Millionaire Traders: How Everyday People Are Beating Wall Street at Its Own Game (Hardcover)

by Kathy Lien (Author), Boris Schlossberg (Author)
Key Phrases: basic life expenses, number one rule for trading, equity day traders, New York, Chuck Hays, Million Dollar Baby (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Trading is a battle between you and the market. And while you might not be a financial professional, that doesn't mean you can't win this battle.

Through interviews with twelve ordinary individuals who have worked hard to transform themselves into extraordinary traders, Millionaire Traders reveals how you can beat Wall Street at its own game.

Filled with in-depth insights and practical advice, this book introduces you to a dozen successful traders-some who focus on equities, others who deal in futures or foreign exchange-and examines the paths they've taken to capture considerable profits.

With this book as your guide, you'll quickly become familiar with a variety of strategies that can be used to make money in today's financial markets. Those that will help you achieve this goal include:

• Tyrone Ball: trades Nasdaq stocks almost exclusively, and his ability to change with the times has enabled him to prosper during some of the most treacherous market environments in recent history.
• AShkan Bolour: one of the earliest entrants into the retail forex market, he trades in the direction of the major trend, rather than trying to find reversals.
• Frank Law: a technician at heart, identifies a trading zone, commits to it, and scales down as long as the zone holds.
• Paul Willette: has mastered a method that allows him to harvest some profits right away, while ensuring that he can still benefit from an occasional extension run in his favor.

Order your copy today and beat the Street.

From the Inside Flap

Every day, millions of ordinary people around the world wake up, turn on their computers, and try to make a living by trading the financial markets. Some are successful, some fail, but the possibility of hitting it big attracts many to the business.

As currency strategists and traders, authors Kathy Lien and Boris Schlossberg have been active in the markets for more than a decade, meeting many successful individual traders along the way.

In Millionaire Traders, Lien and Schlossberg interview twelve ordinary individuals who have transformed themselves into extraordinary traders. These people aren't hedge fund managers or employees of large money center banks with billions at their disposal, but regular folks who started with as little as $1,000 and turned those modest initial investments into six- to seven-figure fortunes.

The traders you'll encounter come from all walks of life, live around the world, and trade a variety of electronic markets. Some focus on equities and options, while others deal in futures or foreign exchange. Each has a very different style of trading—many that are even in direct conflict with each other—but all share the common traits of discipline, persistence, and the willingness to always cut losses.

Some of the individuals who share their experiences in the art of trading include:

Dana "Dan" Allen: the man who buys crashes and thrives on making bids when most other market participants are running for the exits

Chuck Hayes: who breaks many of the sacrosanct rules of trading yet thrives in the chaotic world of e-mini stock index futures, where the difference between fortune and failure can be measured in seconds

Indi Jones (this is an alias): who trades options for volatility as well as directionality, using sentiment and psychology to select his winning contrarian ideas

Roland Campbell: who likes to trade news flow, but only the news that catches the market off guard

While none of the traders highlighted throughout this book were successful from the start, all learned from their early failures and used those experiences to improve performance. Now, with Millionaire Traders, they'll show you how to make serious money in today's financial markets—whether it be through stocks, futures, or forex.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (September 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470049472
• ISBN-13: 978-0470049471
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #178,040 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not Exactly Market Wizards, October 17, 2007

By	A Reader (Connecticut) - See all my reviews

Read this book, but be careful. The research and documentation are questionable.

Millionaire Traders tries to replicate Jack Schwager's "Market Wizards". It does not. Read Market Wizards first. It is thorough, well researched, and the traders in it are first rate.

There is some useful information. The traders interviewed trade a variety of instruments (not just FX as one reviewer claimed). It is interesting to see how others got into trading and how they chose their markets.

The following are what I consider the downsides of this book:

1. There is no indication of how these people were chosen. Unlike Schwager's book, the author's do not tell how they chose these 12 traders to represent successful individual traders. There is also no indication that the authors verified that these traders were successful. It appears that they just took their word at face value.

2. Some of the traders represented as being highly successful individual traders are "mentoring" and running blogs and chat rooms. A real red flag. It does not necessarily mean that they are not successful traders, but anyone who has been around long enough knows that a lot of "experts" selling their trading knowledge do so because they can't make money trading. Some are very good, but for every good one there are 10 con artists.

3. Some of the resources touted as having been instrumental in their development are worthless.

42 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Everyday market wizards, September 27, 2007

By	Jaronimo (NJ, the garden state) - See all my reviews

Ok, I will start with a run-down of the things I liked best about this book.

-Every trader profiled is very different than the others. Telling me there are hundreds of ways to make money trading.

-Every trader knows his strengths and weaknesses and focuses on what he is good at. The basic centuries old advice "Know Thyself" rings true again. Are you better trading long or short? Fast hits, or more long term? Trade your style for success.

-Every trader says "don't lose money". Come on, who doesn't know that? But it turns out it is probably one of the most violated trading rules out there, one every successful trader follows. As the book states, protect yourself, No Capital, No Trading, No Life.

-You are not smarter than the market. Trade what is happening at this moment, not what you want or hope to happen.

-Stay away from companies with debt. If you are going long, that's a great piece of advice! While other companies that carry debt also move up, those without it move up more reliably.

-Trend is continuous, but turn only happens once.

-If you have to make money, you never will. All of these traders trade to do it right. If you do it right each time you will make money as an added benefit. If you violate your rules the market will punish you.

-Focus on a few stocks, futures, or currencies. You can't trade everything, so you need to become an expert and specialize somewhere.

The traders profiled target different markets. Stocks, futures, and Forex. There is a good assortment here so you should be able to find at least one trader that resonates with your trading style. While every one of them trades differently they all have figured out a system that they stick to. Some have daily profit targets, others don't. Some of the targets are large, others seem very small, like one trader that shoots for ten pips a day. That's a pretty easy target in my opinion, but if you make it a large trade you can achieve a pretty high reward.

One comment in the book really clicked for me. It pretty much summed up in one sentence why I enjoy trading so much. The sentence was "Trading is one of the only professions that punishes you for non-performance". It also rewards you instantly for good performance. There are many jobs in this world where you can skate by and do mediocre work and get away with it. But in trading there is no place to hide. Your P/L will tell you immediately if you have done good or bad. What other career can give you that instantaneous feedback?

Most of these traders paper-trade to ensure their systems work. One trader will triple his paper account before trying the system live. That's dedication to your craft. I have found that I cannot paper-trade too long, maybe I am impatient? That's one reason I like Forex because I can trade very small amounts and actually use real money to do a pseudo-paper-trade. The amount of risk is very tiny, but psychologically I am more focused because I understand its actual money on the line. Then once I have achieved a long enough test sample the only change I have to make is the trade size.

If you trade or are planning on starting, I highly recommend this book. I think there is knowledge here for everyone, no matter what your skill level is.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed, December 27, 2007

By	Dogwood - See all my reviews

I just finished reading Millionaire Traders and was generally disappointed in the book.

First, I found the sloppy editing, obvious grammar mistakes and numerous spelling errors highly annoying. No professionally authored and published book should have so many errors. Every page has missing or misplaced commas, misspelled words, or words simply missing from sentences.

Either the book was never copy edited, or that part of production was farmed out to a couple high school kids working summer internships.

While a few mistakes per book are acceptable and expected, mistakes on every page made the book unpleasant to read and created an unprofessional impression of the authors/publisher.

Secondly, as another reviewer mentioned, I would like to know how these particular traders were selected. Where did the authors find these people and what did the authors do, if anything, to try to verify the traders' performance claims?

As someone who plans to trade for a living at some point in the future, I was looking forward to reading each interview, but at the end of each I was left wondering who is this guy and how do I know his numbers are legit?

By interviewing professional traders, Jack Schwager in Market Wizards bypassed this problem, but by focusing on "Everyday People", the authors need to do more to establish credibility.

Finally, it seemed like the book was heavily skewed toward Forex traders. Even though traders of other instruments were featured, it just seemed to lean on Forex a lot, but this might be more impression than fact.

Overall, as I read the book I couldn't help but think this was a slam-bam-thank-you-type imitation of Schwager's two books, only superficially and sloppily written, then rushed through production to meet an arbitrary publishing deadline.