Welcome to the new look of The Essentials of Trading site. I hope you like it. Please be patient as I get things all properly placed and working the way I intend. I’d hoped to do it all offline, so to speak, but the gremlins wouldn’t let me work it that way. Sorry for any glitches. Struggling with support & resistance and knowing what the key market levels are? Check out the Price Distribution Analysis methods I use. AKPC_IDS += "354,"; Bookmark to:

Someone on one of the forums I visit posted a link to an article about Nicolas Darvas which was published in Time Magazine. Darvas, in case you don’t know, wrote How I Made $2,000,000 In The Stock Market. It’s one of the classic stock market texts. Surprisingly, I don’t think I’ve read that one (unless it was 15-20 years ago), but I’ve certainly come across his work along the way. The Time article is certainly worth giving a read. It’s relatively short. The title is Pas de Dough, a reference...

I just completed a book entitled The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession. It was lent to me by a colleague at work. He and I talk monetary policy on a fairly regular basis, so he thought I’d like to give this book a read. In brief, this is a book which tracks the use of gold from a monetary perspective through most of human civilization. If you’re at all interested in history, then this book is definitely right up your alley. It takes a look at world events from a perspective that you won’t find in many...

I hope you are enjoying the holiday season, that 2007 has treated you kindly, and that 2008 will be even better! I actually have the week off from my day job, so I’m not as wrapped up in the market as I normally would be. That doesn’t mean I’m taking it totally easy, though! Over the next several days I’ll be working on several projects which I think will be really interesting and useful for everyone. The most visible will be a big change to the format of this website. I’ve got a sexy new design...

There’s a new blog covering the forex market that you should check out if foreign exchange is your thing. Actually, even if you’re not a forex trader, you might find some of the supporting information worth looking at – www.thomsonfxhub.com Technically, the site hasn’t been launched yet. I believe that will officially happen sometime close after the start of the new year – maybe the first week of January. So while you might see some little glitches they are ironing out, it should be mostly what...

My Trader’s Wish List of good books, audio and video content, and other resources comprises a dozen posts. Here’s how they break down: Entry #1: Books by Brett Steenbarger Entry #2: The Market Wizards Collection of Books, Audio, and Video Entry #3: Liar’s Poker – a view from the inside Entry #4: Paul Erdman Books – great financial fiction Entry #5: The Darker Side of the Markets – stories of the bad boys Entry #6: Trading and Markets Movies – drama to comedy Entry #7: Market Profile Entry...

The hedging topic often comes up in forex forums. One recent example was a trader who likes to trade GBP/JPY in what is basically a carry strategy. In order to protect his downside, he hedges his position with a short in CHF/JPY. The two are fairly highly correlated, so that would seem to be a good hedge. In theory, it is. There’s a bit of a snag in it all, though. Firstly, when you hedge you need to match position values. Since a lot of GBP/JPY has a higher value than CHF/JPY – remember you are buying or selling...

Well, this is it. The final installment of my Trader’s Wish List is here to wrap up the series. This is a bit of an eclectic collection. I’ve read all of these books at one point or another in my personal trading development. Each has contributed in some way to my development as a trader and market analyst, either that or I’ve just simply enjoyed reading them. Trader Vic, by Victor Sperandeo. Long-Term Secrets to Short-Term Trading, by Larry Williams. Campaign Trading, by John Sweeney. How to Make Money...

Jobs in trading and the financial markets are the target of many individuals, especially those coming out of school. I received a specific question the other day that I think is one many folks have: I am technical student who just graduated from University of Pennsylvania who will start working in a couple of days. Of course my work would be technical. But at some point in time in my career I want to switch over to job involving financial analysis. Doing trading helps me in two ways. First it gives me good experience of analysing...

I want to shift away from books and videos for this recommendation. Metastock is the charting software package I have used for more than a decade now. If you have read The Essentials of Trading, you will know that I used charts and the results of system tests from that package as examples in the book. I continue to use it on a daily basis when I do my market analysis and write commentary. In particular, I have worked with the End-of-Day edition because I generally do not need the functionality of the real-time versions. Regardless,...

Here is the 10th installment of my list of my trader’s gift recommendations. I want to feature a couple of books today which focus primarily on the risk side of things. There aren’t a ton of books that do so exclusively, as many incorporate it in to the mix with other things. Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom was written by Van K. Tharp, who was featured in the first Market Wizards book. Tharp was among the first to bring in to play the idea of modeling successful traders. That isn’t what this book...