolute faith now in my methodology, and thats the only reason why im no longer beating myself up.
So long story short, take the time in getting a good entry and an exit you are comfortable with, without thinking "I should have exited earlier, or later". rock solid faith that you will be able to enter again, and faith that even 10 losing trades in a row will not stop you from pulling the trigger again. That's what I'd be working on if I were you
good luck though

Malaguti, you know you're singing to my own personal choir with posts like this. That psychological doubt a lot of people feel is actually a deep-seated and quite reasonable knowledge that their system is under-tested, half baked and probably a load of shi*e.

It tends to fade when you enjoy sustained live-tested success... and that takes a long time to come.

This getting over the psychology nonsense seems like a good money maker for book writers etc, but I can't think of anything worse than convincing yourself to brazenly trade a crap method.

 

[fabiansc]

Thank you guys for your responses.
I appreciate it.

I believe both of you are right, yet, the question is how do you develop your own trading methodology?
I agree that once you have a strategy that you 100% believe in and you know its statistics and you know it works, you're set.

However, unless you learned your system for someone else and you saw it in action enough that you know it works, you'll need to get pass the "psychological part" in order to really place the orders as your beta-strategy suggests, don't you think?(I mean my self-developed trading plan, I plan on trading on my own, not to build a software)

Maybe my question should be how do you develop your own methodology and method after going over a technical analysis course? What do you think is needed in order to develop your own trading plan?

Thanks

 

[the hare]

Maybe my question should be how do you develop your own methodology and method after going over a technical analysis course? What do you think is needed in order to develop your own trading plan?

The short answer, buy Van Tharps trade your way to financial freedom and follow his 10 step method (better still steal the book)

What I think is needed is irrelevant really, because I am not you. We probably have very different outlooks on risk, different strengths, different weaknesses, different skills etc etc. maybe you think the market can be predicted, maybe you think its random, etc etc, all of those issues will influence how you approach developing a method. the way I approached system design may or may not be suitable for you so I won't go there.

My only advice would be do what seams to make sense. If you read Tharps book there's zero detail, and everything's rather vague, (probably because he's a clueless vendor who by his own admission doesn't trade) but even if he did, I doubt that would change things very much.

You just have to get started and do it. Trade a moving average cross if you must, but you have to start doing something that gets you actually engaged and thinking, and trying out a bunch of things.

 

[fabiansc]

Thanks for the answer
Up to now, I just tried to follow what I've been taught, it turns out that the 3 places I went to learn didn't really have an interest that I'll succeed so it's the first time I'm starting "from scratch"
I'm going over some courses and books and I guess that in a few weeks, I'll open a demo account and start trying some things.
I was just looking for a methodology for creating a trading plan, but I guess I'm just interested in spoon-feeding, I'll have to determine on my own under my own criterias when is a system profitable and usable for the long term. Thanks for the answers

If anyone has another guidance tips I'll be more than happy to hear them.

Thanks

 

[MalcolmSm1th]

One of the things about trading or stock selection is that it's easy to work out when to get in. The getting out is where the problems lie because it seems that a lot of people don't know when to get out.

I've read a few of Malcolm Pryor's books, "Charting Tools for Spread Betting" in particular and what I like about that book is that he explains how he gets into a position and his rules for getting out are hard and fast.

Because of his hard rules, not forgetting the stops of course, then it's easy to go through the process. Yes, I know that this doesn't directly answer the psychology part but I feel that it goes a long way to how I deal with such matters.

At least it works with how I operate; I find that if I reduce the uncertainties (which is why I won't play areas that I don't understand such as forex and the like) then everything becomes clearer to me.

Because I use methods which have strong rules to get in and when to get out I feel more confident that I know what I am doing. And that level of confidence it gives me helps me over any psychological wobbles - because I know my entry, I know my risk and I know what to watch for to get me out regardless of making a profit or not.

This may not work for you but it works for me. Because I know what I ought to be doing I find that I am making more winning trades and better long terms stock selections. It's when I start to go against my rules that I go to pot and make losses because I don't know what I am doing and then panic and uncertainty creeps in.

This is my view on things and, of course, yours may differ.

 

[pboyles]

it turns out that the 3 places I went to learn didn't really have an interest that I'll succeed
)

You're kidding, who were they?

 

[fabiansc]

You're kidding, who were they?

I was a member of Timothy Sykes and saw all his videos. The guy is a ****** marketting genius but he's the biggest abuser I've seen i the stock market. While he's statistics are around 80-85%, he's real students statistics are much much lower, especially when using he's alerts, he buys penny stocks with very low volume, after him like 1,000 members of his service buys them, the stock goes up 30-40 cents from those purchases, he sells his 10k stocks to additional buyers and lowers the price so that eventually only a small percentage can gain from his trades, most get to be around 20-30 cents down on every cents (talked to few of the students, not only myself) luckily within two weeks I was already out.

The other other two are Israeli companies (I live in Israel), one of them is a very popular place that teaches basic technical analysis and wins big time with their alert service as well. and another school which is smaller and teach mainly to buy breakout is 5 min charts, the thing is he teaches to put the stop right at your entry price. The problem with both companies is that their also hiding the fact that the recommeneded broker belongs to them so on each deal they make quite a lot of money without the real need to actually trade.


Thanks for the advice, I'll pick that book up as well. I really thing that strict rules is very important in trading.