commodities

Normally I will check the reviews on Amazon before I buy a book. Because I had read some of the very interesting but negative reviews of this book so I borrowed it from the library instead of buying it with my hard earned money. Thanks to those reviewers, I had saved twenty bucks.

Actually, this is the interview type of trading book. The problems are: 1) The interviewees are far less famous than those you find in "Market Wizards". 2) The author's fixation on "identify trends, cut losses, maximize profit and manage risk" (reflected by his questions like "Do you think X (any one of the above four is important) had limited the scope of answers from the interviewees that made the book much less useful and interesting than it could be. Very short "yes" and "no" answers from the respondents were frequent. 3) The author's deliberate separation of the book into the four main principles/chapters had made the whole book incohesive and hard to read. You can see the opinion of Jake Bernstein (a writer who wrote over 20 trading books) here and there that made you hard to grasp the trading strategy and ideology of him at all.

In short, only borrow one if you really want to read it.

The premise is simple, four rules, but it is the application from traders that have very different styles that make this book worthwhile. It's easy to say trade with the trend, cut your losses, etc. How do you define that? It depends on your trading method. It's not the same for everyone.

The traders interviewed in this book walk through how they trade (or don't) based on these principles. Anytime you can look over another successful traders shoulder and see how they do it, it's invaluable. My copy is well worn and dog eared. Anyone that actually trades the markets would find this book well worth the money, and an excellent read.

1.Identify Trends 2.Cut Losses 3.Maximize Profits 4.Manage Risk. Now send me $28 and forget about the book!