[/QUOTE] So you saying she then makes not substantial money, and she trades a Hedge fund? I know she has co-written 2 books and I believe a 3rd solo. Marty Schwartz wrote a book, maybe one didn't get the memo.
when you have a small account but positive expectancy... you need to make a lot of trades to make a living. I was earning at least 100 percent per year after considerable transactions costs. But, I was living off most of my profits. When the market vol dropped... 40 setups a day across the small basket of stocks I traded went down to about 2 to 5 a day and the wins were also paying out less. Trading is not hard when you get to take plenty of trades.... it was actually fun. Trading is hard when you have to be patient and you are not making enough money. Our strategy had nothing to do with dart throwing. We made money almost every day. Basically what we developed was turned into a computer arbing strategies once there minis got liquid and the NYSE got fractured with ECNs. I find it odd when putting put down daytrading. What buffet does is not more honorable. arbing is not more honorable. swing or position trading is not more honorable. if it works over a ton of trades and you make money. You are trading... period.
It's difficult to know how to respond to these people in trading forums who produce all the stuff like "Real experts don't write books" and "Textbooks aren't useful", isn't it? (Glad my doctor and lawyer didn't think that, when they were learning!). One can try a simple, factual "You're wrong", but probably they don't listen. Others might, though, and at least become aware that they're actually being fed factual misinformation, rather than just someone's eccentric opinion? So there might still be some value in it, in principle? (One of Linda Raschke's books is quite good, actually - I don't mean to imply that the others aren't: I just haven't read them yet.)
Learn to trade/master/predict/manage the broad market, SPY/SPX/ES, ...its few main macro move(s) in the day. This is the only game in town that traders need to master and trade, as far as I'm concerned. If you're able to do this day in and day out...the world is essentially yours. -- specially amplified with leverage, or options. You could make way more than your stated 100%/year. If you trade aggressively and grow and compound. That window of opportunity is there for it. For all you salivating, bright-eyed ET's...this is the Holy Grail. No more wondering.
Just because a supposed Guru writes a book, doesn't mean it is any good. Reason could be to give fluff material just to sell books and make profit. I believe Donald Trump wrote or cowrote some book on real estate. I also heard those books were bad.Very bad. I said before what works in trading is counter intuitive. If I was to write a book about trading, the masses (audience) wouldn't even understand. Unless they have the necessary education and experience. It is very much like giving a book on Advanced Quantum Calculus to a someone in Elementary School. No. Only a few would understand. And more importantly only a few would buy the book. So the book would be a profit loser. No. If I was to write a book and my goal was to make money. It would b a dumb down book on finance that uneducated people (the audience) can understand.
Not really a fair analogy IMO. There's not really any motivation for a doctor or lawyer to not write books. However I do know that some doctors have wrote books based on lies.
Point taken: not the best analogy, really - it was just the one that sprung to mind as I was typing. Really, I seek only to make the point that the view that "expert traders don't write books from which aspiring traders can productively and profitably learn anything worth learning" is just total bullshit. Which it is.
There are some books that can point you into the right direction. A couple of them combined might give the full picture. But I haven't seen anything close to a full complete strategy coming from one book. However with so many bad trading books out there, you could probably guess that 95% of them are junk. 5% are worth anything close to gold. What are the chances you would find that 5%. And like I said my trading strategy comes from just 3 or 4 books. Good luck to the newbies in figuring out what those 3 or 4 books are. Note. I haven't bother reading a trading books in years. Maybe there is some new undiscovered book out there that contains the Holy Grail.
I've only read probably about 100 altogether (most of which were highly recommended by colleagues and other professionals), so I haven't yet read enough to be able to monitor, calculate or quote percentages, and will have to take your word for that. That must depend on your judgment, book-selection-processes, persistence, and where you take advice on what to read, surely? That I doubt very much (as I'm guessing you do), but I certainly wouldn't be earning a living without having studied some textbooks, at quite some length and in quite some detail, and I would think that's probably true of every other successful and/or professional trader I know, myself, too. It's definitely true of all the ones with whom I've ever discussed it, anyway.
I think the whole concept of Holy Grail, in trading, is rather...relatively subjective from person-to-person. I mean we all excel greatly, in our own, unique ways. -- or trading instruments and time frames and personal philosophies and approaches to the market , Dan Zanger. Japanese traders CIS and BNF. Larry Williams. Marty Schwartz. Mark Douglas. Tim Sykes...even historic traders like Jesse Livermore...all would claim they have found their Holy Grail...at their own, unique moments in time/history.