tactical trader

I decided to put the great weather we had over the last couple of weeks to good use: I switched off the computer, abandoned my desk and sat out in the garden. To justify this departure from my trading station I took a pile of books with me - books that I was supposed to read last year!

I started with A Mathematician Plays the Market which proved to be a more enjoyable read than I expected. You can read my full comments here.

I then moved on to Street Smarts by Laurence Conners and Linda Bradford Raschke, a book that has to be as well known as Edwin Lefevre’s Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. It’s a great book that has given me a few ideas for some short-term trading strategies (I’ve written a brief review here).

How I Trade for a Living by Gary Smith, Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom by Van Tharp and Come Into My Trading Room by Alexander Elder were the next three in the pile. I have to confess that I (thankfully) didn’t have to read these three from cover to cover. Steve had the pleasure of doing that last year and had highlighted the chapters he thought might be useful to me. While I’m sure all three books are perfectly fine, I was amused to see that they are aimed at beginners and each one recommends the reader do completely different things. At one end of the spectrum is Gary Smith telling readers to forget technical analysis and at the other end is Alexander Elder who doesn’t appear to have heard the saying “less is more”, preferring to throw as many well-known TA indicators (as well as inventing some new ones) onto the screen as possible. No wonder so many newcomers find it hard to get started!

Out of the five I’d say Street Smarts was the most enjoyable to read and I’m looking forward to trying out some of the ideas I got from reading it. But that’ll have to wait because I’ve got some more sunbathing...er...reading to do