Customer Reviews

Investment Psychology Explained: Classic Strategies to Beat the Markets

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Many people, including me, discovered the psychology is the most important part for good trading. This book pointed out many commone mistakes traders often made and many pitfalls to avoid. I found some materials in this book were quite similar to the Elder's Trading for a living. Because I read Elder's book before this one so I found it was less informative than I expected. But if you didn't read any other books about investment psychology, you could still learn a lot from this one. The price is cheap and Pring's style is lucid. A good choice!

Pring makes an excellent case for his premise that every investor's worst enemy is him (or her)self. Investing evokes a host of emotions - fear, greed, panic, hope - all of which drive the investor to make unsound decisions. The key is to develop an objective plan and stick to it - not necessarily because it's foolproof, but more importantly because it allows a means of acting outside our emotions. He gives many good examples of how emotions cloud sound judgement, but after he's made his point I felt he ran out of gas. Though there is some insight into how the market reacts to news and other events, there's a lot of repetition and a lot of gratuitous summaries of other people's advice - filler for what is essentially an excellent magazine article stretched into a book.

This book was required reading for a course I am taking, so maybe I remembered how I felt when I had to read "Silas Marner" in high school english. I found the book contained valid points about the psychology of trading which would be helpful to someone who was just entering the world of trading, but it seemed very dry reading to me, and repetitive. Much of it was rules for trading taken from other peoples books, and after awhile you got the feeling that you had just finished reading these rules, several times. I am currently reading "The Mind of a Trader" by Alpesh Patel, which is a similar type book (and also required reading), but somehow more readable.

I had read over a hundred trading books by far and written many reviews here on Amazon. This is the first time I used the term "book of books" to tell how far an author had tried to incorporate the trading ideas/concepts/rules of other gurus into his book. I dont mean that this book is simply a product of copy and paste. I believe the author had the good intention of covering as many "classic" strategies as possible to deliver the promise of the book title to his readers. In my opinion, most of the essential trading psychology concepts had been there.

This book is divided into three main parts. The first one tries to break popular trading misconceptions/errors with topics like no holy grail, myth of expert, marketitis (overtrading), tickeritis (too close to a quote screen), price-news drug effect (too easy access to prices, news and analyses), damage from tips or rumors, cult of guru, greener pastures effect (survival bias of industry funds), pride of opinion, specific difficulties facing successful businessmen and so on. The second part is about contrary opinion. Historical big crashes are discussed, as well as means to avoid or even profit from them. The third part is primarily rules and regulations of legends like Warren Buffet, John Templeton, Paul Tudor Jones, Bernard Baruch, W.D. Gann etc, and those developed by the author himself.

I agree with some reviewers that the author's writing is quite dry. To me, that's acceptable because it's not easy to elaborate with vivid words and stories, or the book will be far more than 265 pages. It would be eye opening for those who had read less than three trading psychology books. For serious trader readers, this book is still satisfying with the opportunities provided for the traders' own health check. Not a must, but certainly a valuable asset in one's own trading library.

Warning: Though my comment above is quite positive, please take this as a reference book only before you completely understand yourself and your best trading style. Otherwise, the third part of the book may lead you to become a Jack of all trades and thus meat for your fellow traders/investors.

His book is clearly written with fine examples, however, its not presented in a retainable, usable format. There are other books that present the same topic in a more effective manner. The main premise of the book: "Do not let market concerns drive your investment strategies." There, I just saved you $16.00.

Investment Psychology Explained was a very informative piece that details some of the emotional problems that traders and investors alike must face within themselves when playing the stock market. At the same time, however, Pring uses many real world examples that show how some of his theories and tips have either been applied or ignored and the results that followed. These real-world examples, in my mind, added to the book's entertainment and helped illustrate how Pring's tips can be transferred over to the reader's own investment style. The main idea that I walked away with from the book is that letting emotions interfere with investment decisions is like mixing oil with water...they don't blend at all together and only result in a big mess. However, I did feel that Pring's book did a lot of summarization of others' ideas, and more concrete plans of action for the daytrading speculator would have been in order. Overall, I found the work to be worth the money and ! a very interesting reading.

For the impatient get-rich-quickly or lazy "investor" this book seems to have a lot of story-telling and no "miraculous" strategies. However if someone wants to become a real investor/trader (without quotes) they have to be able to control themselves before they can create a consistent and reliable winning strategy. This books not only teaches a lot but also puts you in the right frame of mind and so I consider it a must-read for anyone who wants to eventually master the markets.

This book utilizes the historical events of various markets (mostly the US stock market) to explain various behaviours of market participants. The information is concise and each chapter deliver its points clearly. Part 3 of the book even list the trading rules of various well known authors/traders so that the readers can feel the importance of discipline as these well known individuals have to list a set of rules to remind themselves what not to do.
One thing I do not like are quoted results from research on trader psychology. The conclusions mentioned do not really sound very scientific nor making any sense. e.g. only "successful" traders are studied and conclusion is made without mentioning any similar study to prove such quality do not exist on "unsucessful" traders.
Overall, this is a good read for someone who already have experience in trading the market and would like to start learning something about the psychology aspect of trading. It will not be useful at all for a beginner who has not experience the emotional ups and downs related to trading, as the beginner is not likely to be able to connect with the content at all.

A good book, covers the collective mind aspects of the crowds which is a must for either a day trader swing trader or a position trader. If you read it carefully you will "get your money back" and much more.


Thank You !

This book as the title suggests rightly attacks the psychology of a trader. It points out what all challenges comes in the life of a trader & contrasts the usual trading approach that amateurs take with the actual right approach to tackle them. It has convincingly established that just controlling our moods, attitudes & actions towards investing can save us from loosing much or all of our money, which most people do in real life, & in turn we can make profits.
I have myself made a lot of mistakes while trading & found all of these in this book as an example, then got embarrassed of why not reading this book earlier. I strongly recommend that every trader should read this book thoroughly.