It’s been a while since I’ve updated my list of Best Trading Books which I recommend to traders looking to up their game. And there’s a good reason for that, I didn’t see anything interesting out there that would make it as a “Top Trading Book”, that’s till I recently came across this fantastic book. First I need to say this isn’t a paid or incentive driven review, I didn’t get a free book, and I have absolutely no affiliation with the writer. I just think that One Good Trade is a damn good trading book which almost any trader can benefit from.

I did skip the first couple of chapters (mostly prop trading related) but then instead of skimming through to the end like I would do with most new “get rich quick” / secret formula trading book for stocks / futures / options and all other instruments on the planet, I actually started seeing some really good material in it which kept me reading. It’s like one of those gem of a trading book that Dr. Brett Steenbarger publishes (his 2 books Enhancing Trader Performance and The Daily Trading Coach are absolute must read).

The author of One Good Trade, Mike Bellafiore covers almost everything you can think of in terms of the journey to becoming a good trader. From specific advice on Tools of Success:

To real world examples and explanations on sound trading building blocks such as

And more advanced stuff such as reading the tape, high frequency trading, when to press your winners etc.

Even if you’ve read dozens of trading books in the past (who hasn’t..) I would still encourage you to pick up this one.

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I was thinking about trading strengths, weakness and was going to create a list for myself but found it hard to decide where to start. So I just started with brainstorming all the positive trading skills and traits, personal attributes and characteristics I could think of that successful traders might have. Here’s the list, see if I missed out on anything.

Discipline
Resilience in the face of adversity
Desire to continue and improve
Persistence
Curiosity
Creativity
Networking
Calmness
Courage
Competitiveness
Pattern recognition
Numerical skills
Practical (as opposed to idealistic)
Self confidence

Btw, INO is hosting a webinar and offering free access to MarketClub for 2 weeks, this isn’t one of those offers where you have to pay up front and cancel withing a certain amount of time, this requires no payment
info and cancels automatically in 2 weeks. Sign up here.

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This looks like it might be the best trading laptop ever. In truth, I traded on this kind of laptopfor a long time and made good money. But still, I know some traders who hop from country to country every now and then and I’m sure this would come in handy for them. At 12lbs it’s not something you’d carry with you to a cafe, but who trades from a cafe, or the beach or any of those other noob fantasy locations.

See the Laptop With Two Full-sized Screens – Tom’s Hardware

As for me, I’m happy with my desktop. Awesome piece of hardware, now if only I had more space I might add another monitor to my current dual setup. And to think that just a year or so ago I was still trading just off a single 15″ LCD, it’s funny how you get used to having all this “extra” space and all of a sudden you find yourself thinking it isn’t enough.

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I don’t post daily results anymore, it’s not very meaningful and just adds to stress during drawdowns. But Here’s a snapshot of my total R return since August last year. Note the Jan – Feb chop/drawdown that I mentioned before. I then made some changes to my trading to adapt to the new environment. I included last year’s data mainly so it’s easier to see the Jan-Feb period in context. Also note that I was on vacation for most of December (only worked for 4 days) and Nov/Jan weren’t full working months either. The graph was generated using Stocktickr.

I’m also trialing Market System Analzyer which offers a wide array of statistics and position sizing simulation tools. Here are a few interesting stats for data since Jan 2007.

• Total Number of Trades: 731
• Profit Factor for all trades: 1.669
• Percent Profitable: 39.67%
• Max Number Consecutive Wins: 7
• Max Number Consecutive Losses: 11
• Win/Loss Ratio: 2.538
• Worst Case Drawdown (%) Equity Value: 5.922%

I’m very far from trading in the best way I can, both from a hard stats point of view as well as on a personal level. I don’t think it’s possible to trade in a 100% “optimal” way but there are certainly things I can and should continue working on. This is one of the fascinating and challenging aspects of trading, you never “arrive”, you just progress or regress.

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Livermoreghost has asked in a comment to a previous post about the difference between the results I get from InteractiveBrokers’ Trader WorkStation built-in scanner and the Trade-Ideas scanner so I thought others might be interested in the same and I put my response in this post. This isn’t an all out comparison of the two scanners but just how they fit into my own trading.

Hi livermoresghost, IB’s TWS scanner is great but it requires more manual work out of me since it’s less granular. So when I got Trade-Ideas I was able to build the manual eyeballing and filtering I do on the TWS scanner results into the TI filter. The TI filter then gives me the most interesting subset of results. You can do with just TWS but it’s a bit more tricky, requires closer watching of the scanner and more experience on the trader’s part. I like to use both since it helps reduce the clutter and makes the decision making on trade candidates easier. Anything that takes decision making load off of me during the trading day is blessed since there’s enough information overload as it is.
It’s quite easy to take the Trade-Ideas tool for a test drive as there’s a 7 day free trial in which you get full functionality. I don’t use most of the functions in the tool but the wide selection means that people should be able to squeeze the best out of the few functions they focus on. And that’s all you really need to select profitable trade candidates.

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The name Willem van der Vorm came up in a discussion of annual rates of return, and the lucrative world of Hedge Funds.Reader Iain mentioned this link to a trader called Willem van der Vorm who manages and trades a technical based fund for swissDirekt. There are some very good points in the article and in the 2 CNBC interviews. Willem van der Vorm shares some insights into the patterns he is looking for and even where his stops are on those patterns. If not for the appalling job the CNBC interviewer did (“So you can actually short oil?!?”) we’d probably have a chance to learn even more.

Definitely someone to keep an eye on.

There are also some interesting videos on INO from hedge fund managers, including guys like Willem van der Vorm that are worth checking out.

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