Electronic Day Traders’ Secrets: Learn From the Best of the Best DayTraders
From Amazon.com
The literati of the day-trader universe, George West and Mark Friedfertig helped to popularize day trading with their bestseller, The Electronic Day Trader. Their following book, Electronic Day Trader’s Secrets, written with Jonathan Burton, is a collection of interviews with 13 successful day traders. Whereas their previous book looked at the mechanics of day trading, this book considers the people who trade. And what’s most striking about the traders interviewed is not their various trading philosophies, but what they have in common: male gender (childish men–half under 30); similar backgrounds (most were either brokers or floor traders before they became day traders); the stocks they trade (NASDAQ high flyers: Intel, Cisco, Amazon.com, Yahoo, Dell); the money they lost when they started (lots–Eric Fromen is typical: he lost $53,000 in his first six months of trading); and their contemporary success (why else would they be interviewed?).
With chestnuts such as “Flexibility is a key to successful day trading” and “Controlling your losses is key to not digging yourself into a hole,” the book may ring hollow to those weathered in the art of speculation (consider Edwin Lefevre’s classic Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, instead). But if you’re looking for a major way correction to your contemporary day-trading tack, you should find useful guidance here.
Though, those uninitiated to day trading should watch for sandbars. This book dangles the likelihood of lucrative careers for successful day traders, which for many is simply an oxymoron: matching wits with Wall Street’s best (not to mention these guys) can be the quickest way to the poorhouse. But if you fit the profile above, have money to burn, want a quick and exciting career, or are just simply curious, Electronic Day Trader’s Secrets is a tantalizing glimpse into what interviewee Jim Shaw describes as “the church of what’s happening now.” –Harry C. Edwards
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This book is very nearly as fascinating as the Market Wizard books. You may not be able to apply some of the technical techniques that the interviewees used anymore, but the psychological insights they give will always be applicable. If you’re hooked on trader biographies and their deal with to the market, as well as small-term trading, I reflect you’ll take pleasure in this book. Like the Wizards books it hammers in the importance of discipline. Most of the subjects trade a small another way, but they all learned risk parameters ahead of schedule on. Granted, we don’t know how they did outside of a bull market, but the point was that they did far better than the norm during the market of their time. And how you do in the present in relationship to the general market is what measures your routine whether you’re a day trader or a mutual fund manager.
I’m more of a swing/intermediate-term trader, but I found some of the technical and psychological insights caring in picking intraday entry/exit points.
I paid $.90 for this book used – that’s right, 90 cents – and I’d have to say it’s the best book bargain I’ve ever bought. I had a hard time putting it down.
Rating: 5 / 5
The author book is a composite of interviews with a variety of day traders. The book follows a question and answer style of writing. Actual technics and methodologies come secondary and are replaced with interview narratives about to pattern recognition, psychology of trading, and experience. Each chapter highlights a different trader who shares their tale of success or failure. Most having survived ahead of schedule trading mistakes and bloated egos managing to change lossing strategies into winning reactions. Most of the traders emphasis flexibility, game plans, pattern recognition, understanding the trading crowd, price and volume, risk managment, and staying ahead of the pack. The book is simple reading and selects from a select group of day trader for opinions. Most of the assumptions are contrary to the book “The Master Swing Trader: Tools and Techniques to Profit from Outstanding Small-Term Trading Opportunities”. This tells me the author is interviewing the celebrities of day trading. Warning chance! If a new trader followed their trading advice it is likely they would be crushed within hours. With high speed internet connections and powerful software and computer more traders will fail quickly than any other time in description. What amazes me is that the author does not warn the reader to deal with each tale with a dose of healthy sceptism, as if, the hype from the interviews is necessary to encourage others to risk their assets for a chance of obtaining rankings in the gold spoon club. I reflect more of the questions should have focused on the penalty of failure while day trading so the reader could see how high the stakes are for these day traders. All the interviewees agreed that once trading starts there is no beginners clubs. Trading may be against some of the best day traders in the world. These traders have no reservation about their desire to win. They are willing to admit failure and quickly get out realizing they want to win over the long run. In small this is an narrative of the forces of dread and greed that drive price and volume in the stock market.
Rating: 2 / 5
The last chapter on daytrading money management is worth the
price of the books alone.
In that chapter Friedfertig and West tell us the real secrets to (day)trading.
There are dozens of successful daytrading patterns.
But you wont keep a dime unless you follow advice in the last chapter.
Rating: 5 / 5
This book is the kind you can read and re-read a couple of times as you start a new discipline and always know more. There are many startegies and the authors (interviewrs) make sure that a number of very basic issues are highlighted in their conversations with traders: Discipline, using relative-strength analysis, and following you’re own rules, and trading on rules and restricted interpretation of the markets instead of trading on hope and dread.
Trading is hard work. And it was deadly too so much on-line day traders in the past few years only because they left the “work” out… If the market went up and up, you could only buy low and sell high. Perhaps the main teaching could be summed in this way: Its not really buy low and sell high, but rather, buy strong stocks and sell weak stocks, which means quite different things at the most vital times… The difference they would seem to argue is this: “buy low, sell high” works on 20-20 vision. Buy strong, sell weak” is a tool and a trading strategy that can be used very well as one faces the trading choice.
Rating: 4 / 5
In small I would say the book is ok. The book is dominated by childish guys who have not been trading for even five years. They have not traded a secular bear market, a secular bear market for tech stocks, had to deal with decimalization, or have had to deal with incredibly rangebound and lackluster markets of years past. While not doubting the talent or the consequences of the traders interviewed in the book, I want to see where all is in 2010. This book was written in the sweetest spot of the NASDAQ market most of the traders, myself included, will probably ever see in our life times.
If you are a new direct access trader this book is worth a read. If you are an experienced trader just trying to continually polish your game-I’ll save you a 250 page read and twenty-some bucks. Cut your losses, let your winners run, be restricted, use instinct, be a quick typer, trade with the trend, get long stocks in a strong market, get small stocks in a weak market, don’t monetize your trading consequences, don’t let your ego get in the way, and the market is always right. These phrases were repeated over and over. You just learned the education of this book without having to read 250 pages.
Rating: 2 / 5