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60 of 63 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
MUST-HAVE for Starting Your Trading Business, April 6, 2009
This review is from: The Daily Trading Coach: 101 Lessons for Becoming Your Own Trading Psychologist (Wiley Trading) (Hardcover)
The Daily Trading Coach: 101 Lessons for Becoming Your Own Trading Psychologist (Wiley Trading)
This is my first Amazon.com review, and with excellent reason -- Dr. Steenbarger's latest book is his best yet!
Wall Street is the only place on earth where an expert and a novice have a 50-50 chance of winning. This is the human fascination with speculation.
Dr. Steenbarger's book provides 101 lessons every rookie and professional trader should---thanks to this book---be familiar with. Like his previous books, The Daily Trading Coach provides little jewels to improve your viewpoint from amateur trader to professional trader.
Compared to Van Tharp's books, Dr. Steenbarger takes an entirely different approach. Where Van Tharp focues on Position Sizing and Positive Expectancy systems, Dr. Steenbarger focuses on proper self-monitoring and self-coaching tips to improve performance over the daily uncertainty of Wall Street.
Combining Van Tharp & Brett Steenbarger's lessons, below are some commonly misunderstood facts of financial speculation:
1) It's not by making large profits that money is made over time. It's by consistently keeping losses small in relation to profits.
2) Making Money and Being Right are at opposite ends of the performance spectrum, and --- very surprisingly to most --- most professional traders admit their primary job is to minimize losses, NOT focus on being right. Why? Minizing losses (well over 50% of the time losses can't be avoided) ensures their average winner will be greater in relation to the average loser.
3) No one knows FOR SURE how much profit any trade is likely to make. Fortunately, it is possible to know THE INITIAL RISK a trader is willing to lose.
4) Projection of future prices are only a BEST GUESS, never a 100% certainty.
5) Top traders only control three things all the time: Initial Risk, Exits, and EMOTIONS...
Most professional traders keep emotions in check, and most admit that an emotional trader is a Dangerous Trader. I'm happily surprised to find Dr. Steenbarger support a different view.
Dr. Steenbarger uses research to argue that emotions can become a trader's best friend by fueling the drive to sustain change and modify a trader's behavior to enhance trading performance. Learning this is worth 1000x the price of the price of the book! Why? Because humans are naturally wired to act on emotions, and the human mind is the most complex to understand because emotions drive its actions unpredictably. Over 75% of the Daily Trading Coach is focused on harnessing the psychology of emotions to propel performance
It is said that Wall Street is the most expensive place to find yourself. Although this will always be the case, The Daily Trading Coach will certainly help reduce the cost of such an expensive lesson.
My faith is stronger than your doubt,
Federico Tewes
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28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Must Read, June 2, 2009
This review is from: The Daily Trading Coach: 101 Lessons for Becoming Your Own Trading Psychologist (Wiley Trading) (Hardcover)
The first time I met Dr. Steenbarger was in the smaller conference room of our proprietary trading firm in NYC. We were finalizing our training program and wanted the best teacher that we knew to review our work. He wasn't being paid, he was just a trading coach offering a helping hand. As Dr. Steenbarger offered his critique I was humbled by how much I still needed to consider. There was more work to be done.
I have traded my own account through the Asian Financial Crisis, the Tech Boom, the Internet Bubble, 9/11, and the recent near collapse of our banking system. Today I run SMB Capital, a proprietary trading desk. Yet TraderFeed and Dr. Steenbarger's writing is still essential reading for me. The Daily Trading Coach is no exception. It is simply a must read for the new, developing, and experienced trader.
As John Forman has done I should disclose that I am a proud contributor to the book. And I must admit my favorite part of this book is when Dr. Steenbarger makes fun of me for my overzealous contribution. Hey I was just trying to help.
When I first started my trading career in the late 90's you learned through osmosis. You sat next to an experienced trader and when they had time (if they had time?) they discussed their trading. The market is more complicated than when I began and this model frankly is outdated. One of the new techniques you must master is how to coach yourself, even if starting at an established firm with excellent mentoring. Start with the Daily Trading Coach.
Often new and developing traders mistakenly believe that learning from the best trader is the way to become great. If only this were true. The developing trader must find the best teacher. Dr. Steenbarger is the best trading teacher that I know.
The other day I received an email from a prospective trader asking me if everyone on our desk put up identical P&L since they all have access to the same trading plays. The experienced and developing trader are I am sure chuckling politely as they read. Not every trader possess the same trading skills and mental development. Psychology is the 800 pound gorilla in the room on every trading desk. Dr. Steenbarger is the godfather of techniques to clear our mental hurdles. There is so much more of this in the Daily Trading Coach. 101 lessons more to be exact.
Dr. Steenbarger has insider access to Hedge Fund traders, Investment Banks and proprietary trading firms that few do. His years of experience working with these groups has armed him with anecdotes and lessons that he has again passed along. Thank you Dr. Steenbarger.
This book sits in my office in Manhattan along with many other great trading books. I find myself often of late, rising from my chair, heading over to my book shelf, and rereading sections of the the Daily Trading Coach, as I consider how to best mentor one of our traders. The Daily Trading Coach is a trading gift that keeps on giving.
Mike Bellafiore
Partner, SMB Capital
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How to coach yourself to trading success, June 7, 2009
This review is from: The Daily Trading Coach: 101 Lessons for Becoming Your Own Trading Psychologist (Wiley Trading) (Hardcover)
After reading over 100 books on trading, I believe this one could very well be the most important. Your mind will determine if you are successful or not in trading. When you trade you are competing with millions of other traders, investors, and institutions for profits. It is similar to being an athlete, and all athletes must have coaches to continually push them to higher levels of achievement through motivation and goals. With out the right coaching, careers stagnate and even go backwards. The beauty of this book is that it teaches you to coach yourself. The author is a trader and psychologist, and he coaches professional traders. His goal with this book is to teach his readers how to coach themselves to success with the same techniques he teaches the pros to use.
Here are some of the gems of wisdom you will find in this book:
"...your losing trade is never a total loss as long as you embrace it and learn from it."
"When we're most frustrated, but also most overconfident, we're likely to make our worst decisions and violate our trading principles."
"..confidence comes from self-mastery."
"A good day is one in which we follow sound trading practices, from skilled execution to prudent risk management."
"Your focus becomes one of trading well, not one of making money."
"To best focus on any single performance, it helps to be diversified among performances."
"Positive thinking is not necessarily optimistic thinking, it is constructive thought."
"...good risk adjusted returns are better for the psyche than extreme patterns of returns. It's not how much you make, but how much you make per unit of risk taken that will keep you in or out of the performance zone."
"Focus on your best trading and you begin the process of extinguishing your worst practices."
This book has really improved my trading, by really teaching me to think correctly. It also reinforced my risk management strategies and showed me the importance of learning and growing. If you are serious about becoming a trader this book is a must have, it will show you how to build up the correct psychology to persevere in the markets long enough to win consistently. This is a must have for every trader's library.
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