Exceptional Trading: The Mind Game

This book is written to give traders a winning edge. Winning eludes some 80 to 90 percent of people who trade.

Each year millions of dollars are spent creating and buying and selling trading systems. Hopeful traders seek the holy grail only to find that their latest acquisition doesn't work or they can't work it. Information flow is instant and vast. Computers calculate and grind out data 24 hours a day around the globe. Every conceivable edge is sought and provided. And still traders lose.

The rules for good trading are simple and understandable: Buy low, sell high, or buy high and sell higher. Sell low and buy lower. Cut your losses. Let your profits run. Never overtrade. Act promptly on signals to enter and exit. Trade a proven winning system or strategy as it was designed to be traded; i.e., take every signal and stay the course. Control and balance fear and greed.

But traders don't follow the rules, not even the rules they commit to following. As the Book of Common Prayer says, "That which I would not do, that I do." The prayer goes on to say, "And there is no health in me." It's a simple human condition which becomes quite large in trading.

The good news is that some traders do win. They win consistently over time. Success leaves clues. This book examines the clues and shows traders seeking to win how to run their own minds the way winning traders do.

It's not enough to simply know how to think or what to think. It's important to do it. This book outlines proven techniques for making the necessary mind shifts that will enable a trader to create a mental winning edge. Trading is, after all, mind over markets, quick action, clear thinking, and an unclouded intent to win.

Ruth Barrons Roosevelt coaches traders around the world to trading excellence. She is exceptionally well qualified to offer such guidance to traders, as she herself has extensive trading experience and is to this day an active trader. Her experience covers multiple time frames, from position trading in virtually every futures market, to active and intense intraday trading in currencies, T-bonds, and S&P futures. She has traded S&P's extensively and actively since inception of trading in 1984, down to and including 1 minute bars. Her trading experience also includes active trading of mutual funds.

She is a former Vice President of Prudential Securites and of Thomson McKinnon. From 1981 to 1986 she headed the International Moneline trading desk at Rudolf Wolf (New York). Before that she was a stock and futures broker at Drexel Burnham Lambert where she broke records by opening 250 accounts in one month. A graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, she is a member of the New York and California Bar Association. A frequent contributor to "Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities," she writes articles on the psychology of successful trading. She is coauthor of "Living in Step" (McGraw Hill, 1976). As founder and director of the Wall Street Hypnosis Center, she works with Wall Street professionals to achieve their optimal effectiveness.

Ruth has appeared on numerous national and international television programs including: CBS, NBC, CNN, and WWOR Evening News, CNBC, NBC The Today Show, Good Morning America, Japan Public Television, Nippon Television, Hungarian Public Television, Finland Television Channel 3, and the David Letterman Late Night Show. She has been profiled for her work with traders in Business Week, Barron's, The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Independent of London, Toronto Star, and many other publications