The Ultimate Day Trader: How to Achieve Consistent Day Trading Profits in Stocks, Forex, and Commodities

by Jake Bernstein

Book Overview

Day trading is difficult. The path is fraught with risk. But a pot of gold awaits those who learn their lessons well. After four decades in the markets as a trader, analyst, author, educator, and system developer, Jacob Bernstein sets down a comprehensive guide to the art of day trading.
You will learn: New day trading methodsOrder entry strategiesHow to avoid costly errors when using electronic trading platformsDetailed strategies to maximize...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1605500089
• ISBN13: 9781605500089
• Release Date: August 2009
• Publisher: Adams Media Corporation
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Great book for everybody trying to get into trading.

Not quite entery level, but great for people familiar with investments in equities who want to get more in day or swing trading.

This book is a must have for day traders

I am a successful day trader and Jacob Bernstein has been key in my success. I have built numerous successful systems based on his principles from his books. Here are ten of the cardinal rules from this book: 1. Do your home work. You need to be prepared for all your trades through each stage of the cycle from the set up, to trigger to follow through. Keep your charts up to date, watch your signals, trail your stops to lock in profits, keep to your stop losses. Most importantly decide on your system before you start trading do not make up rules as you go. Study how systems performed in the market and then follow them in real time. 2. Focus and specialize. Pick only a few stocks or markets to trade and become an expert on them. Understand their time of day action, volume, price range, and risk parameters. Do not be a Jack of all Trades and master of none. 3. Be consistent. You must be consistent in your application of methods. Work the same schedule each week. Follow the same systems take the same stop losses. Trading is a business and must be ran with the same discipline as a business. Be consistent to give your methods a chance to work. Once you have back tested and proven your system has worked do not abandon it when you you have a few losing trades. Even the best systems can easily have six consecutive losing trades. Aim for an average win per trade. 4. Trade with sufficient capital. You must have a minimum of $25,000 to day trade, $30,000 is preferable to be able to withstand draw downs. Your chances of success increase with the more capital you have to begin with. You must have enough capital when you start to be able to withstand your initial losses while learning to trade. 5. Don't trade any stock or futures contract that scares you. You must be comfortable with the amount of risk you are taking on in any trade to be able to make good decisions under the stress and pressure of trading. 6. Avoid reacting to news reports unless you have used specific triggers. Do not chase the market after news is reported unless you have a system for doing that. Generally the people that buy the rumor or expectations and sell the news are successful, not the people rushing in after the news is reported. The news is usually expected and priced in. 7. Avoid internet chat rooms. The vast majority of these are filled with novices and people trying to pump or dump their holdings. I have found no value in these over the years either. 8. A day trade is a day trade. One of the riskiest things you can do is carry a losing day trade into the next day. This one rule has saved my thousands of dollars. You must cut your losses no matter what before the closing bell each day. 9. Do not combine time frames. Stocks move in different directions within different time frames. A day trader must take his signals at the daily level regardless of what larger time frames tell him or her. 10. Your big money will be made in the big moves. Traders must understand that on av

A realistic, practical book

I found this book exceptional. The advice is practical and cuts through a lot of the baloney that I read in other books on technical analysis. Yes, there are a few typos in the book, but I'd rather have excellent advice, a few typos, and pay $15 than perfectly laid-out bad advice for $30-60 (plus the losses from bad trades). (My background? A lot of math model development in traditional sciences, which I've been applying to investment modeling for the past year. I'll be teaching a course on investment modeling to my computer science grad students next term and plan to use this book.)

Some good basic ideas

The book rewraps author's trading methods which were published in his previous books. I only like his exit strategy and the stock trading business operation, and the book also gives some good advice. This books does not provide much further information as previous published.