18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Puts the odds in your favor when trading, January 24, 2009
This review is from: Trading Without Gambling: Develop a Game Plan for Ultimate Trading Success (Wiley Trading) (Hardcover)
This book is in the top eight out of the over one hundred stock trading books I have read. It presents one of the most important principles of successful trading: DO NOT GAMBLE, ONLY TAKE TRADES WITH A HIGH PROBABILITY OF MAKING MONEY. Author Marcel Link covers in great detail all the areas that a stock trader needs for success in the markets.
First he explains the importance of having a detailed trading plan:
1. Entering a trade
2. Exiting a trade
3. Stop placement
4. Position sizing
5. Money management parameters
6. What to trade
7. Trading time frames
8. Back testing
9. Performance review
10. Risk vs. Reward
In two areas of the book he writes about how even though great traders have a huge amount of differences about them they all share one common trait:Discipline. Whatever your trading style you must have the discipline to follow your trading plan by taking your wins while they are there, cutting your losses when it is time, and never trade to large a position and risk to much of your capital.
He touches on some of the key aspects of trading strategies, but his main point is whether you trade based on technical indicators or fundamentals you must trade a proven system that has been back tested and once you make your system rules, follow them.
The author advises focusing on one market and really know how your market or specific stock trades. He believes you can really hurt your performance watching commodities, futures, bonds, or to many individual stocks, and having to many positions on at the same time. I agree.
You will receive advice to keep the right perspective and always ask yourself "If I did not have this position on would I buy now"? Try to look over your own shoulder while in a trade and give yourself advice like you are trying to advise a friend's trading.
I really liked how Mr. Link said that you should avoid over trading and you should not always either be long or short a stock, that no position was a position in itself. (I had to follow this "no position" mantra in my major account in 2008 being unable to get a feel for any trend or support and resistance levels and saved myself from huge losses).
The author shares his personal trading rules, key principles for successful trading, favorite books and magazines. This book is a treasure test of information and advice from a real 20 year veteran trader who has done very well for himself and is sharing his knowledge with us. This is not a gamble, buy the book and use its principles and you will win in trading.
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good advice, too much rambling, April 15, 2009
This review is from: Trading Without Gambling: Develop a Game Plan for Ultimate Trading Success (Wiley Trading) (Hardcover)
I've read Mr. Link's first book "High Probability Trading" and also had high hopes for this one. Unfortunately, I found this book to be written in too personal a way with the author going off on tangents completely unrelated to trading on what seemed like every other page.
I didn't mind when he discusses his bar business or family and how those things affect his focus on trading, but the book is laced with his side comments about how animal manure is contained in processed meat (p.74) or about how he knows a bunch of successful people who smoke pot (p.253) etc etc. He also talks alot about how he wrote the book and in what order and what he was originally gonna title the book in almost every chapter! I kept thinking to myself, "Who cares dude, let's get back to the trading advice"
The book is full of these little anecdotes that I found extremely distracting. The author does state that he wrote the book like a conversation but I still found it annoying. Also, it's full of spelling and grammar mistakes and I wonder if those kind people at Wiley even edited it.
Having said that, if you can get past the writing style, there are good nuggets of advice like in his first book. The chapter on drawing up scenarios was particularly helpful in demonstrating the authors thought process throughout a trade.
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22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Complete Babel, February 15, 2009
This review is from: Trading Without Gambling: Develop a Game Plan for Ultimate Trading Success (Wiley Trading) (Hardcover)
After reading Mr. Links first book High Probability Trading I had high hopes for this book. I was very disappointed to say the least. What we have here is 270 pages of repeated advice. At times I felt like this book was written by some illiterate author who just started writing. Topics and ideas are all over the place, something that he mentions in chapter 3 is seen in chapter 5 then 8. The author himself admits that he's being repetitive, I have no idea how this book was published as is. I'll save you guys some money and tell you the central theme around this book is to Trade with a plan, but this is not the book to help you come up with a trading plan it simply tells you what the required steps are. Something which could have been done in 3 chapters but instead is repeated over and over to make a book.
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