I know I'm in the minority here, but I thought that this book was a long, drawn-out, total waste of time.
Iâll give you one situation where this book helped me (there were more than one): There was a part in the book where the situation with rare mink coat was described. All traders in the office were trying to make certain amount to buy the coat, and eventually much higher amounts were lost. I was in a similar situation few years back, remembering that part helped me to avoid losses.
Just read this one and its at the very least a fun read with some insight into some big players in the markets. For traders it really does a good job highlighting the psychological ups and downs to your trading on your best and worst days and offers some pretty practical advice...sure some beginner advice but to hear a pro have the same issues shows how difficult some things are to overcome. The little blurb on how he reads the Wallstreet Journal is a nice method for anyone who get overwhelmed by the enormous volume of reading it has daily. Making money on Big market days was also insightful...he really jumped into huge market days and made big profits, but they were really quick seat of your pants events...perhaps not quite as easy to get a hold on nowadays with faster and faster electronic trading. Its all about what your read and who you meet and this book has a bit of both in it.
This thread should definitely include The Zurich Axioms by Marc Gunther. After trading for oh-so-many years and reading too many books on trading or investing to even bother counting, this was a book that stood out from the rest and immediately rose to my Top 5-ish list along with Reminiscences, Market Wizards, Van Tharp etc. It's that good. Use the search-function, there's a few threads about it.
High Probability Trading Strategies from Robert C. Miner http://www.highprobabilitytradingstrategies.com/ The reports from this site is also useful: http://www.dynamictraders.com/ On trading psychology I recommend Dr Brett Steenbarger's books and his blog: http://traderfeed.blogspot.com/
Bravo , " players" like you that don't know what they are talking about - that's how traders like Elder make money .
I've assembled a pretty decent collection of old market related books on my blog. These are free downloads and include some rare titles. All are helpful, especially Clews and Mackay's books. With the risk of getting banned from this site, here is the link. http://masteroftheuniverse.wordpress.com/books-to-download/ I also have a bunch of classical literature books on my sidebar that you might have not got around to when you were in college. Enjoy Jeff