Customer Reviews

The Undergroundtrader.com Guide to Electronic Trading: Day Trading Techniques of a Master Guerrilla Trader

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

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!

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.

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.

Jea Yu is an excellent trader, and his book is very helpful for assisting traders in understanding the practical 'mechanics' needed to be successful in daytrading.

The unique contribution that Jae makes in his book is a detailed understanding of scalping and market maker plays, an area in which few resources are available to the public. We highly recommend this book to all our traders at the Daytrading University for helping traders learn more about order routing, sector plays, tick-by-tick scalping and how to day trade correctly.

Along with Tony Oz, Barry Rudd, Nison, Cooper and Turner, Jae Yu has made it into the upper echelon of our "must read" recommended books for all aspiring daytraders. This is thankfully not a newbie fluff book nor does he overtly try to sell his services like many of the other authors do.

Yu has added solid value to the trading community, he is a professional who knows what he's doing, and traders can learn a lot from him. This book is absolutely an essential reference for those who are trying to learn how to daytrade. Get it.

This is the best book among twenty other day trading books that I read. Great chapter on Market Makers ( AX, different tactics by them). Other chapters are just as valuable to making money. I learned a lot from: "How to Trade Correctly", "Playing Momentum Stocks on the Fly" and "Watching the MM" chapters. In fact, no other book has portrayed the game played against the public as this one book by Jea Yu.

I cannot understand for the life of me why you would post a review from someone like this guy "snipertrader". If you cannot spot someone with no intention of reviewing the content of the book but rather in attacking author, then you have a problem. I've read just about every book there is about daytrading and decided to become a member of the UNDERGROUNDTRADER.COM after reading it. Nobody guaranties anything in life, why would you ask Jay to guaranty to make you rich? If you can't tell me that O. Velez and Capra's mentioning of their website at least twice in every chapter is not self serving then what is it? This is not directed at them because they are not claiming that their book and service is the only way to go but to people saying that. (I belong and receive daily updates from their service(PRISTINE), but I don't expect them to make me rich)You can't and won't learn everything from every book but some are better than others, and pound for pound, Jay's book being the smallest is still the one with the most useful content for a "newbie" trader. He will take you in the right direction(a trader who's been trading and making money for a while has already developed other sources of info to tap into,those thing come with time and trial and error, not from a list from the back of book, there are pages and pages of websites and other sources you will be directed to(isn't that one way of filling pages?), but only you know what is right for you so you will develop "your own list" in time)open your eyes to the reality of daytrading(trading "intraday"), not buy and hold, ("buying for the long term")Now why would Jay's chat room only have 400 members as opposed to Pristine's 65,000?who knows, who cares, Do we go there to count heads or to make money? Why does Rolls Royce only make a few thousand car when Ford makes a few million? again, I became a member to make money not just to be associated with a bigger mob. I can only speak for myself but I am making money(not enough to buy a Rolls but I could be losing or lost everything like a lot of people) after 2 months in the UNDERGROUNDTRADER.COM chat room (full time) but my education didn't begin and end with Jay's book, his is only one of many that you need to read but IN MY OPINION it is the one with the most useful content and Jay doesn't insult our intelligence by repeating himself and fillind the book with useless information, he understands the reason why you bought the book, "to learn how to trade", therefore he gets to it and doesn't waste your time, like you will be if you read snipertrader's review.

I can't rate this book highly enough! Jea Yu is a master trader who writes from a position of experience and not theory alone. Jea teaches us to become 'snipers' keeping our powder dry and waiting patiently until all indicators (fully explained) are in our favour. Only then do we 'pull the trigger' and enter a trade. I'd have gladly paid many times more to obtain the secrets in this book as Jea passes on so much information that one might only begin to learn alone through making many costly mistakes. Jea's clear explanations of everything from Level II screens, market makers, head fakes, order routing, charts, stochastics etc made sense for me out of all the jargon I'd been hearing elsewhere. I'm so pleased I found this book and through it, Jea's website at www.undergroundtrader.com. Thanks only to Jea I went from 'newbie' to profitable trader in around 2 weeks!

Readers beware:

You did not indicate whether you are a swing trader or day trader.

From a DAY TRADING perspective, this book in my opinion truly fits the bill. The author pointed out that there are many different type of technical analysis indicators, and he is using one overbought/oversold indicator plus one trending indicator (5/15 SMA), because day trading requires decision making in a few seconds, extensive indicators makes such decision making impossible.

His trading style is completely intraday, more or less a scalping type of trading, he doesn't take overnight positions, the BEST time to day trade is without a doubt opening and close, any arguments vs. above, you simply haven't been day trading. Classic day trading feasts upon volatility, and there is no way you can day trade without volatility. The higher the volume and volatility, the easier it is to trade.

I recently started my adventure at a NYSE day trading firm on Wall Street. There are dozens of trading styles that will make you money, this is one of them. I had to make numerous changes (mostly Level II -> NYSE tape) to the system presented in this book. The average time span for a new trader to pick up his first check at this firm is six months, most of them lose 7-10K before turning things around and become profitable, from there, traders at this firm make money.

No book, not even this one, will remove the learning curve. I am there one month and I lost $2300, but I lost less than just about everyone who started with me, and the stochastic scalp techniques presented in this book work wonders. That said, day trading is a tough business, and the NYSE specialists are criminals, this book did more for me than any other . . .

If you are interested, you can follow my progress at MSN Money Supermodel Message Board, thread Hit List Journal . . .

The author gives important information and techniques; thinks like how to watch the AX, how to figure out if he's head-faking, order routing, the best price in order to get an immediate fill. He also gives us his thoughts for 2 trading days. Unlike the Velez / Capra book, this book isn't a sales brochure. I think undergroundtrader.com was only mentioned twice, one in the author's bio, and the other time in the title. The information seems to be a bit dated.

Most who attempt day trading fail because they underestimate the learning curve, both in terms of the knowledge and capital it takes to succeed. The UndergroundTrader.com Guide to Electronic Trading, is recommended to those with at least some day trading experience, who are determined to survive the learning curve. Author Jea Yu is co-founder of UndergroundTrader.com, a popular Web site for day traders. "The secret to successful trading" he says, "is to know what to do when certain prices occur, and to let go of belief and prediction in order to focus more clearly on what is actually happening in the market."

The book's themes are the necessity for precise, objective methods of identifying and managing trades, the requirement for discipline, the importance of money management, and the powerful psychological factors that lead traders into self-defeating behavior. Charting indicators and studies such as moving averages, stochastics, and Fibonacci pivot points are detailed and illustrated, and the author does a superlative job of explaining the nuances of reading the Nasdaq Level 2 screen and how to track the ax and significant market makers. Execution methods and order routing are covered, as are as ways to exit trades in fast markets. Two days in the life of author-trader Yu are detailed minute-by-minute, trade-by-trade - and this section demonstrates and ties together the principles and techniques presented throughout the book.

Roll up your sleeves, for you will likely find this one of the best books on how to day trade with success.