Customer Reviews

The Four Cardinal Principles of Trading: How the World's Top Traders Identify Trends, Cut Losses, Maximize Profits & Manage Risk

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1.Identify Trends 2.Cut Losses 3.Maximize Profits 4.Manage Risk. Now send me $28 and forget about the book!

Read the dust jacket and learn the four key principles: trade with the trend, cut losses short, let profits run, and manage risk. You don't need to spend the $28 to buy the book.

In a nutshell - the four rules - trade with the trend, cut losers, let winners run, and money management. Now you won't need the book. He interviews "top" traders and asks them the same questions. Example "Do agree trading with the trend is important?" Ans "Of course". These things I knew before I wasted money on this book. As another reviewer said "If you want this book, you can have mine" I'd love to stop myself out of it!

It seems like Babcock is a smart guy with high powered degrees. Why did he write a book with so little intellectual value? His title tells us 4 elements to good trading. The stuff between the covers does surprizingly little to explore these points. I feel ripped off!

Normally I will check the reviews on Amazon before I buy a book. Because I had read some of the very interesting but negative reviews of this book so I borrowed it from the library instead of buying it with my hard earned money. Thanks to those reviewers, I had saved twenty bucks.

Actually, this is a trading book of the interview type. The problems are: 1) The interviewees are far less famous than those in "Market Wizards I&II". 2) The author's fixation on "identify trends, cut losses, maximize profit and manage risk" (reflected by his questions like "Do you think X (any one of the above four)is important?" had limited the scope of answers from the interviewees that made the book much less useful and interesting than it could be. Very short "yes" and "no" answers from the respondents were frequent. 3) The author's deliberate separation of the book into the four main principles/chapters had made the whole book incohesive and hard to read. You can see the opinion of Jake Bernstein (a writer who wrote over 20 trading books) here and there that made you hard to have a holistic view of his trading strategy and ideology at all.

In short, just borrow one if you really want to read it.

The premise is simple, four rules, but it is the application from traders that have very different styles that make this book worthwhile. It's easy to say trade with the trend, cut your losses, etc. How do you define that? It depends on your trading method. It's not the same for everyone.

The traders interviewed in this book walk through how they trade (or don't) based on these principles. Anytime you can look over another successful traders shoulder and see how they do it, it's invaluable. My copy is well worn and dog eared. Anyone that actually trades the markets would find this book well worth the money, and an excellent read.