Learn the Art of Day Trading With a Practical Hands-On Approach
Do you want to be a day trader?
Every day, millions of dollars change hands in the markets, presenting the perfect opportunity for people just like you to make significant money and profits through the art of day trading.
But here's the question: is day trading right for you? And, if it is, how do you get started?
In his new three-part guide, professional day trading coach Markus Heitkoetter lays out a simple, proven system for trading success. From the basic essentials of trading to the actual process of making money in the markets, he'll cover it all.
* What You Need To Get Started: The Tools, The Methods, The Mindset
* Finding the Best Market to Trade: Futures, Forex, Stocks, or Options
* A 7-Step Approach to Developing Your Own Profitable Trading Strategy
* The 10 Power Principles of Successful Trading Strategies
* Avoiding The 7 Common Mistakes of Traders
* Get Started Without Risking A Single Penny
* Ready-To-Use Trading Plan Templates, Checklists, Resource Directories, & More
Loaded with easy-to-use information, proven and reliable strategies and guidelines, and a practical hands-on approach to the industry, The Complete Guide to Day Trading is your own personal manual to success in the markets.
"As a former instructor at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and founder of Commodity Boot Camp, I wish this book were given out by every instructor in our classes. It is a nice overview of the pitfalls and opportunities that exist in day trading. Before you go down the day trading path, spend time and seriously consider reading this "easy to read" overview." -- Neal Weintraub, Professional Author, Trader, & Instructor
"I have been trading for 22 years, full-time for over 16 years. There are few traders out there who I feel have a well-rounded understanding of what is necessary to be a successful trader. After reading The Complete Guide to Day Trading, I feel that Markus Heitkoetter is one of those traders.
In trading, context is everything. You can have great entry and exit signals, but if you don't address other important factors such as money management, fear, greed, and developing a trading plan, you only have a small part of a big puzzle. This is what I like about The Complete Guide to Day Trading - it provides the context necessary to cover other critical aspects of success.
I would highly recommend The Complete Guide to Day Trading as preparation for anyone who is considering day trading... It will save you many, many costly mistakes while setting up a solid foundation from which to build your day trading plan." -- Ryan Jones, Author of The Trading Game: Playing By The Numbers to Make Millions
"If you are interested in day trading, this is definitely a book you must check out before jumping in. Easy to read and understand, entertaining, and right to the point... A great book from Markus Heitkoetter!" -- Francesc Riverola, CEO & Founder of FXstreet.com
"If you're looking for a great trading book that shows you how to profit from a balance of technical tools and usable trading experience lessons, look no further." -- Glen Larson, President and CEO of Genesis Financial Technologies
"There are plenty of books out there that can teach you about daytrading, but I'm not sure there are any other books like Markus Heitkoetter's The Complete Guide to Day Trading. What I especially like about the book is that for an experienced trader like myself, the book was a terrific review down "memory lane"...Heitkoetter's book had me get focused on doing things right again." -- Norman Hallett, CEO of Subconscious Training Corporation--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
From the Author
"I wrote The Complete Guide to Day Trading a bit like a road map, or a how-to manual. Nothing would make me happier then if every copy we sell becomes mangled and beat up, filled with creased spines, dog-eared pages, and notes scribbled in margins. That's the whole point - it's a hands-on guide to trading success."
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
"Markus, How Did YOU Get Started With Trading?" ===============================================
I receive this question all the time, so here's my story:
Let me start with my motivation.
According to Wikipedia "retirement is the point where a person stops employment completely", i.e. you stop exchanging your time for money. MY definition of retirement is to do what you love to do and to live where you want to live while money is generated by your various investments.
15 years ago, at the young age of 25, I decided to retire at the age of 40. When I announced this goal to my friends, they thought I was crazy, since at that time I was still in college and didn't even start a career. But here was my plan: Go to college, get a well-paid job at a major corporation, make a lot of money and smart investments so that I could retire at the age of 40.
This doesn't sound like the career of a trader, does it? Bear with me, I'll explain in a minute.
The Beginning Of My Trading Career ==================================
I was fascinated by trading when I was a teenager. While going to high school, I read the books from Andre Kostolany, a world-renowned stock market expert and speculator, who worked most of his life in France and Germany. At the age of 18 I placed my first trade: It was an option straddle on a German Dax stock. It worked out very well, and I doubled my $200. I did a few more trades and made close to $1,000, before making a stupid mistake and losing it all.
After high school, I placed some outright stock trades using signals from hand-drawn point-and-figure charts. I did ok; made some money and lost some money, and my trading was not consistent.
Then I Got Scammed By A "Broker" ================================
In 1994 I was introduced to the futures market. At this point I was going to college and running my own computer shop to pay for my education. The computer shop was quite successful: Five friends and I imported computer parts directly from China and Taiwan and then assembled affordable computers for our fellow students. I had $25,000 in my bank account and one day - out of the blue - I received a call from a broker. He told me that Gold has reached a bottom and there would be a shortage in Gold. Bottomline: It is time to start buying Gold futures.
He told me about "leverage" and how my money would triple in just a few weeks. If you have ever received a similar call from a broker in the late 80s or early 90s, then you know what I am talking about. Needless to say that I was hooked and wired $8,000 to him. A few weeks later he called and told me that right now is a great time to "buy even cheaper", since Gold prices moved down. Long story short: I was young and stupid and way too greedy. Tripling or quadrupling my money in weeks? Come on, who wouldn't want to do that? I wired another $12,000 to the broker and that was the last thing I ever heard from him. The company went out of business and I took my place in line with thousands of other investors waiting for my money. I never got a single cent back.
The Next Scam: Automated Trading Systems ========================================
Based on this experience I decided to learn more about futures trading. I would NEVER fall for a scam artist again. I bought many books written by "trading gurus" and tried to understand the futures and forex markets. But it seemed all so confusing: There were so many indicators, candles and chart formations that I didn't know where to start. In 1996 I decided to take a shortcut: I read an ad about an automated trading system that would make me money while I was sleeping.
I went out and purchased MetaStock and the advertised trading system for this charting software. Supposedly this system was making hundreds and thousands of dollars every month, and I didn't have to do anything. Needless to say that this system did not work. Fortunately I only tested it on a paper trading account, but I paid a decent amount for this system. I was scammed again. Lesson learned.
OmniTrader - The Holy Grail? ============================
Shortly after this experience I stumbled across a software package called OmniTrader. At that time you could use this software tool to optimize a basket of trading indicators and therefore "discover" a profitable combination of indicators and parameters. As far as I remember I was still using an 80486 computer processor, and running this optimization took a couple of hours. But it was so convenient: You selected a stock, and OmniTrader analyzed a "winning combination" of more than 50 indicators and optimized them with the right parameters. At that time I was still new to trading system development and did not understand the danger of over-optimization. I spent several months running these optimizations on a large number of stocks, and all I had discovered was a perfectly optimized trading system for my stocks - on the backtested time period. After a few profitable trades the system failed. No surprise.
*Note: OmniTrader is probably an excellent software IF used correctly. I did not use it the right way and wasted several months developing useless over-optimized systems.
My Own System Development Disaster ==================================
After wasting more than one year on trying to find the Holy Grail (i.e. a software that magically produces a profitable trading strategy for me so that I would only log into my account once a month to see how much money I made), I decided to take matters in my own hands. I had enough from all the "trading gurus" who claimed to have the "perfect system" and all the hype around black box trading systems.
So I started developing my own trading system. I purchased three books on System Development and SuperCharts Version 3 from Omega Research, which is now known as TradeStation. I spent two years developing and backtesting trading systems and became an expert on this topic. Believe it or not, but I know the meaning and application of more than 100 indicators. I guess if you do something long enough you eventually become good at it. But it didn't matter how good I became; automated trading systems simply don't work. At least not in the long run. I wasted a lot of time and money to come to this conclusion.
Becoming A Discretionary Trader ===============================
In 2000 I got tired of contradicting indicators and complicated formulas. I wanted to find a simple way to play "the game of games". I got frustrated browsing through hundreds of stocks trying to find the "right" one and decided to move to the futures markets. At that time the e-mini S&P was fairly liquid. Margin requirements were reasonable and brokers charged "only" $20 - $25 per round-turn. I came across the teachings of Joe Ross, who used simple chart patterns like 1-2-3 formations and Ross Hooks to trade the markets. I was intrigued by the simplicity of his concepts and bought all of his books. You should know that Joe's books cost anywhere between $150 and $195, and I bought a total of 10 books!
But it was worth it. I wanted to compete with the brightest minds in the world, so I thought it would be smart to invest some money in quality education. And I started to understand that a discretionary trader will always outperform a mechanical trading system IF he has the discipline to follow his rules and control his emotions.
Jumpstarting My Trading Career ==============================
I also realized that there are certain limitations when learning from books only, so I decided to book a private tutoring with Joe Ross in the USA. The cost was $1,500 per day PLUS travel expenses from Germany to the USA. If I remember correctly, I spent $6,000 for the first private tutoring session with Joe.
During the day I listened to an experienced trader, asked him many questions and took a lot of notes. In the evening I went through all my notes, applied what I had learned that day and jotted down more questions. I don't think I slept more than 4 hours during this time, since I wanted to maximize my return on investment.
And it paid off: After the training I started with an $8,000 account and traded it up to $18,000 in a few months.
Making More Costly Mistakes ===========================
But then I started making costly mistakes: I was overconfident, overtraded and tried to optimize a strategy that wasn't broken. I was unhappy with a 70% winning percentage. I wanted 80%, 90% or - even better - 99% winning trades! I got greedy, didn't follow my rules, abandoned my money management and lost 80% of my trading account.
Humbled by the markets I went back to Joe and spent another $5,000 or $6,000 (can't remember) just to refresh what I had already learned.
And I got back to Germany, focused on my discipline and controlling my emotions - especially greed - and started again with an $8,000 account. It took me only 12 weeks to double this account.
Leaving The Corporate World ===========================
I realized that it was almost impossible to day trade and have a full-time job. Between 1996 and 2002 I made my way in the corporate world. After all, until this point in time my trading career had not been very lucrative: Yes, I made money, but I had lost a lot of money earlier and spent even more money on books, software and seminars. Fortunately I lived in Germany and because of the time difference I could work during the day and trade the US markets in the evening hours.
In the corporate world I learned to play by the rules, generated revenue for the company and became an Executive at IBM in January 2000. In 2002 I was responsible for mySAP.com Services in Europe, Middle East and Africa, and I was stuck in the corporate rate race: I travelled 6 days a week and only got home to change suitcases. I always had a packed suitcase at home. I lost contact with many friends and my family, and I did not have any hobbies. After two years of living the life of a "career junkie" I decided that enough is enough and told my wife that I will leave the corporate world to become a day trader. I don't think that I have to explain her reaction in much detail here, and I am thankful she didn't incapacitate me right on the spot.
But I am very stubborn; that's why I had so many successes in my life.
In late September 2002 I moved to the USA, since living in the US was one of my goals. I had visited many cities in the US and decided to settle in Austin, TX. In October 2002 I rented a small apartment with a pool view and couldn't be any happier. After I settled in, I began day trading.
The First Months As A Day Trader ================================
I could have funded a trading account with $50,000 or even $100,000. But I already experienced how fast a trading account can be wiped out, so I decided to start with 5,000 Euro, which converted to $7,291.24.
In the first month I made $3,387.45 and had $10,678.69 in my trading account.
In the second month I made $7,445.05 and traded my account up to $18,1237.74. This was in December 2002 and I decided to take $2,348.65 out of the account to celebrate Christmas.
Then the "Third Month Slump" hit me again: In January 2003 I lost $4,307.40!
But I was able to regain my strengths: After making some stupid, stupid, stupid mistakes in January and in the first week of February, I managed to lose "only" $350 in February.
Then I was back on track:
March: $1,992.00 in profits April: $1,322.82 in profits May: $2,575.04 loss !
(Note: In April my first son was born, and since it was our first child, our life turned upside down. I learned one of the most important lessons of my trading life: In order to succeed with trading, two conditions have to be met:
1.YOU have to be ready and 2.THE MARKET has to be ready.
And no, you are not ready when you are sleep deprived.
June: $3,231.94 (back on track) ... and the story continues
Even though I made some stupid mistakes, I managed to double an $8,000 account in eight months. At this point my wife felt much more comfortable with my decision to leave the corporate world, move to the US and start a career as a trader.
Fast Forward A Few Years ========================
I decided to start trading in order to escape the corporate rat race, become financially independent and retire early without worrying about money.
Just to recap: MY definition of retirement is to do what you love to do and to live where you want to live while money is generated by your various investments.
I am now 39 years old and here's a list of my current investments:
* I have four rental properties and my own home. One of these properties will be completely paid off next year. * In addition to these real estate investments I invested in an oil tanker, which was a very smart investment, since the tanker is chartered for the next 8 years. * And I invested in a business: I am the majority shareholder of Rockwell Trading and do what I love to do: Talking about trading and sharing my experiences to teach aspiring traders and help them to achieve their trading goal.
As you can see, my income does not depend on trading alone, and neither should yours! I strongly advocate to use your trading profits and invest them wisely in passive investments. Keep in mind that trading is active income: If you don't trade, you don't make any money. If you get sick, have a family emergency or just go on a vacation and can't trade, you don't make any money. So don't put all your money into a trading account and make sure to take out some money from time to time. You never know what will happen, and you don't want to lose all your savings when making stupid trading mistakes. Protect yourself! I am speaking from experience.
But even more important than all these financial things: I have time for my friends and family.
I have two kids: My son Julius is six years old and my daughter Vivian turns four this summer. I am picking up my kids from Preschool and Kindergarten every day and spend the afternoons with them, unless they decide to go on a play date with friends.
I am creating memories for my kids that will last a lifetime. As an example: Last year we bought a pop-up camper and went camping once or twice a months - and you should know that camping season in Texas lasts from March until November. I tried to buy a big travel trailer, but the kids love this little pop-up since it reminds them of tent camping. They like to be close to nature; fall asleep to the chirping of the crickets and wake up to birds singing. Yes, we went on a fancy cruise for Julius 1st birthday, had a suite with a balcony and the whole nine yards. But at their age my kids enjoy camping more than fancy hotels or cruises, and I would be a lousy father if I would ignore that.
These days I am closer to my parents and brothers than I've ever been. My father retired two years ago, after spending 40 years in a steel corporation. I remember the times when I was a kid and daddy came home late, completely exhausted and with a briefcase full of work. He rarely had time to play.
I don't believe I could experience the life I am living right now if I had stayed in the corporate world. Trading helped me to make the change I needed!
Again: MY definition of retirement is to do what you love to do and to live where you want to live while money is generated by your various investments.
Today I am living exactly where I want to live at this stage of my life; I do what I love to do and have time for friends, family and especially my kids. And I have been able to make smart investments in the past couple of years. It seems that according to my definition I am already retired. Cool
I have been actively Day Trading for about 2 months now, and have managed to remain profitable. I have gotten better over time, and I eventually see this as a way to earn a living.
I heard about this book as I attended one of Marcus's free seminars online.
I really struggled on whether to give this book a rating of 2 or 3 stars. And that is based on what I think the book is good for. I think the title is a bit misleading? The title kind of bills this book out as a 'COMPLETE Guide to Day Trading.'
When I read the word 'COMPLETE,' I tend to think that it will cover money management, trader mentality, how to identify trends, and most important, detailed explanations into trade setups. Basically I would think it would cover many things about day trading, but most importantly.....specific trade setups.
This book was a decent, quick read. And it does a pretty good job at explaining the basics to brand new day traders. It also has some good organizational information in there for anyone. But if you're looking for a book to explain specific setups, time of day, etc.....this isn't the one for you. Specific trade setups really are just mentioned as a blurb more or less in the book in one chapter. If you've been trading for a while, I would say that since it IS available in paper back, and is relatively in inexpensive, it's not a bad buy, but there are more useful books in my opinion. 'Mastering the Trade' is still the best book I've read thus far.
If this book were billed as anything BUT the 'COMPLETE' guide to day trading, or if the word 'Beginner' were somewhere in the title, I would have given it 3 stars. But to be billed as the COMPLETE guide is what swayed me to report 2 stars. Even after reading this book, there is no way a new trader will read it and be capable of day trading.
I don't feel bad about purchasing this book at all. Decent read, but I do not think it's going to help most day traders. Happy trading!!!
If you're looking for a book to help you navigate through the complexities of day trading, Markus Heitkoetter's The Complete Guide to Day Trading is the one you should use.
Heitkoetter starts from the beginning, as anything calling itself a Complete Guide should do, by explaining that although it is possible to make a great living as a day trader, day trading is not for everyone. And even day traders who are successful and make large amounts of money MUST accept that losses are a part of the business, and you - as a day trader - must be prepared for that, too.
Heitkoetter emphasizes what every good day trader needs to know - you have to be in charge of your emotions, make a plan, and execute the plan. He can't emphasis this enough, as a matter of fact. Day traders must be able to control their emotions, and never ever "trade angry."
The table of contents is very detailed - from selecting a market (stocks, stock options, forex, futures) to selecting a trading approach (fundamental analysis, technical analysis, day trading charts, and technical indicators.)
Then, he covers perhaps the most important part of a day trader's job: "Defining Exit Points!" I also like the fact that he identified the seven common mistakes that day traders make which cost them money, from trading the wrong market, to not having a trading strategy, to not limiting your losses. Knowing what mistakes NOT to make is almost as important as knowing what you should be doing!
Heitkoetter explains his principles in simple, easy-to-understand prose and covers everything thoroughly.
My one complaint: as detailed as the table of contents is, I still would have preferred an index, to help me find things even quicker. However, there is a glossary of terms, reading resources, and a trading plan template, as well as bonus materials available from his website, including an ebook containing a fully disclosed trading strategy - which I'll be using soon.
I have had high hopes for this book based on good reviews. I admit, I slacked off and didn't check the reviewers as I normally do. For me this book was a disappointment - regurgitated and repackaged information for the beginners that you can find free on the internet.
Markus Heitkoetter of Rockwell Trading sells day trading seminars that are priced in middle four-digits. You always have to do your due diligence, whether it is a $15 book or a four-digit seminar. Otherwise you risk to buy an inferior product. In case of trading, always do research online in depth or ask the vendor to provide the track record. If any teacher cannot provide a successful track record in their field - run. Buyers beware!!!
