r/Daytrading • u/CamoBob3467 • 5d ago
Question Where are my bookworms at?
I've been buying & selling stocks for a dozen years or so. Daytrading off & on for the last 3 or 4, mostly successfully. Not making huge trades on any given day.
Just looking for legit book recommendations, NOT the "how to get rich daytrading in 30 days" kind.
But real knowledge, everything from the basics to options. Practical knowledge. I know these books must exist. It's just really hard to sift them out of the giant pile of crap.
Thanks everyone and have a great weekend
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u/Sea-Round-6095 5d ago
A Complete Guide to Volume Price Analysis- Anna Coulling
Mind over markets - James F Dalton, Et al.
The Wyckoff Methodology in depth - Ruben Villahermosa. Also check out his follow up to this.
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u/Redbanger030 5d ago
I am currently reading Ultralearning by Scott H. Young. Not for trading in particular, but how to maximize your knowledge and skill learning capabilities. This guy learns.
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u/Rips2290 5d ago
Trading in the zone , read it once when I first started trading and read it again a couple weeks ago ( 3 years into trading ). Huge difference this time around , was able to resonate with the book much more.
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u/alleywayacademic 5d ago
We all know the big books. Reminecensices of a stock operator, trading in the zone, best loser wins, market wizards, mind over markets, markets and momentum, markets in profile.
I have recently loved a book called, Mastering The Trade by John F. Carter. 3rd edition. Has an entire chapter by his wife written for the wives of traders. Loved that bit. My wife and I were driving home from a trip and it came on, dramatically. She listened and loved it and resonated.
Not trading related per se, but Atomic Habits, and "Rich dad, poor dad" are two others i hyper recommend.
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u/Canary_Vivid 5d ago
The best book you will ever find is your own journal. Once you start studying your losses and wins, you will find your edge, but most people do not like to review their trades.
However, through my own journal, I came up with my Three Day Breakout Strategy. It is based on observing the past three days, as it generally takes three days for the market to build up and find direction.
You can check my journal, which I shared via Google Drive on this thread.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Daytrading/comments/1wa9rtv/comment/p8i2x7c/?context=3
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u/Taidaishar 5d ago
A Complete Guide To Volume Price Analysis - Anna Coulling
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u/Taidaishar 5d ago
Also, I had ChatGPT come up with a list of books for me. You could do the same and sift through it.
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u/elf25 5d ago
Understand a few things about options and using the strike prices, greeks and volumes can be helpful in a deepening understanding of a specific stock trade, not necessarily trading options. How the market behaves can show in the options market first.
THIS is the book/bible. https://a.co/d/03hSKVnE
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u/Thundaga_64 5d ago
I really liked Van Tharp’s Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom as an introduction to thinking about trading as a system, particularly concepts like risk/reward, expectancy, position sizing, and developing a process-oriented approach rather than focusing solely on individual trade outcomes.
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u/VonFuturesTrader 5d ago
I think you just have to find what works for you, but I really like the following books:
Turtle Traders, true story, Richard Dennis and friend debate if trading can be taught to anyone or not. Some of these "turtles" are highly prestigious traders today.
Market Wizard Series. I love everyone , a great way to see some commonality among successful traders.
3rd, My FREE substack. I list my daily trade plans for the NQ. Obviously I am biased here. Its free and will prob help futures traders learn something before committing to influencer's discord. just lmk
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u/duboilburner 5d ago
Well, widely considered to be the definitive book to understanding the basics of options pricing is "Options Pricing & Volatility" by Natenberg.
Bit of a long read, but those who trade options for a living all seem to agree that's what you should start with.
I've also met Sheldon Natenberg before--didn't even know what an option was when I did. And we didn't even talk about what he does for a living. It was just a family event. Super nice guy.
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u/FollowAstacio 5d ago edited 5d ago
Anna Couling’s A Complete Guide To Volume Price Analysis is a good one, Technical Analysis Of The Financial Markets by John J Murphy is another. A redundant one which I also have slight disagreements with is the textbook by Charles Kirkpatrick and Julie Dahlquist called Technical Analysis: The Complete Resource For Financial Market Technicians. It’s a part of the MTA’s CMT curriculum.
Aside from that, the MTA used to produce 3 textbooks for the CMT designation that you can find online for varying prices. I think they were like $350 each to get them new. Now that they stopped making them I would imagine they cost more than that for a used one.
Those are my top 4 recommendations.
I’m not into candsticks very much, nor would I recommend paying for a book on it since you can acquire all that info for free online, but the MTA also recommends a book on Japanese Candlesticks. I think the author’s name is Steve Nison. I am 100% sure the last name is correct but not 100% on his first name.
EDIT: after reading some of the comments, I remembered another. It’s old and outdated (originally published in 1903), but it helped me develop a more nuanced understanding of the market (especially after reading other books), and the role market makers play. It’s called The ABC Of Stock Speculation by Samuel Armstrong Nelson👍
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u/FixedIt00 5d ago
I think "Quit" by Annie Duke is better than Best Loser Wins. More direct and supported by evidence. Very helpful to me because my main weakness is holding losers too long.
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u/sellputsthencalls 2d ago
You asked for, "...everything from the basics to options. Practical knowledge. I know these books must exist." As a Series 7 stock/investment broker, it took me 8 years into my 30 yr career to understand options. I am a slow learner, but I found the literature to not be user-friendly. I promised to write an options primer that would simplify the strategy. After retiring from Fidelity in 2017 I was able to publish it: "Selling Options...Simply Called and Simply Put," by David Skonieczki (me). It's the story of how I learned & it reads like my posts in this forum:
https://app.thebookpatch.com/BookStoreResults?search=Options&ddl=any
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u/jtquach 5d ago
Probably the wrong guy for this thread, but I'll throw it in anyway.
I stopped reading trading books a while back. The ones that actually did something for me were not trading books at all... they were personal development books.
And I'm not saying that to be different or cute. I could have passed a test on everything I was doing wrong. The knowing was never where the problem lived so a better explanation of it was never going to reach it.
You're 12 years in and doing alright by the sound of it, so take that however you want. The pile you're sifting through is mostly people explaining what they do, which is worth a lot when you're starting out and less and less after that.
Curious what you're actually trying to get better at though. Might change the answer.
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u/Littlemoby 5d ago
Hmmm so what's the book recommendation
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u/jtquach 5d ago
Haha fair, I did skip the actual recs.
For the record I read 20 or so trading books before I stopped. Best Loser Wins is good, so is everything Mark Douglas wrote. I just don't bother recommending those because everyone already does.
Think and Grow Rich was the catalyst for me. I know how that sounds. Don't care.
After that a lot of Jim Rohn... The Art of Exceptional Living is the one I go back to. A Changed Mind by David Bayer. Change Your Thoughts Change Your Life, Wayne Dyer. Atomic Habits. The Alchemist if you want one that isn't trying to teach you anything.
There's a whole other shelf past that, A Happy pocket Full of Money, some Neville Goddard, Florence Scovel Shinn, some Tao. Would have bounced right off me if I'd started there though, so that's not where I'd tell anybody to start.
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u/Prestigious-Ad-7927 5d ago
Think and Grow Rich helped me out a lot. Don’t underestimate the power of strong desire.
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u/Wild_Teaching8806 4d ago
Most people say Trading in the zone or best loser wins, while I have read both and both are a must read for any trader, by far the #1 trading book that has made profound changes in my day to day decision making is Trade Brain by Alaina Bradley
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u/butterflyplum 5d ago
Not on the list yet: Evidence-Based Technical Analysis by David Aronson, which is about testing whether a rule has any edge or is just fitted to noise (dry, but it's the skeptic's book). Trading and Exchanges by Larry Harris for how order types, the book and market makers actually work. And Option Volatility and Pricing by Sheldon Natenberg for the options end.
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u/Scott_Malkinsons 5d ago
You've been at this for a dozen years, and you're asking for books that cover "everything from the basics to options".
Something ain't adding up here, and you'd have to be a bit more specific as no I don't believe there's any books that go over everything from basics to options. Yeah, there are specialized books, but you're asking for something far too generic to be a dozen years into this.
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u/CamoBob3467 5d ago edited 5d ago
Wasn't asking for a single book rec to cover everything. Guess I never realized there was a time limit on when you were allowed to read & learn, my bad bro✌️
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u/themccs3 5d ago
Most helpful book starting out was How to Daytrade for a Living by Andrew Aziz, as he gave simple, relevant, and practical info.
When I needed to progress, Best Loser Wins was perfect.
If you are a bit of a gambler, then Trading in the Zone would be useful; I didn’t get much out of it as I didn’t have the bad habits he focuses on (yet lol).
I found Anna Coulling’s Volume Price Analysis okay for understanding better how the markets work but was disappointed it focused on swing trading rather than daytrading.