I'm sure this has been asked and answered tons of times. Just point my impertinent question in the right direction of any existing list. I'm especially fond of Mastering the Trade and High Probability Trading. There's still room in my bathroom for a few more volumes. My strategy is make a few bucks buy a book.
Surf, the only book i would buy is Trading & Exchanges by Harris. Read that and understand who is trading in your market and why and how they make money. 99% of trading books are people being fooled by randomness, or more accurately people being fooled by marketeers. That said there have been some very good specialist trading books written recently. A good rule of thumb for a book would be if most people can understand it then it is useless.
What are the must read books on day trading?" ...eXPERIENCE, in my opinion -- is better than any book. You learn Real fast if you are thrown into the real world. Losses are inevitable. so don't think by reading a ton of books or paper sim trading for a long time you will be able to avoid that. I kind of like to think of the trader...as the hero...in an action/suspense movie; kind of like James Bond or John McClain in Die Hard ...you have to be able to think on your feet and not be razzled. Yippee ki-yay
Don't know about "must read" but the Mark Douglas books "The Disciplined Trader" and "Trading in the Zone" are important studies of the psychology of trading as without consistently appropriate behavior, the best technician in the world will fail. I like Joe Ross's book "Trading by the Minute" as a good one to learn about price behavior. The John Murphy classic "Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets" is an excellent primer.
John Hill written in late 70's, Stock & Commodity Market Trend Trading by Advanced Technical Analysis and Scientific Interpretation of Barcharts.
Which? The one you mentioned and possibly New Trading Systems and Methods would probably be my recommendation.
Completely disagree. In fact, most would be traders start trading too soon and blow up multiple accounts. Because that's what happens when you're thrown into the real world of trading; you blow up. Also, you may not learn that much in the end just by sitting in front of a screen and watching price move up and down. Learning a profession, you typically spend 3-5 years in school and then the next level of the learning process starts when you're graduated and move on to an actual job. This is the norm for most professions. Yet, most people on ET and seemingly you, recommend people to just get started ASAP and start trading, without doing the proper preparation and studies that's required to learn how a market works. With regards to losses being inevitable, I also wonder if that's another ET myth. Sure, a 100% win rate ain't gonna happen, but I think your win rate and win/loser ration can be a lot higher than what most of ET thinks.