Education advice for new traders

Learning to survive in the world of daytrading and swing trading is no small undertaking. If it were easy, everyone could do it. The ocean of trading is filled with sharks who are looking to gobble up easy marks. You want to make sure that you’re not an easy catch for them.

Some people learn best on their own, through a combination of reading and reflective practice. Other people are more social in nature and seem to do better by joining a trading tribe and learning from a group mastermind. Either way can be successful for you, but you have to know what style of learning is best suited for you.

Any y book by any reputable trading author will suggest that the key to success in the market is finding your own unique niche and relying on your own preparation and insight to make your way through the complexity. If all you are doing is following the crowd, you won’t be able to find any advantage and then you might as well be investing in low cost index mutual funds or exchange traded funds.

As a trader, you need to have a personal and unique edge that allows you to consistently pull profits from the market. As such, you should plan on doing a lot of self work and individual research in order to find techniques and strategies that are well-suited to your personality.

Reading books is a good way to help expedite that search, but there is no substitute for your personal effort. The books of Dr. Alexander Elder are a good place to start to begin learning the basics of professional trading. He does a good job of analyzing psychology, risk management and trading strategies for the new trader and experienced trader alike. His background in psychology and decades of professional trading practice make him well-qualified to provide advice to beginning traders. You could do a lot worse than starting with his books.

No matter what though, the best book that you can read about trading is the book that you write: your own trading journal, in which you will identify every trade you make, why you made it, the results and the specific lessons that you can learn from your practice. There’s no substitute for this kind of reflective learning.

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