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

by Alan Northcott (Author)
Key Phrases: integrated trading platform, engulfing pattern, swing traders, Bollinger Bands, United States, Wall Street (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
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.

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 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #12,659 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 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 (Kirkland, WA) - See all my reviews

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.

23 of 26 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)

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.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great reference book for the newbie trader and anyone else who wants a primer on trading in today's markets, March 10, 2008

By	Linda O'Dell - See all my reviews

I wish I had read this book years ago -- I may have been able to react more appropriately (ie: I wouldn't have tuned out, or my eyes wouldn't have crossed) when my husband raved about a stock that he had just sold at a profit, or another one that he was watching as CNBC pundits argued in the background. I'd go into the "huh? zone" because I didn't understand what he was talking about when he referred to futures, options, puts and calls. All I vaguely knew was that a stock going up in price was a good thing, and you buy low and sell high. So, while I'm not planning to do any short term trading, this book gave me a better understanding of trading in terms that I could understand.

I sailed through the first several chapters in which Northcott went over the basics: supply and demand, global influences, the mindset of a trader, the differences between the markets and exchanges, placing orders, the types of traders, economic indicators and the tools that are needed to be a trader. Northcott's cheat sheet at the end of each chapter offers a quick look at the chapter in the form of "success bullets" and "words to know" that I found helpful and invaluable to someone using this as a reference book. I did start to get into the "huh? zone" around Chapter 8 when Northcott went into the nitty-gritty world of charting, and I found my reading slowing down as I stumbled over candlestick charts and support, resistance and continuation patterns. His lesson on indicators (ie. Moving Average Convergence/Divergence indicator and the Stochastic Oscillator) go into a detail that should make this book required reading for the beginning trader.

The next several chapters aren't a quick read - in fact, they'll take several re-readings and a highlighter. But they're basic tools for anyone wanting to research and trade on the markets.

I closed the book with new knowledge and a better understanding of just how risky and exhilarating short term trading can be. This book doesn't offer a get-rich-quick plan, but it does provide a look at the basics of what it takes to do this kind of trading. Throughout the book, Northcott stresses that short term trading is a business, so the novice needs to think of it that way. Don't let emotions like greed and fear get in your way. Come up with a business plan and stick with it: do research to get in or out of the markets, and know the point when you've got to fold and get out.

I'd give this book five stars and recommend it as a required reference book on the shelf of anyone who dabbles in buying or selling on the markets to those who want to make it a career.