Newbie here...and I read psychology and money management are key to trading career. I dont quiet follow those 2 topics. Any resources/books on psychology and moneymanagement would be appreciated. So far I found one book (Trading In the Zone) http://www.amazon.com/dp/0735201447...hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_f6i5178mg_b
A job at a trading firm is the key to a trading career. Make no mistake about that. You have found a well regarded book. For do-it-your-selfers, psychology and money management is just one of the keys because they completely lack the structure imposed by a professional operation. However, you will still have to come up with a viable trading plan/strategy. Look up "Trading for a Living" which touches on these various aspects. Good luck and welcome to ET.
=== psychology and money management are key to trading career.=== imho they are not the key but first of all imho trading is not a career, you would not call hunting for a living by the Eskimo a career... the key to success is creating a method which is based on found by you laws of nature that govern the market, and then being able to use this method psychology and money management important for building the method: helping you not to loose your mind or your money before you learn how to trade so for practical trading "Trading in a zone" is useless..."Trading for a Living" too
Of all psychology books believe "Trading in the Zone" best of all. Key to success to trading well, knowing the answer before knowing the question, those who have experience will easily understand and those who don't understand will laugh, and that is ok with me. Only way one understands is countless hours of developing well back tested method of entry and then thirty times as much time on developing the answers deemed money management. What often happens is people back test over couple years of trending markets or over high volatility then when markets become normal, they don't do well, so for intraday I use ten years of data and long term 25-50 years of data for weekly. It is best to have every conceivable occurrence twice or more on seldom patterns. Like other day Dollar was dropping like a rock and say you were short, are you sitting in your chair thinking it will go much lower & doing your happy dance, get out but where, use trailing stop, buy call options? But from experience of seeing many times before, you have rules in place to perhaps take some profits as you know when markets drop or go up strong markets tend to reverse based on news, and to take right position to hedge your shorts. So having all the answers when situation arises means you know your method well. After spending years developing then the hardest part comes into play, trading what you developed without changing it during hours market is open. Stress tends to change how you think, one minute you thinking nine different things to do after trading and needing calculator to figure out 62% of 5 points during trading.
Well applied psychology is key to higher life quality. Well applied money management is key to financial freedom. But key to successful trading is having an edge.
Objectively defined system (set of rules for entering/exiting the market, covering every possible condition), which provides positive expectation in the long run.
Not true if you're saying they are the only thing that matters. In contrast, they are very important for discretionary traders (those not using automation or mechanical systems). Yet, everybody is different. Thus, it may be more important to one trader's success in comparison to another successful trader. Just about any of the top books or lectures in these areas that's orientated towards trading is good and can easily be found via Google search.