Noob needs to learn more - what books do I need?

Hi All
I lost quite a lot of money on trading, so I thought it would be better to spend some money on education in stead of loosing them on markets. I try to read about different markets although am interested mostly in forex
So far I read, or have in my library waiting to be read:


The Little Book of Common sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns (Little Books. Big Profits) by John C. Bogle

my first book about markets I ever read, and very interesting. I have few grands in HSBC indice trackers (FTSE, Pacific, Japan, SP500 and British gilts) on iii platform


The Little Book of Currency Trading: How to Make Big Profits in the World of Forex (Little Books. Big Profits) by Kathy Lien
interesting book, easy to read

The Little Book of Commodity Investing (Little Book, Big Profits) by John F. Maudlin and John R. Stephenson
It was very easy to read and interesting book, and gave me a good view on commodity market, which fascinates me but I can't trade on it

The Little Book of Economics: How the Economy Works in the Real World (Little Books. Big Profits) by Mohamed El-Erian and Greg Ip
good to know things ;-)

Currency Trading for Dummies
book has lots of knowledge about forex but is very boring ;-)

Technical Analysis for Dummies
I am reading it now, seems to be interesting so far

The Bogleheads' Guide to Retirement Planning by John C. Bogle, Taylor Larimore, Mel Lindauer and Richard A. Ferri
Interesting book, but with focus on American realities, still worth to read

Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas
The book is very interesting, and I learned a lot from it, but is a bit too long, after reading half of it it seems like author is repeating same thing over and over again, and the real meaning of the book could be written on few A4 pages, anyway I am glad I could read it

365 Ways to Live Cheap: Your Everyday Guide to Saving Money by Trent Hamm
good book about cheap living, but some of the ideas like how to make own washing powder seemed to be stupid

The Simple Dollar: How One Man Wiped Out His Debts and Achieved the Life of His Dreams by Trent A. Hamm
same author but the book more interesting than the one above

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I bought this book and was so disappointed with it that I got rid of it. It seemed for me like the main reason to write this book was to show off with oh, ah posh language, lost of words, no content. some people like it, I don't

Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders by Jack D. Schwager
good book with nice stories, but after reading half of it I had enough. The stories are different, but seem to be very similar. I stopped when I got to story of a guy that got some shares from his father on 13th birthday, and since then markets were all his life - a bit pathetic for me. I will probably come back to rest of stories, but this one was like reading about somebody's sad life

The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy by Thomas J. Stanley Ph.D. and William D. Danko
this book changed the way I am looking at life. I know that having average life is better than living like a king, that I don't need to live in palace and drive expensive cars, that life is about something more than money

Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom by Van Tharp
a really good book, it is bit boring but has lot's of knowledge, and will read it again

Super Trader : Make Consistent Profits in Good and Bad Markets by Van K. Tharp
I am reading it now, really good book, that focuses on most important thing in trading - mentality

Jim Cramer's Real Money by James J. Cramer
It is waiting to be read, seems to be interesting

Whoops!: Why everyone owes everyone and no one can pay by John Lanchester
still waiting to be read, but also seems to be interesting

All them books I read within a year. Please let me know if there is something else that could be good for me to read or should I focus more on working on myself?

Below I will write something about me, but there won't be any questions, it will be rather about my life, my dreams, my plans, so you may skip this part as the question I wanted to ask is above ;-)


Why do I want to trade? Because I don't feel safe, financially safe. I think that hard times are coming and that the best years Europe has behind. Now it will be only getting worse, most of countries on the world are going deeper and deeper into debts that they will not be able to pay, sooner or later something bad will happen.
I want to feel safe to secure my family. If I were single I wouldn't bother that much, but I have at least 2 reasons: my wife, and my son.

What are my dreams?
Of course the most important is health, and happiness, without health or happiness no money will satisfy you
I'd like to retire by the age 55-60 years old. I don't want to work till the end of life (assuming that I will live more then those 55-60 yrs), I want to secure future for me and my wife, as I don't believe that in 25-30 years there will be something like state pension, benefits and people will have to count only on themselves.

By this time I'd like to be mortgage free with 3 bed detached house in some nice area away from chavs blaming immigrants for the fact they are unemployed (like they ever tried to find a job), junkies, pissheads, drug addicted people, to have a small car, to be able to go to nice restaurant once for a while, to have an average life, nothing extraordinary.

Quite often I am browsing zoopla or right move, check house prices and keep telling myself: if other people can afford it there must be a way for me to be able to have it as well

I want to secure future of my son as well, to give him good education, to point him in a good direction.

If it will be possible I want to help my parents, mother in law, sister and brothers and sisters in law.

everything more than that is a bonus
some people may say it's impossible, but my life belongs to me, I need to try, and even If I won't succeed I will know I tried, I was looking for a better life

about my financial adventures:
so far the best profit I had was on bank ISA account ;-)
I started playing demo forex accounts about 2 years ago, always wiping accounts, playing like a lunatic, without plan, without any knowledge, treating it like gambling and nothing else.

a bit more than year ago when silver was flying high I was reading different articles about silver, that by the end of the year it will go till 70-80$ per oz, some s-f fans were even saying about silver being equal with gold (what a pile of s****). so I tried. I invested 500GBP in oanda live account. Within 2 weeks I turned 500GBP into 4k. How? Just luck. I was betting for half the account with no stop loss, with no tp, and leaving the account like that, going to bed, waking up happy (the best night I earned about 2k). I was so convinced that silver will fly till at least 70$ that even when it all went down I was sure it is only temporary and was keeping long positions. within about 2-3 days I lost all, all that I earned, and the 500GBP that I invested on beginning.
But it wasn't the end. I was upset that I lost, and was trying to get it back. So I sent another 500 to my account, and then another 200 ;-)
within about 6 weeks I lost 1,2k, I had to work for a month for it. How did I feel then? I felt that I disappointed my family, my new born son, my wife, myself. I will never forgive this feeling of being idiot. Today I look at it like it was an expensive lesson, like doing some course in college.

Since then I was reading books, enjoying fatherhood, working hard.
This spring I started playing demo again. On EUR/USD only. and my idea worked. I could do 100% a month (2 months in a row only and then went live). my plan? simple: waiting for news releases (only those marked with red and orange icon on ff main page and only those related to eurozone and states) and betting all the wallet according to news. TP on 20pips (what gives 7% profit), no SL, but with a mouse button ready to stop trade anytime. why this way? as when I was trading with SL trend was always turning back after hitting my SL. This way I was risking a lot, but it worked for me, and in fact, when I could see I was loosing I was closing. sometimes loosing 5, sometimes 10%, but it was maybe every 5-7 trades or more.

I went live. with 100GBP only, to test this idea. Within 2 weeks I went to 136Quid (I was even at 170, but such is life ;-)). There was a strong trend down on one day, so I stopped at 92 quid. I should have switch computer off and leave it till next day and I would get it back. But I wanted it back fast. So I did the most stupid think I could. I went to trade silver. I made a bet with trend, and right after I did it trend (that lasted for hours) turned back. I lost 50% of the 92GBP, and then I lost on oil again 50% and so on. If I were sticking to the plan I would still be in trade, but by greedy, impatient nature won. Now I need to spend few months on demo, to test my system again, and most important to work on myself. Will also remove commodities from my oanda account ;-)

In the meantime I hope to read some more books, to gain some more knowledge

Probably not many of you lasted till the end, sorry for long and boring story ;-)

There is only so much you can learn from reading. I realized that although reading has its benefits it can also be detrimental to your trading.

If you have found something that works just stick to it and try make yourself consistent. Once you know the basics of the markets. Reading this and that only puts more confusion in your head when you are getting ready to pull the trigger,

for example: you trade support resistance and you see a pinbar and want to enter. All of a sudden all these other things come to your head. Where is inside bar? Is this a corrective wave abc or impulse? Is there divergence on macd? Whats the volume like? What are others saying about the pair? And in the end you either dont put the trade or put it opposite to what you were going to do in the beginning because of all these other factors in your head.

I've realized that reading is good but stick to a couple different things and not complete diverse ways to trade. The other stuff may be tools in your toolbox but in the end you realize you only need use one-two tools only to make money.

In the end I realized simple PA at s/r is the way to go and I have thrown everything else out the windiow. All it does is bog you down.

Yes, there's only so much you can do by cramming your head with all the facts or alleged facts listed in these books. I would suggest that you stick with just a few that provide you with all the bare essentials of forex market, select a broker, do the demo until you start making some profit..just a suggestion and good luck!

Ooo Nassim Taleb. I like that mindset.

Here's a couple gems not on ur list,

Trading and Exchanges: Market Microstructure for Practitioners by Larry Harris

&

Orderflow Trading for Fun and Profit by Daemon Goldsmith.

thanks , great help for newbies..

If there's anything I've learned over the years it is that you can't be me and I can't be you.

I have seen several manual traders that have shown and described there profitable systems, but I could never do what they did. I just couldn't see it.

I stopped listening to all the opinions and formed some of my own. I developed a trading plan thru years of experience of chart time... watching charts during news events, slow watch the grass grow events etc.

Until you approach the market with your own trading style and stick to your plan then success will likely be fleeting for you. You can't be something you're not. Be yourself, find your plan and stick to it. Do not approach trading as a get rich quick scheme it will never work, you will lose everything if you continue down that path.

Start small and grow, be well funded for the size of trades you are trading.

I only read for new ideas, but put my own spin on them as well. The FX market is big, there is no reason to try to be someone that you're not. As long as your plan is sound and you stick to it you're well on your way.......

I really like Alan Farley's book "3 swing trading examples". But maybe its not for people who just started trading...

Always use a larger font if you worry that people might not take you seriously.

The more you learn, the less you understand. Read basics, go through forum and seek for some simple systems and trade demo. Just do it

before u learn trading, you should learn money management....

Does anyone have any good books to suggest on Futures? Can you list them here..
thnx in adv

I am looking for book which can describe how to trade profitable when we are emotionally down.

any help?

Books... I have read many of them. I would say no book alone can make you a trader. Plus, you can get a lot of stuff from some good websites like fxstreet and babypips.

In reality trading is a mixture of math, psychology and a setup itself. Setup is probably the easiest to develop/understand.

Okay... some books that one might want to read.

Money Management

McDowell - A Trader's Money Management System: How to Ensure Profit and Avoid the Risk of Ruin.

Essential knowledge about math and how to survive in this game. Don't fight the math! Although a lot of the very similar stuff can be easily found on the web. Nothing new. Position sizing, risk of ruin, etc.


Psychology/Mindset

Steve Ward - High Performance Trading: 35 Practical Strategies and Techniques To Enhance Your Trading Psychology and Performance

Very practical and with some good advice. If you want one book on psychology then this is it. There are classic books by Mark Douglas and Brett Steenbarger, but I find them way too long and theoretical. Those are good if you want some advanced knowledge. But the trading psychology is all about live trading, getting to know yourself, adjusting yourself and your trading system based on that knowledge.


Max Gunther - The Zurich Axioms

Really good book about mindset. Not just trading, but making money by speculating in any field (arts, investing, real estate).

Mike Bellafiore - One Good Trade Inside the Highly Competitive World of Proprietary Trading

Good book about mindset and what it takes to succeed. They have also a good blog http://www.smbtraining.com/blog/

Forex Trading
Ed Ponsi has two good books on forex.

1. Forex Patterns and Probabilities: Trading Strategies for Trending and Range-Bound Markets

2. The Ed Ponsi Forex Playbook: Strategies and Trade Set-Ups

Both books are not just for beginners. There are some advanced things (COT report, various market indicators like TED, LIBOR). Good for general forex education.

Kathy Lien - Day Trading and Swing Trading the Currency Market: Technical and Fundamental Strategies to Profit from Market Moves

Again a good book for general forex education. Might be the best general forex book.

Interviews

Reading what traders and money managers say is always a good thing. And if you read carefully and make notes... Again it's all about mindset and what it takes to succeed.

Market Wizards books by Jack D. Schwager.
Two books by Steven Drobny.



I won't recommend any books on technical analysis and trading setups. Well... you can easily develop your setup based on the info that you find on the web. There are nothing magical in books.

This is how I feel about reading heaps of books on trading. I've read many myself and my personal opinion is that all the strategies taught are mediocre and the ones that actually are good require large accounts and are in no way intended for 'small time traders'. There's a heck of a lot of discretion in both the TA and FA approaches and every book will of course provide it's own perspective and also regurgitate common information (eg every book will give it's 2cents on leading and lagging indicators, fibs, pivots, S/R lines, index and equity markets correlation, cot, news trading)...after reading several your head really gets clouded.

I really do consider that an aspiring trader can learn more on investopedia, babypips, and forexfactory than in many, if not all books on trading. I can honestly say that I've learnt everything and more on FF than I have in most books, and that a learning trader should treat all sources of information, whether from books or forums like this, as a banquet of info pieces, from which you choose your own set of tools and discard everything that doesn't help, to create and configure your own method of trading that suits your style and most important makes complete sense to you personally, as opposed to trying to learn another method that you may not completely 'gel well' with and not be able to get 'into the zone' of trading as Mark Douglas would put.

After some thinking I remembered one book that might be useful:

Corey Rosenbloom - The Complete Trading Course: Price Patterns, Strategies, Setups, and Execution Tactics

This is about understanding price, indicators. All you need to start developing your trading setup.

But again... you don't need to buy books.http://www.fxstreet.com/education/learning-center/
This has all the knowledge that one trader possibly needs.

Some quick tips for newbies:

 

1. understand why you want to trade
2. understand probabilities, money management - you won't succeed without this.
3. understand price, trend - learn to spot a trend, learn how trends continue and change, learn basic support & resistance. (do it all without indicators)
4. if needed use indicators wisely. no need to use 3 indicators that tell the exact same thing.
5. learn ONE setup, master it. setups are almost never complicated.
6. always remember "golden rules": 1) plan the trade, trade the plan 2) cut your losses 3) let your profits run.
7. find style/setup that fits your psychology

Some of the books you read had nothing to do with forex. As much as they are useful in terms of dealing with money, keeping money and investing they will help you very little when it comes to forex. So read what guys here recommend you and then try again. If it won't work try some other books, there are thousands of different recommendations.

Also there is no one right book about forex, of course you can listen to guys here who are recommending you some books and those books could in fact made them successful investors but let me give you an example: I am pure TA trader, I can recommend you 10 or 20 decent books but if that disagrees with your style and you prefer to go with FA you will still not be successful after reading all those books!!! On the other hand I am unable to recommend single FA book because I was never interested in it. And details like that give unlimited combination: time frame, manual/automatic, sl/tsl, markets, currencies etc. You do have already 1000 preferences when it comes to trading and some of them are causing bankruptcies to your account those must be changed. But some of them changed will cause even bigger disaster because you will not adapt fully to someone else trading style.

I would also look into your emotional attachment to losing and your abandoning demo accounts before your strategy is fully tested. No matter what strategy you use those are not a good practice.

Read, practice on demo, move to small amounts, practice more, don't fight the market and have ready entry and exit strategy. Stick to the basics and good luck.

I will read this one, plus books I have awaiting to read in my small library and then I will stop with books, and start using suggested in here web pages.
In about 2 weeks I will come back to demo account, and will start it with some small amount, probably 25£. If my idea will work, then I will change the 25 into 100£ in 2 months, if not it means I still need to practise, and try something else.

I can recomend:

Curtney Smith -How to Make a Living Trading Foreign Exchange: A Guaranteed Income for Life

Right now I am reading
Greg Michalowski - Attacking Currency Trends: How to Anticipate and Trade Big Moves in the Forex Market
It does make sense so far.

But whatever you do invest some money on Forex Tester or use the free testers that exist in this forum. While the books will point you in the right direction and give you some good ideas, the experience gained by getting your hands dirty with the charts will boost your understanding.

I strongly suggest doing several things at the same time. 1) Reading books
2) reading fxstreet or babypips forex school 3) analyzing markets.

You can start with this http://www.fxstreet.com/education/le...tract-for-you/

Master it a bit by bit and apply it right away. You learn what is support and resistance? Pull up a live chart and try to find those zones yourself. Try to analyze one or two markets. Analyze price on weekly, daily and 4 hour charts. You learn about trends? Again, try to analyze them on the same charts. You shouldn't trade (not even on a demo), just analyze the markets. The more you watch them, the more you learn.

Books and websites help, but they will not make you a trader. It's like reading a book about fitness. You can read about the exercises, but you will have to actually do them to improve your fitness. Same thing with trading. Spend some time on the charts after you learn a new technique. Do it every day. Day after day.

I do it already ;-)
1) I constantly try to read something about markets - different markets
2) I read babypips school
3) I keep checking news, and data all the time for eur/usd, also prices for gold, silver, oil, indexes