Study Guide for Trading for a Living: Psychology, Trading Tactics, Money Management

Successful trading is based on three M's: Mind, Method, and Money. Trading for a Living helps you master all of those three areas:

• How to become a cool, calm, and collected trader
• How to profit from reading the behavior of the market crowd
• How to use a computer to find good trades
• How to develop a powerful trading system
• How to find the trades with the best odds of success
• How to find entry and exit points, set stops, and take profits

Trading for a Living helps you discipline your Mind, shows you the Methods for trading the markets, and shows you how to manage Money in your trading accounts so that no string of losses can kick you out of the game. To help you profit even more from the ideas in Trading for a Living, look for the companion volume--Study Guide for Trading for a Living. It asks over 200 multiple-choice questions, with answers and 11 rating scales for sharpening your trading skills. For example: Question Markets rise when

• there are more buyers than sellers
• buyers are more aggressive than sellers
• sellers are afraid and demand a premium
• more shares or contracts are bought than sold
• • I and II
  • II and III
  • II and IV
  • III and IV

Answer B. II and III. Every change in price reflects what happens in the battle between bulls and bears. Markets rise when bulls feel more strongly than bears. They rally when buyers are confident and sellers demand a premium for participating in the game that is going against them. There is a buyer and a seller behind every transaction. The number of stocks or futures bought and sold is equal by definition.

ALEXANDER ELDER, MD, was born in Leningrad and grew up in Estonia where he entered medical school at the age of 16. At 23, while working as a ship's doctor, he escaped from a Soviet ship in Africa and received political asylum in the U.S.A. He continued to work as a psychiatrist in New York City, served as book editor of The Psychiatric Times, and taught at Columbia University. After becoming involved in financial trading, Dr. Elder published over 50 articles, software, and book reviews, and spoke at many conferences. In 1988 he founded Financial Trading Seminars, Inc., an educational firm for traders.