Customer Reviews

The Stock Trader: How I Make a Living Trading Stocks

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Don't read this book if you are looking for esoteric set-ups and tricks that you can use in today's market. Do read it if you want to sit with a successful trader and get a hint of what it's like to live by trading.

Mr. Oz impressively made 32% on his account during the crash of April 2000 when the NASDAQ dove by 30%. He did it without shorting and by trading only the hard hit tech sector. The strategy he used was basically the "buy on the dip" technique that worked so well during the historic run-up. However, this feat is not the "take-away" from this book.

The real lesson is risk management. First, Tony is ruthless about leaving bad trades without afterthought or regret. Even when the stock bounds up shortly after he sells, he affirms that he did the right thing by exiting when he did. He always enters a stop loss as soon as he enters the trade, and raises it as soon as feasible. Those of us who have learned this lesson the hard way can only admire his intestinal fortitude. Second, Tony almost never hits his target for a trade. He almost always exits sooner, but he preserves his profits. Mastering these two seemingly simple lessons is what separates the real money-makers from those who finance them.

The author accepted a challenge to open an account with $50,000 and trade for one month, which resulted in this book, where he documents each trade and the associated chart pattern. He made over $22,000 during this challenge, if you include positions he opened but did not close until shortly after this time period.

In understanding this book, it is critical to recognize the period of time that he was trading. This was essentially the very end of the biggest bull market in history. Much has been made of the fact that there was a huge NASDAQ crash during his trading window and he was only trading to the long side. However, during this volatile period, the NASDAQ also made huge rebounds from some of these selloffs. A trader always prefers volatility, which is what creates opportunity.

The author's trading strategy was to buy expensive tech stocks (over $100 a share) based solely on support and resistance levels and look for gains of 1, 2, 3 dollars a share or so. He was essentially playing the old day trader's "momentum" game, which is now just a memory. The tech stocks he was trading now sell for a fraction of what they were, for example, five dollars now instead of $120 during his trading challenge.

One must also understand that during low volume, low volatility markets that are not strongly trending, support and resistance levels often are not present. We are currently in such a market. Could the author trade successfully in today's market environment? Possibly, but certainly not the levels of success he obtained during his challenge.

One of the real values of this book is the author's religious use of stops. Until a trader understands the importance of cutting his losses early, he has no hope of succeeding. I also commend the author for documenting his actual trades, which should be a requirement for anyone writing a book on trading. I would suggest that any author of a trading book should be legally required to submit his prior six months trade confirmations, their accuracy guaranteed by a certified third party.

As a final comment, I would note that the book represents only the end results of an experienced trader's work. It never mentions the long journey required to get to that point, particularly having to overcome numerous mental and psychological obstacles.

Many authors write books about trading for the sole purpose of marketing training or website access. Tony's books are different. They provide in-depth information that is clear and concise. The Stock Trader is the perfect compliment to his first book, Stock Trading Wizard. I found it to be absolutely fascinating and accessible for those with trading experience. It actually enhances my understanding of the first book because it adds the hands on insight which is so critical. The first book dealt with Tony's rules for trading. It's sort of like ground school when learning to fly an airplane.While this is the essential foundation of trading one also needs to see these rules in action. His new book does this perfectly. We move from ground school into the flying plane and get to see every move.

As each trade unfolds all of the nuances of Tony's trading style become clear. He uses simple, easy to recognize, support and resistance coupled with effective analysis of Nasdaq level II and the major indices to find and execute high probability trades. This doesn't make successful trading easy, but as Tony says it does make it "doable". For me it also reinforced one of life's essential lessons: The simplest effective solution is almost always the best solution.

In many respects Tony has taken the methods first illuminated in Reminiscences of a Stock Operator and showed us how to apply them utilizing today's technology. The information contained in The Stock Trader coupled with his Stock Trading Wizard are all experienced traders need to develop a successful trading style.

Matt Kreegar

Tony's latest book, The Stock Trader, is an excellent resource for all day and swing traders. This well-thought out 280-page book documents successful actual trades Tony made and has chart patterns and trade setups explained in detail on every page.

Tony's the best trader out there who writes, with an easy-to-understand practical style that can help people actually become better traders. Unlike the other theory fluff books that abound out there, both of Tony's books are practical and well-written. This book is well worth 2-3 times the cover price and I have no hesitation in recommending it strongly to all our traders at ... as a "must read" resource.

Thanks, Tony for contributing another useful, practical resource to the trading community. He put a lot of hard work into the book, and it shows. He documents "real trading in action" with risk/money management stops and profitable trades.

Best of all, his book documents a genuine "look over the shoulder of a real trader in action" for a full month's worth of trades. Tony made a 56% return in 4 weeks, turning 50K into 78K (in a bear market month!). It's all here. Read it. He's a good trader.

There is much more to learning how to make money on the stockmarket than reading "how-to" books. There is another equally important task and that is how the markets work in real life. The real skill is often not losing money. Winning can be relatively easy, but so is losing. If you can eliminate most of your losing trades, success will be yours.

One way to learn how to do this is from those who have "been there and done that". There have been hundreds of trading books written on this topic, but a stand-out contribution comes from Tony Oz, a professional trader. His book The Stock Trader: How I Make a Living Trading Stocks gives the reader a fabulous opportunity to track his trades over four weeks. He also reveals the skills used during the biggest crash of the past decade - the awesome April 2000 tech wreck.

Oz's book is easy to read and sets a slick pace. For today's army of daytraders, it gives a unique look at how serious, aggressive daytrading is conducted, those annoying missed opportunities that we all waste our energies lamenting and, of course, the winning trades.

It is a diary of a fascinating four-week hectic trading period that outlines how every trade was identified, managed and closed. The trades were taken only from the long side, or buy side, which is more applicable to Australian markets than other US books that concentrate on selling stocks.

The book was written in response to a challenge and starts with $50,000 in a new account. Profits are taken out each week. These are real trades, not theoretical examples. The total return is 35 per cent in four weeks. There are 116 trades recorded, charted and then explained in a daily trading journal including illustrations and formulas.

Oz explains the research and preparation, the joys and frustrations, the exhilarating victories and disappointing defeats. He gives us a blow-by-blow description of each battle between emotions, decisions, market makers and technology, and explains what he was thinking and feeling. Oz then outlines each trade's strategy, the profits and the losses. At the end of each week, he orders a cheque from his broker to clean his account and prevent compounding of profits. After all, he explains in the book, Friday is payday.

There are 26 main chapters with some terrific topics such as Working on My Golf Swing, The Market is Always Right, Sitting on My Hands, Thank God It's Friday, Sweet Dream or a Nightmare, Cash is a Position and Thank You, But No Champagne For Me.

Every chapter has something aspiring that even experienced traders can learn from. The chapters are informative and sometimes very funny; any trader can relate to the stories.

There is an epilogue and a bonus pack that covers what happened next, tips, guidelines, rules and case studies. There are eight appendices covering everything from plans, records, statistics through to creating a constant watch list and some useful resources for the active trader. A full glossary of terminologies is included.

Daytraders will be pleasantly surprised at the small size of each win, and the even smaller size of each loss. Interestingly, none of the popular technical indicators are used and Oz outlines his simple and straightforward approach. His book reconfirms several important lessons that come up repeatedly in all good trading books. These include:

The need for absolute discipline.

The need for a simple, straightforward trading approach.

The ability and, importantly, the willingness to cut losses quickly and cleanly and at pre-determined levels.

The need to take profits based on what the market is telling you and not on what you want to tell the market, or wish the market would do.

The most important lesson presented in the book was to never break from a trading plan or discipline. Overall, the book is a good read for traders who have learned the basics and want to see how to put it all together and move to the next level.

I found Tony's new book "The Stock Trader" to be a fantastic companion to his first book "Stock Trading Wizard." While I think that the book can be read by a relative novice (like myself) on its own, I do feel that it is better understood if it is read after "Stock Trading Wizard." Like STW, "The Stock Trader" shows that a simpler and more basic approach to trading stocks can be a very successful approach if the user maintains a high level of discipline and sticks religiously to his own set rules. It takes the lessons learned from "Stock Trading Wizard" and puts them into action.

Tony literally put his money where his mouth was. From the first page I realized that this was not an ordinary trading book. Tony lets us go into his trading mind on a daily basis and see his approach and his discipline at work. I wasn't bogged down by rules, formulas and opinions. What I got was an entertaining and exciting (assuming you are interested in stock trading) trade by trade account of a successful trader at work along with his thoughts before and after each trade and at the trading days beginning and end. Afterwards I realized that, while being entertained, I was also getting a great trading education, without realizing it. I could not wait to see what the next chapter (day) would bring. This was especially true in light of the fact that the market was going through a major correction at the time and that I was aware, in retrospect, which days were going to be very difficult to successfully trade long in. Tony was not just telling me how to trade in this difficult market, he was showing me!

I highly recommend this book.

One of the keys to successful day trading is simplicity. It doesn't get much simpler than this. Mr. Oz uses a 1 min chart, generally buys stocks over $100 when they hit support, places dollar stops on small shares and exits when the stock shows weakness. It is a good example of the old adage buy the dips sell the rallies but in this case buy support sell resistance. You can not argue with success in publishing or trading. Over all it clarifies how a mediocre trader can make a living trading stocks. It has great value for the beginner with a stout heart. The technique is not generally thought of as day trading but applying swing trading to day trading and a lot of money is left on the table.

This book is outstanding from the crowd of other books written on the subject. Not only, that Tony demonstrated, that it is possible to make money only on long trades during the crash in spring 2000. What's makes the book so outstanding is, that he describes every trade he made during this 4 week period in detail and the reasoning for the trade. His thoughts and descriptions of the emotions he went trough during this phase are very helpful for every trader.

While reading the book, I really had the impression to look over his shoulder while he prepared and made his trades. Reading this book is a bit like watching a movie on daytrading.

While I haven't found ( and didn't expect to find ) any new concepts, strategies and alike, it was very interesting to read about how a master trader executes well known methods in real live.

The most fascinating aspect of the book is, that even the author had no idea in advance of what will happen through the 4 week trading period. So it was a real challenge for him as well

Tony Oz's book "The Stock Trader" is one of the best books on trading that I have ever read. And I have read quite a few books on trading and investing over the last 5-6 years. You won't be able to put this one down or away....you will want to keep it near your trading desk and be sure to get it back if you loan it out. You will feel as though you are right there with Tony as he trades day in and day out. You understand and feel what he is going through as he makes each trade. Tony gives the reasons for each trade and you learn about his rules and guidelines. As a trader who is beginning to make shorter term trades day after day myself, Tony proves to me that what I have been doing is the beginning of a more succesful trading strategy. I absolutely love this book and I would highly recommend it to everyone out there, novice and professional traders alike, as well as those who would like to get a "feel" for what it's like to be a successful Stock Trader. This is a "Real", "in your face", "fighting in the trenches" book on trading.

Tony's new book pulls the curtain all the way back and reveals how a successful trader works in real life situations. Not only does Tony present the setups and technical explanations behind each trade, but he also shares the human and emotional consequences as well, making me feel like I was sitting next to him as he did it. I couldn't help but laugh, as well as relate to the pain of various situations that I have found myself in as well. It really made a difference reading Tony's emotional reactions and real-life ways of dealing with them. With so many case studies included, the book is the kind that you can keep coming back to again and again and continually glean something new from. The most important lesson presented over and over in the book was to never break from a trading plan or discipline. Seeing that in action made the book worth its weight in gold, and the kind of book to come back to for inspiration. Overall, it is a must read for traders who have learned the basics and want to see how to put it all together and get to the next level.