The Complete Guide to Investing in Short Term Trading: How to Earn High Rates of Returns Safely [Paperback]

Alan Northcott (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 28, 2008

Short-term trading refers to the practice of buying and selling financial instruments within the same trading week or, at most, a few weeks. Short-term traders buy and sell stocks over a few days or weeks in the hope that their stocks will continue climbing in value for the time they own them, making for quick and, often, huge profits. Some of the more commonly traded financial instruments are stocks, stock options, currencies, and futures contracts such as equity index futures, interest rate futures, and commodity futures. Short-term trading was once the preserve of banks, financial firms, and professional investors. Many traders are bank or investment firms employees working in equity investment and fund management. As with many other business segments, the Internet, technology, and legislative changes have opened up this attractive marketplace to a new breed of individual investors and speculators working part-time. You and I can now stand on an even playing field with the largest banks, wealthiest individuals, and trading institutions from the comfort of home. Short-term trading can provide you with very high and secure rate of return as high as 12%, 18%, 24%, or even 300%. If performed correctly, short-term trading can far outpace all other investment techniques. The key is to know how to perform this process correctly. This all sounds great, but what is the catch? There really is none, except you must know what you are doing! This groundbreaking and exhaustively researched new book will provide everything you need to know to get you started generating high-investment returns with low risk from start to finish. In this easy to read and comprehensive new book you will learn how to set up your online account, how to choose the correct software to use in trading, how to get started in short-term trading, how to invest in short-term stocks, evaluate performance, and handle fees and taxes. This book delves into trading tactics for swing trading, position trading, leveraging the stock market, selling short, and pinpointing entry, exits, and targets for your trades. You will pick up the language of a trader so that you recognize candlestick patterns, advancing and declining issues and volume, call options, and put options. You will know how to find the very best stocks every day, how to read and prosper with stock charts, how to use the New York Stock Exchange tick indicator and trading index (TRIN), the Commodity Channel Index (CCI), the moving average convergence/divergence (MACD), the Dow 30-Day Moving Average. As you read this book, the mysteries of short-term trading will unfold so that you can double or even triple your investment all while avoiding the common traps and pitfalls. In addition, we took the extra effort and spent an unprecedented amount of time researching, interviewing, e-mailing, and communicating with hundreds of today s most successful investors. Aside from learning the basics of mutual fund trading you will be privy to their secrets and proven successful ideas. Instruction is great, but advice from experts is even better, and the experts chronicled in this book are earning millions. If you are interested in learning essentially everything there is to know about short-term investing as well as hundreds of hints, tricks, and tips on how to earn enormous profits in short-term investing while controlling your investments, then this book is for you.

Editorial Reviews

Review

You could have no prior trading experience and still be part of Alan Northcott s targeted readership... The Complete Guide to Investing in Short Term Trading, a modest paperback, packs abundant information within 285 pages, and much of it is beyond the novice level. Because it does invite the uninitiated to come aboard, either as full or part time traders, there s some well-covered ground, such as fundamental vs. technical analysis and the psychology of fear and greed...Northcott offers solid advice on prudently testing mechanical systems, emphasizing the importance of walking forward in virgin data. All major trading styles are examined, from momentum and counter-trending to pullback and volatility strategies, day-trading vs. longer-term trading vs. swing trading and so on. Such market facets aren t that new, any more than any of the other technical indicators Northcott presents. Rarely, though, has the subject matter been imparted in such a readable and thoughtful fashion. --Art Collins, author of Beating the Financial Futures Market and co-founder of the Trireme Capital hedge fund

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Publishing Company (FL) (February 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 160138002X
• ISBN-13: 978-1601380029
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #334,099 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Far from being a complete guide to trading, despite the title, February 22, 2009

By 

Brainwav13 (Santa Clara, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Complete Guide to Investing in Short Term Trading: How to Earn High Rates of Returns Safely (Paperback)

I'll start off with the positives: this book does give a good basic overview of basic short-term trading timelines and styles, and it frequently reminds the reader of several key rules for trading success (for example, developing a consistent trading methodology that emphasizes discipline over emotion). The profiles of successful traders also provide some pithy advice from people with varying backgrounds and perspectives. That said, after reading through the entire book, I find that it leaves a lot to be desired. My main complaint is that despite its claim to being a "complete guide" to trading, the book only covers fundamental and technical analysis at a very superficial level. Beyond that level, the book's best advice is "buy some trading software and figure it out." While it's true that you ultimately need to practice the concepts yourself to really apply them effectively, a few diagrams or concrete examples in the book would go a long way toward helping readers digest the ideas being discussed. [...]

Bottom line: you can use this book if you are an absolute novice looking for a very high-level overview of analysis principles and trading techniques. Otherwise, I'd recommend looking elsewhere for more detail and sophistication.

36 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Have, March 10, 2008

By 

Elizabeth M. Wade "Pop Culture Duchess" (Bothell, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Complete Guide to Investing in Short Term Trading: How to Earn High Rates of Returns Safely (Paperback)

Just reading through the table of contents may seem daunting for this incredibly detailed and well broken-down text. But don't put it back on the shelves simply because of information overload! This book claims to be a complete guide to investing, and it takes that claim seriously. The strength of this book, in my opinion, is its variety of voice. Technically, it has one author. But between the covers are numerous interviews and personal stories on success and failure of stock market trades- not fictional scenarios, but real anecdotes from real (and often well known) `expert' traders. There is also the layman's approach to it all, with a glossary of terms and handy information `bullets' in the back of each chapter (in case the words were making your head spin). The author also does not cushion us readers with false hope or any sugar-coated lies about ease and success- which, as a beginning stock trader, I greatly appreciate. So, although it may take you weeks to fully comprehend the mass of information here, stick with it. Because, as we all know, playing the market is based on education, not luck, and so if you're a beginner in short term trading you should do your best to educate yourself fully. And this book should be a part of that education.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars What a major disappointment, May 11, 2009

By 

JK (Raleigh, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Complete Guide to Investing in Short Term Trading: How to Earn High Rates of Returns Safely (Paperback)

This book is a very basic book about trading. If you have traded for 3 months or more, many of things pointed out in this book, you will already know.

I've read many books about trading. This quite possibly might be the worst one of the bunch. Its very basic. Things that were covered, full service, web based and direct access brokers. Most of the major indicators were covered by the author. This information can be found anywhere on the web.

As I was reading this book, I kept waiting for the author to get into the nuts and bolts about short term trading. I waited and it never came. This book is very "generalized".

I gave it one star on the review but would have gave it a 1/2 star if I had that option. I would ask for a refund, if I could.