31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Best Scalp Day Trading Book, September 23, 2000
This review is from: The Undergroundtrader.com Guide to Electronic Trading: Day Trading Techniques of a Master Guerrilla Trader (Hardcover)
I was a little suspicious when I ordered this book. I thought the other reviews were written by friends of the author given only 5 reviews at the time I ordered the book, and they were all five stars. What hell, it is only a round trip commission . . .
Wow, I was wrong.
In my opinion, this is the best book on scalp trading I have ever read. Those who are not scalping for 1/4's and 1/2's may not find it to be the best thing since sliced bread, yet the principles here can be easily applied to all aspects of trading. Most importantly, the book is filled with professionalism, you know it was written by a professional trader as soon as you open it. Hell, it almost feels like it was written by my mentor's day trading alter ego! It kicks off with a line straight out of art of war, it emphasizes on the fact that trading is a zero sum game, survival of the fittest, it also made very clear statements that 90% of the traders lose money, back cover AND very first pages of the book!
It tells you everything from the equipment/broker you need (straight out of Golfbiz's living room) to the recommendation of a trading journal! The book has a truly enlightening chapter on Market Makers, covering who they are, what they do, and their bag of nasty tricks. (After ( ) and this book, I feel most people on this board has no clue what a market maker CAN and CAN NOT do, I highly recommend this book because it provides some amazing insights not found in any other book I read. It only covers 3 minute moving averages (curiously 5/15 SMA, reminds me of VicLee) and 1 minute stochastics, and most importantly, how those two indicators can be combined with Level II screens. You learn everything from watching index futures and how they really work to institution buying programs and how they affect a day trader.
I was afraid that this book may be a loud advertisement for ( ), yet I was pleased that throughout the entire book, the site was NEVER mentioned as blatant advertisement. In fact, 90% of the book has NOTHING to do with the site at all. In the end, there is a two day minute-by-minute journal of a profitable day trader, covering everything from pre-market to closing bell, his winning and losing trades, and only in this chapter you will see the mentioning of the site, even then, you can see that the day trader only uses the site to bring up interesting stocks to watch on his radar, and he uses his OWN instincts to decide entry and exit points.
Finally, this book is UP TO DATE, you will recognize every single stock mentioned in this book, one of the examples mentioned the addition of YHOO to S&P 500, and how it gapped up in afterhours, faced severe selling pressure in the morning, and how MSCO (Morgan Stanley) the market maker simply single handedly took on the world and HELD the BID at 300, eventually the stock closed at 350 . . .
Complaints:
The book is VERY hardcore, the author left out all the fluffs and gave you nothing but hardcore material. That said, it is very readable and very concise, the perfect type of learning curve/speed for me, may be a bit fast for others.
Also, it is rather narrow in scope. This is not reading 700 charts a night, this is focus on a small basket of stocks. The author recommends identifying the AX (leading market maker) and watch them closely for hours or even days before jumping into the stock (for new day traders, veterans can speed things up). Bottomline, this is not my mentor's "commander of an army" trading style, this is more like "camp out in the bushes with a sniper rifle" approach.
Finally, I find the book to be a bit short, 200 pages, too easy to read for me, finished it on a rainy Saturday dreaming about the princess, yet, it is quality over quantity here, very little repetition, very little fluff, just pure day trading goodness.
A MUST READ FOR EVERY DAY TRADER! I MEAN IT!
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding. Read it again and again., July 19, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: The Undergroundtrader.com Guide to Electronic Trading: Day Trading Techniques of a Master Guerrilla Trader (Hardcover)
A novice should probably read that fluffy Toni Turner book to get an idea of the lingo, but no one should contemplate day trading without reading Lu. This book is a detailed description of the intricacies of no-nonsense, hardcore daytrading, written by a consistently successful practitioner.
I have read dozens of books on trading and this is the only one that I read again within one week of finishing it for the first time. It's simply too good to store on a shelf. Read it, learn from it, read it again, profit from it.
To use an old cliche, the small amount of money spent on this book will be the best investment you'll ever make. I'm not kidding. Read Toni Turner's sappy book if you must, if you're new to the game, but don't open an account until you read Jea Lu. His explanation of Level II screens, the use of stochastics and moving averages, and his advocacy of zero-emotion trading are all gems, which alone would be worth the price of the book.
I'm currently re-reading it, cover to cover, for the third time.
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29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Beware!, November 11, 2000
This review is from: The Undergroundtrader.com Guide to Electronic Trading: Day Trading Techniques of a Master Guerrilla Trader (Hardcover)
I suppose this is a good book for would-be day-traders if and only if we knew that the market were about to enter another period like that of 1995-1999. I have the disadvantage of having been at this business since 1983.
The information presented about time-of-day is not universal across all market phases, other than it is true the first and last hour see the most volume and often the most volatility.
The concept that the highest volatility is the best time to trade is based in ignorance. The greatest volatility we have seen in the history of the US equity markets was 1987. Unless you were short (or flat) by the end of the day on Oct 16th, you were broke, dead broke, and you should have been short a couple of days before that. That just wasn't going to happen using these techniques.
The author's view of technical analysis is very narrow. What is pathetic is that he seems to believe he has great technical depth. It is also very dangerous for the reader.
Yes, I see all the other rave reviews. It will be interesting to see how well all like the techniques after a secular bear market, which will happen again. I'll be surprised if any of the raves are still trading, and, if the author continues to trade as described (which I suspect he is not even at this writing), I expect he will be broke. These methods are not new, and have not withstood the test of time.
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