Alpha Trader: The Mindset, Methodology and Mathematics of Professional Trading - Hardcover

Donnelly, Brent

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1736739808 ISBN 13: 9781736739808

Publisher: Brent Donnelly, 2021

Synopsis

Trading is a chaotic, complex, and loosely-structured game played by the smartest minds and most expensive computers in the world. It is the ultimate puzzle. Few can trade at an elite level for an extended period. The game is constantly changing and the rules, mechanics, and probabilities are difficult to observe and forever in flux. Just when you think you've got a plan: BAM.

You get punched in the mouth.

Trading attracts intelligent, driven individuals who see enormous financial rewards and few barriers to entry. But no amount of intelligence or skill is enough if you are irrational, undisciplined, or overconfident. The best analysis is useless if you keep reaching for the self-destruct button. How do you survive and excel in this high-stakes competition? How do you become an Alpha Trader?

The answer is mindset, methodology, and math.

ALPHA TRADER is not a behavioral economics textbook and it is not a boring, theoretical deep dive into trading psychology. It's a practical guide full of actionable information, exciting and relevant trading floor stories, concisely-distilled research, and real-life examples that explain and reinforce critical concepts. The book details the specific strategies, tactics, and habits that lead to professional trading success. It will help you become more self-aware, rational, and profitable.

This book will make you a better trader. It will help you unlock more edge and it will motivate you to become an expert in your market. It covers practical and essential topics like strategy vs. tactics, microstructure, market narrative, technical analysis, sentiment, positioning and systematic risk management. It will explain the importance of adaptation, rational thinking, behavioral bias, and risk of ruin.

Brent Donnelly, the author of ALPHA TRADER, has been a professional trader for more than two decades and has been writing about macro and markets for more than 15 years. His writing style is engaging, approachable, and entertaining and he has the experience and knowledge of a veteran professional trader. His first book, The Art of Currency Trading is a bestseller and has received rave reviews.

Brent has worked as a senior FX dealer at some of the biggest banks in the world. He has traded global macro for a Connecticut hedge fund, and he has day traded equities with his own money. He loves trading and he loves writing about it.

ALPHA TRADER is for traders of every skill and experience level. Veterans and rookies alike will benefit as the book digs into topics like self-awareness, discipline, endurance, and grit. Learn the common traits of winning traders, the myriad sources of trader kryptonite, how to improve your decision-making, and how smart people do stupid things, all the time.

Professional trading is a lifelong journey of self-improvement, struggle, adaptation, and success. This book will help you level up on that journey.

Be rational and self-aware.

Learn, adapt, and grow.

Unleash the Alpha.

About this title

About the Author

Brent Donnelly has been trading currencies since 1995 and is currently a senior FX trader at HSBC New York. He is the author of The Art of Currency Trading (Wiley, 2019). He writes a widely-read and highly-respected macro and FX daily called AM/FX. Over the course of his career, he has been a market maker, trader, and senior manager at some of the top banks in foreign exchange.
 
He has extensive experience trading currencies, FX options, stock index futures, NASDAQ stocks, and commodities. Brent is a respected macro thinker with the unique perspective of a senior risk taker. He has been quoted by or featured in the Economist, Real Vision, Epsilon Theory, the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Bloomberg, and CNBC.
 
Before joining HSBC, Brent was head of G10 Spot Trading at Citi New York and global head of G10 FX Trading at Nomura New York. He was also a portfolio manager at a major hedge fund in Connecticut for three years. He created and wrote a cartoon called ''Daft Planet,'' which aired on TV in Canada, and he dreams of one day winning the Man Booker Prize.

From the Inside Flap

Foreword by Dr. Ben Hunt (Epsilon Theory)

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If you're reading this foreword, you're probably considering whether or not to buy this book. You also probably have a professional or semi-professional connection to financial markets. Maybe you already work on a trading desk. Maybe you work in sales at one of those too-big-to-fail outfits and trade in your personal account. Maybe you don't currently work in the financial industry at all, but you've been spending a lot of hours on Robinhood and you're thinking about taking your involvement "to the next level", whatever that means to you. In any event, you're reading this foreword for clues as to whether this book will make you a better trader. Whether it will help you make more money.

It will.

Why will Alpha Trader help you become a better trader? Not because it tells you WHAT to think as a successful trader. Not because it gives you instructions on trading this or trading that. No, no, no. It's because Alpha Trader teaches you HOW to think as a successful trader. And that's what makes all the difference. It's the only thing that makes a difference, in every game that we humans play.

Here, I'll give you an example of what I mean.

If you're not a serious chess player, you've never heard of Aron Nimzowitsch. If you are a serious chess player, you undoubtedly have a dog-eared copy of his groundbreaking book - My System - first published in 1925. What was so revolutionary about Nimzowitsch's book? It wasn't a collection of openings. It wasn't a list of moves and countermoves that you should memorize. It wasn't a manual full of instructions. No, no, no. Nimzowitsch's book doesn't tell you what to think about chess. It teaches you how to think about chess. How to think about position. How to think about the flow of the game. How to think about risk-taking and aggression. How to think about edge and strategic dynamics. Sounds pretty dry, right? Not in the least. My System is written with wit, with a point of view. My System is chock-full of examples and illustrations, but presented as annotated stories of personal experience, not constructed applications of pure theory.

These are the same topics covered in Alpha Trader - position, flow, risk-taking, edge, strategic dynamics - all amplified by Brent Donnelly's keen understanding of the pervasive role of variance and chance, the crucial difference that makes the game of markets so much more difficult than the game of chess.

This is the same format and style of Alpha Trader - wit, a point of view, annotated personal experiences - all in service to illuminating a frame of thought rather than rote instruction.

I think that Alpha Trader and Brent Donnelly are to the game of markets what My System and Aron Nimzowitsch are to the game of chess. Truly revolutionary. Truly useful. Books and authors that will change forever HOW you think about playing their games with mastery.

But wait, there's more.

Yes, Alpha Trader will help all you professional and semi-professional and professional-wannabe traders become better traders. This book will help you make more money. You should buy this book and you should read it cover to cover.

And then you should give this book to your partner or your father or your daughter or your close friend ... someone who has never traded a day in their life, someone who has no professional or semi-professional connection to financial markets whatsoever ... and ask them to read this book. Please.

Because Alpha Trader won't only make you a better trader. It won't only help you make more money from trading. It will make you a better player of games.

Back in 1988, Iain M. Banks wrote a book titled The Player of Games, part of a wonderful series of science fiction novels that describe The Culture, a super-advanced galactic civilization. In this book, The Culture sends a representative to negotiate with a less advanced civilization where everyone's social and political status is determined by how well they play a very complicated game. The Culture's representative enters the global tournament himself, and despite only a few years to study a game that all of the inhabitants of this civilization spend their lives playing, he manages (spoiler alert!) to win the game. How? Because anyone can master the rules, even the intricacies of the rules, of any game. There's nothing special in that. There's no edge. What IS special, however, and where there IS edge comes in the very personal and very human understanding of position, informational flow, variance, risk-taking and strategic dynamics that shape ALL games.

And ... not to burst anyone's bubble, but that less advanced civilization where everyone's social and political status is determined by how well they play a very complicated game? That's us. That's Earth. That's the modern human civilization. That's the very complicated game of markets and politics and social interactions that we all play, all the time, in ways both large and small.

It's the single-most important determinant for success in our financialized and casino-fied and gamified world, regardless of where you sit or what you do in that world: are you an effective player of games?

I think that Alpha Trader can help anyone - trader or not - become a more effective player of games.

It sure did for me.



Dr. Ben Hunt
Co-Founder and CIO
Epsilon Theory

Edition details

• Publisher: Brent Donnelly
• Publication date: 2021
• ISBN 10: 1736739808
• ISBN 13: 9781736739808
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 514