The Mind of a Trader: Lessons in Trading Strategy from the World's Leading Traders - Softcover

Patel, Alpesh B.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0273630067 ISBN 13: 9780273630067

Publisher: Financial Times Management, 1997

Synopsis

The Mind of a Trader will explore the trading philosophies, behaviors and tactics of the world's top traders, identifying successful strategies and winning ways in the markets.

About this title

About the Author

Alpesh Patel's recent book, Trading Online, sold 20,000 copies in 6 months, reaching the No. 2 spot in amazon.co.uk's best-seller list. Patel is a leader in the electronic trading community, a champion for day traders, and a regular columnist and speaker. He will soon begin hosting a new weekly online trading show for Bloomberg TV.

From the Back Cover

Discover the "sixth sense" that distinguishes winners from losers in the markets!

Meet the world's leading traders — and gain in-depth insight into their philosophies, behavior, and tactics.

Get into the minds of the world's best traders, with the help of world-renowned equity derivatives trader Alpesh B. Patel — author of the global best-seller Trading Online! Winning traders have a successful sixth sense which can't be learned from any academic course: a market intuition they've honed through thousands of trades.

The Mind of a Trader introduces you to several of the world's best traders — exploring their trading philosophies, behavior, tactics, strategies, and winning ways in the markets. You'll learn from the trades of Jon Najarian, Neal Weintraub, Bill Lipschutz, Pat Arbor, David Kyle, and many other trading legends — the best minds in the business!

"Gets to the heart of the matter of trading ... captures the ineffable ethos of singular, successful traders!" — Pat Arbor, Chairman, Chicago Board of Trade

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Preface

The mental processes leading to trading excellence and profit are described within the covers of this book from the mouths of those who experience, live, breathe and love the markets. What do top trading strategies and minds have in common? How can the reader use this information to his or her own advantage and profit? I do not want a single trading reader to close any chapter and feel "what relevance does this have to me?".

The naïve believe there is a secret to trading success, and they search for it, but in the wrong places, such as expensive trading programs. With experience they realize that the only secret to success is hard work and talent, and they stop looking for any other secret. Finally, with wisdom, they stumble across the secret to trading success without even realizing it. Any secret is the knowledge possessed by the few. The secret to trading success is in this book. That secret is a frame of mind, a way of seeing things.

Trading is viewed by many as seductively easy until they start losing, until they become one of the 80-90 percent that do not last a year in the profession. Trading success is difficult. Better to learn from the mistakes of the successful and avoid your own, than to become a loss-making statistic. Successful traders need not only successful trading rules, but also a successful trading mind. Having successful trading rules is only half the picture; knowing how to achieve the mentality to implement them provides the full picture.

Throughout the book trading strategies are placed within a psychological context, demonstrated through the experience of top traders. I seek to get behind the mind of the trader and examine how he implements his winning strategies. What great map, what unusual perspective has he been granted that permits his view to be uniquely profitable? After all, the lawyer's job is to get the other person, whatever his occupation, to tell his story so that anyone and everyone can easily understand it. However, being a trader myself has meant that I too have experienced the problems, frustrations and questions which are addressed in this book. I have tried to be your collective mouthpiece. I believe I have managed to get to the root of popular trading difficulties not effectively addressed elsewhere. For instance, how do I know if I am cutting a loss short or if I am cutting a loss which could be a potential profit?

Rather than providing an over-simplistic, unhelpful and sprawling question-and-answer format that is heavy on biography and history, I have chosen to incorporate my eminent interviewees' responses into digestible, focused sections within a coherent study of techniques. There is explanation and expansion wherever needed and not merely at the end of a chapter or hidden in a conclusion.

If you prefer your trading books to be rambling accounts of trades placed decades ago in markets that no longer exist, with a few impoverished paragraphs of advice and little focus on the reader, then this book is not for you. You will find this book written in an accessible, direct and useful style, containing descriptions of what these leading traders do so well and how you yourself can improve your trading and, ultimately, make more money.

The Interviewees

In the latter half of the twentieth century there exists a political and economic system that holds dominion over all others. It is the aspired destination of states yet to reach it, and the sanguine attainment of those which have. Success within this system is defined by the accumulation of capital through the trading of commodities. This system is Capitalism. Although they are more popularly known as traders, the individuals interviewed in this book are skillful and accomplished capitalists.

This is the broadest collection of traders ever assembled. They come from the world's three leading trading cities: New York, Chicago and London. Not surprisingly, what they have to teach has universal appeal and a surprising consistency yet originality. Introduced for the first time are the concepts of "dynamic analysis", "progressive trading", "pyramid information", "the Swiss method", and many others.

These ten men have significantly improved my own trading. Not only have I learnt things I never knew before, despite having read virtually every trading book on the market, equally importantly they have confirmed many things I have discovered myself. I hope and believe you will get as much from this book as I did researching and writing it.

Alpesh Bipin Patel Chicago and London 1997

Edition details

• Publisher: Financial Times Management
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0273630067
• ISBN 13: 9780273630067
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272