A Trader Journal

We have thousands of books promising knowledge and success in trading. Especially more so in recent years. I think 90% of books on trading are useless and do lot of damage to traders. The damage is not just the cost of the book. IMO it is much more than that -  like loss of time to learn that useless stuff, years wasted pursuing wrong alleys and expectations etc and then (if one is lucky to recognize) several months and years to unlearn these concepts and bad habits.

I was not an exception and that costed me few years.  It is not like I wanted to read a useless book and improve my trading. Nearly always those useless books are intellectually stimulating, logically made sense, felt I was learning something and on top they were written by "experts". Good for intellect, bad for trading account!

It is really better not to learn how to do heart surgery from a lawyer/engineer etc. Trading is not an exception. Given 90% of people don't make money  (which includes authors and reviewers of those books), it pays to be skeptic.

Now there are many good traders and have written excellent books and articles. Problem is often their excellent books are not as popular as those by pseudo-experts. Other times their books and articles get lost among 1000's of other books and sites. That is another reason to apply the above rule.

I have listed some books which I believe are useful for traders under "Books for Traders" on top of the page. Some of these books are more suitable to beginners and others are probably more appreciated by experienced traders. Similarly some of these books have broad coverage while other books specialize on a particular aspect of trading. Some books focus solely on the author's trading method. Depending on a trader's personality and preferences, some books likely be appreciated more than other books.

Note: If an author has multiple books (for example: "Discipline Trader" and "Trading in the Zone" by Mark Douglas) I included only those books in the list that I am familiar with (i.e., Trading in the Zone).

The criteria I used to shortlist these books is based on whether I found book useful in some way and not based on its popularity or amazon rank. I am sure there are many other good books. Please let me know if you found any particular trading book useful but is not in the list. I would like to read and if I come to similar conclusion then I will add to the list.

List: Books for Traders

“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of the past centuries.” ~ Descartes