Trading for a Living Successful trading is based on three M’s: Mind, Method, and Money.
An eminent futures trader explores crucial factors in the markets that most experts overlook–time, volume and open interest–and describes little-known indicators to profitably track them. Covers all the popular technical approaches to futures, options and stock markets including Elliott Wave, oscillators, moving averages, Market Logic, point-and-figure charting. Explains why most traders sabotage themselves and how to avoid doing the same.
Alexander Elder, M.D., is a professional trader, based in New York. He is the author of several best-selling books: Trading for a Living, Come into My Trading Room, Entries & Exits, and Sell and Sell Short (all with Study Guides). He also wrote Straying from the Flock: Travels in New Zealand. Dr. Elder taught psychiatry at Columbia University. His experience provides him with unique insight into psychology of trading.
Here’s what one reviewer had to say, “Despite the over-promise of the book title and the second half of it discussing mostly technical tools, the book is quite well written. There are plenty of bright ideas, some with originality that can be attributed to the author’s M.D. and psychiatrist background.”
Elder begins with a chapter on psychology. Mind as he refers to it. In my experience, success in trading has less to do with understanding “the madness of crowds” and more to do with developing discipline. Read Mark Douglas instead.
Next, Elder spends a lot of pages giving the reader a rundown of the most common price patterns and technical indicators. Which is fine if you don’t know them, but has all but the most neophyte readers skipping over great gobs of the book.
Next, Elder trots out his two pet indicators and tells you about them. I have used them and they’re about as good as any others that you probably already know about and have already used. In other words, I wouldn’t buy the book just to get a peek at them.
Lastly, he goes into money management. Elder has said himself that he wishes he had devoted more time to this section. Once again, unless you are a complete beginner, you won’t find much meat here either.
Elder likes trading off moving averages and looking for divergences in certain indicators. Well, I have been trading a fair number of years and am here to tell you, you can do better than that. Much better.
If you’re a beginner, try reading Nison and DiNapoli/Boroden. Their material is far more effective and will have a much greater impact on your bottom line.