5 comments about Investing For Dummies, Fifth edition.

1. My title says it all! The book is a little too basic but then again, I should have realized that given the title! If you have ever had even some exposure to investing, find something at the next level. It would be a better investment! :)



2. After reading this book, I finally have the knowledge and confidence to invest. I'm 32 years old and I'm so glad I've taken the time to educated myself, now having 27 years to consider in making the most of my money and investments.



3. I wanted to get some points in investment quickly, but it didn't work. The book covers a lot of materials, but could've done it much more concisely. The writing is very redundant and not straight forward. It is like reading an academic paper. Yet, the author's viewpoint is somewhat fixed, which resulted in not providing board perspective toward investment. For example, he just cuts off a short-term stock trading as gambling. He does talks about many different kinds of investment, but again his viewpoint is fixed, like a history teacher's lecture in the ivory tower. It is boring to read.



4. I found this book very helpful. I like the way it is set up as well.



5. Investing for Dummies does it's name justice. It provides a very detailed yet elementary description that I could easily understand. If you are looking for 101 type information and are clueless as where to start, this is a great place

5 comments about Option Volatility & Pricing: Advanced Trading Strategies and Techniques.

1. This is a fundamental "must read" for anyone who seriously intends to trade options.
   
   It's not a kind and gentle read (meaning you're going to get ALL the details about what drives option pricing). Sometimes you need to read through a section then back up and read it again - just like any legitimate textbook.
   
   What you'll take from the book is true insight into what's happening on the other side of the trade - and how to leverage that to your advantage.
   
   Again - a must read for anyone who is truly serious.



2. Natenburg is often referred to as the bible of options. If you are in that business, this is a great choice to read. Although dry at times (as a result of the subject), this book is thorough and a must have for those who are learning.



3. The book dwells on too much theory:
   
   1)Not hands on.
   2)Too much of explanation with few examples and kind of feel abstract sometimes.
   
   I got headache and resold mine. Don't get carried away by the 5 star reviews. This might not be for everyone.



4. It has been 32 days and I still have not received this book.
   
   Murray Tosh



5. This book is best understood by options traders, or clerks training to become traders. It is hard for all the concepts to sink in without getting your hands dirty on a trading floor. I was a floor trader at the CBOE for 4 years. At a MINIMUM, the reader should have access to a live stock options quote feed and follow an option tree for a stock. Some concepts will not sink in at first and realization may occur only after months of trading. An in-depth study in stock options is best for someone who is excellent in math.
   
   Natenburg lays out all the risk factors involved in stock options: underlying stock direction (delta), movement speed (gamma), volatility (vega), time decay (theta), interest rate / margin / dividend (rho). Then there is the multitude of trading strategies...
   
   For investors out there looking for a "free lunch" from stock options, no such thing exists. Any trading strategy has trade-offs and every stock option has a price. If you believe in a "free lunch" then good luck to you.

5 comments about My Life as a Quant: Reflections on Physics and Finance.

1. Very honest biography something along the line of Andre Agassi's book but with an entirely different subject. Good insite into academic life.



2. When he was a student, moving from South Africa to Columbia, Emanuel Derman became deeply attracted to particle physics and general relativity, subjects that dealt with the ultimate nature of matter, space and time. A life spent studying these topics would be a life devoted to the transcendental. Like in other disciplines, graduate students were socialized to view other options (teaching, industry, even changing to another type of work altogether) with contempt. Particle physicists added to this ingrained attitude the belief that their field is the source of the most fundamental knowledge, and they took some mischievous pleasure in denigrating other messier or more complex areas of physics.
   
   But physics is a harsh meritocracy. Most of the merit is concentrated in a small number of legendary figures at the top. "If you aren't Feynman, you're no one". In addition, academic posts were scarce, and many theoretical physicists who had once hoped to devote their lives to fundamental research were forced to become migratory laborers if they wanted to remain in academia, taking temporary short-term positions in universities and national laboratories whenever they became available. This is how Derman describes the progressive downgrading of his ambition: "At the age of 16 or 17, I had wanted to be another Einstein; at 21, I would have been happy to be another Feynman; at 24, a future T.D. Lee would have sufficed. By 1976, sharing an office with other postdoctoral researchers at Oxford, I realized that I had reached the point where I merely envied the postdoc in the office next door because he had been invited to give a seminar in France."
   
   So Derman decided to change course, and to embark in another career. After a stint at the Bell Labs, writing code and following bureaucratic rule, he did what many disgruntled physicists were beginning to do at the time: he moved to Wall Street, where his life as a quant became in earnest. Upon joining Goldman Sachs, he was lucky enough to begin a collaboration with Fischer Black, who had been lured from academia to a partner position and who was on his way to win the Nobel prize for the work he did on option pricing theory. Although he was unschooled in finance and had been in the field only for a few months, Derman was able to make a significant contribution to bond options theory, and the Black-Derman-Toy interest rate model won him lasting fame among traders.
   
   Derman's testimony on his mentor's personality is worth quoting at length: "Because he liked clarity, and perhaps because his training was not in economics, Fischer avoided excessive formalization. His papers were the antithesis of the unnecessarily rigorous lemma-filled research papers of financial economics journals... He was guided by his great economic intuition; though his mathematical skills were unexceptional, his instinct was strong, and he was tenacious in trying to attain insight before resorting to mathematics... He had a strong pragmatic streak; he was at least as much a practitioner as an academic, willing to devote time and attention to software, trading systems, and user interfaces. He thought that these were just as important as the models themselves." He argued that a trader should be judged on the rationale behind his or her methods and rewarded only if it is sound, irrespective of whether or not he or she profited in the most recent period. "It's crucial to judge the stories they trade on," he wrote about traders. "Stories can be wrong, but I am uncomfortable trading without one."
   
   As Derman describes it, a good quant is a jack-of-all-trades, simultaneously skilled mathematician, modeler and computer programmer, who prides himself on his ability to adapt to new fields and put his knowledge into practice. PhDs in physics or engineering fit this jack-of-all-trades bill pretty well. First, the mathematics of fiance closely resembles the mathematics of physics. Furthermore, physicists don't grow up wearing white gloves; they have no scruples about tackling tasks beneath their so-called dignity. They do their own math and programming; the willingness to do so is an essential part of graduate student and postdoc culture. So in this sense Derman was well prepared for his new work as a quant.
   
   In other respects, Derman's career change from ivory tower to trading floor required several personal adjustments. As he recalls, "When I moved to Wall Street the hardest attitude adjustment for me was to learn to carry out multiple assignments in parallel, to interrupt one urgent and still incomplete task with another more pressing one, to complete that, and then pop the stack." One the other hand, Derman liked the ways in which one could be usefully busy in quantitative finance. "There was always a program to write, a trading interface to design, a calculation to do. It was nice to be able to contribute without having to be extraordinary." By contrast, "a physicist spends about half of his or her time enthralled and the other half in depression."
   
   Until then he had basically worked out of love, and with complete disregard for financial incentives. He now worked for money, although passion, pride, and the pleasure of being thanked still played an important role. Influenced by what the others were doing, he did a very stupid thing: he left Goldman Sachs for a better paid position at Salomon, where is life was miserable, and he was all to happy to move back to Goldman when he was offered the direction of the Quantitative Strategies group.
   
   What especially impressed him about Wall Street in general and Goldman Sachs in particular was the absence of reverential fear. There was a general lack of respect for age and seniority that made him disregard his own age, and he liked that. He was relieved and exhilarated to discover that his employers appreciated solid skills and talents. He found a way of cutting through office politics by including in the programs he wrote for traders a swatch of code which measured how many times his program had been used: at bonus time, or to avoid mass layoffs, he was able to send a copy of the log to his bosses to prove his team's contribution to the bottom line.
   
   Derman came to see that creating a successful financial model is not just a battle for finding the truth, but also a battle for the hearts and minds of the people who use it. He noticed that successful salespeople and quants were prodigiously agile at using quick, back-of-the-envelope methods to compare bonds in terms of yield to maturity or option-adjusted spread. "You can get the answer to many complex derivative problems with less mathematics than you think," he remarked. On the other hand, he noticed that "as in any business, the salespeople liked tailoring and complexity because not only could you charge more for it, but it was also more difficult for a client to assess the value of the individual features. Complexity was also harder for competitors to copy."
   
   In the end, Derman's quarter of a life as a quant--he only stayed 17 years on Wall Street--was a life well spent. He was able to do something useful, gain recognition for his work, and earn a few bucks along the way. Derman notes that the word "quant" is often used in a pejorative sense--especially since the financial crisis of 2007-2008 the general public tends to see them as the mad inventors of weapons of financial mass destruction. But quantitative finance is a worthwhile pursuit--all the more so because of the risks involved in handling financial instruments. Economics as a modern science was born after the Great Depression when a lot of smart people entered the discipline to understand what had happened, and how to prevent it from happening again. If advanced economies now have a problem with their financial sector, then maybe the best way to solve it is to throw intellectual resources at it. Minds of the best caliber should be able to fix it. Indeed, there is no more pressing task.



3. No offense to the author, but his career doesn't deserve being in a book.
   
   Like most of us, Dr.Derman is an average person living an average life. I do not know what motivated him to write about his life in fine details. To be honest, I bought this book to read about Quants, how they predict stock and market trends, create and test sophisticated computer models, fail and succeed, etc. The book isn't really about it.
   
   The first half of the book is just about becoming a physicist and, eventually, failing at being a physicist.
   The second part is about working at different financial institutions and trying to understand what is going on...
   
   Again, I am upset that I was "forced" to read about this nice but pretty average person living some pretty average life for 120+ pages and actually paid for it...
   
   If you want to learn about Quants, go buy some other book.



4. This memoir has limited interest, even for me (a chemist who spent time at two of the author's academic haunts: Rockefeller U. and Penn). If you are or were in academia, you'll recognize the author's struggles in this milieu. Still, he seems a bit blinkered in considering Columbia as the navel of the universe in physics, even as he makes frequent mention of Feynman (Caltech - I did my post-doc there).
   
   His account of his career on Wall Street is unintentionally hilarious. He takes great pride in deriving models to assess risk (especially in fixed income instruments), but: (1) As one can read between the lines, his significant accomplishments are under the lead of Fischer Black; and (2) The collapse of these supposedly risk evaluated products in recent times implies that "quantitative finance" was certainly oversold. (Yes, I note that this was published in 2004 - well before the failure - first in the mortagage field and then across the entire credit markets - came to pass.)
   
   So there's a moral lesson or two to take away. First, no matter how lovely the math, do not place confidence in those equations. Second, all those models make assumptions that are ridculous, (e.g., on interest rates, residential real estate prices).
   
   If you can get this book through resale - I'm donating my copy to the Friends of Palo Alto Libraries. They'll probably price it at $0.50 which is about right. I do believe in markets but guys like Derman haven't a clue.



5. I preferred the later half more than the first half. I wonder if folks on the physics/phd side prefer the front half to the back half. I am glad to see someone speak so candidly about the trials and tribulations of being understood and appreciated as a quant. Truly, it is thankless, and though well paid, you can definitely get frustrated that you are not paid in the same manner relative to ROI vs. your peers. What is truly remarkable and makes this a must read is that it provides great insight into the human side of which every quant must learn to understand to the nuances.

5 comments about Trading for a Living: Psychology, Trading Tactics, Money Management.

1. An absolutely amazing book. If you are a trader and/or interested in becoming a trader then read this book. I ordered this along with Come Into My Trading Room and Entries and Exits also by Dr. Elder. I couldn't lay this book down as I was reading it every free moment I had. After two days I was done and have just moved onto Come Into My Trading Room. I am 100 pages in and it has much of the same content as Trading For a Living. I must say I enjoyed Trading For a Living more. It was easy to read and easy to understand.
   I thought I knew a bit about TA, but Elder added a lot to my knowlege. The psychology section was amongst the best in regards to trading psychology. The Tripple Screen System that he uses makes a lot of sense and is also easy to apply.
   Get this book!



2. I found the book to be interesting so much that I went ahead and purchased the study guide also. I have decided to dive into the stock market and see if I can make more money at this with the economy the way it is.



3. I tossed mine in the recycling bin rather than donate it to the library book sale. What a piece of trash this book is. All these old trading maxims and catch phrases are really a lot of hogwash. Save the price of this book and buy a lotto ticket. The risk/reward is better.
   
   I've bought a lot of investment books. This really is the worst. The positive reviews here make me seriously question the legitimacy of amazon book reviews.



4. After years of trading, I still go back and re-read this book.
   
   It has it all:
   
   - Trading Psychology
   - Money Management
   - Trading Systems
   - Technical Analysis
   
   Well written and very easy to understand, this book is a must to have in your Stock Trading resource library!



5. This book played an integral part in me being able to develop a top-notch trading game, therefore I duly recommend it. For many of the reasons that reviewers gave **** and ***** ratings with regard to its features, I concur.
   
   However, reexamining this book after I made my quantum leap, there are 3 critical factors that need to be addressed if you want to take your trading from "mildew to barbecue" in the shortest time possible. Get out your notepad and crayons because I am going to show you how to make this good book a better one for you. If it worked for me, I am sure it can work for you.
   
   
   1.Trading for a living means you first live how you want to trade
   
   Even though Dr. Elder covered a lot of ground when discussing the psychological aspect to trading, looking back, I respectfully disagree with his notion that trading psychology begins and ends with every trade you make. The reality is that there is no such thing as "trading-related problems." Furthermore, trading doesn't exist in a vacuum. Issues that find their way into trading are already happening in your life. Don't trim branches, kill the roots.
   
   To make the most of this book, start thinking from the inside out. Trading is 90% inner game. If you desire to follow a set of trading rules that you want to sustain you financially, then first become a person of character and integrity. The quality of your trading is reflected in not what you do but who you are.
   
   2.You are the markets
   
   One of my pet peeves was his discussion on crowd psychology. I agree with the author that one should understand crowd psychology and how it fits into the overall scheme of trading the financial markets. I duly understand how the markets move from one extreme to the other by the often primitive-driven actions of the "herd mentality." Although Dr. Elder makes a respectable contribution in explaining the mechanics of how mass trading psychology works, the book gives the impression that its influence is somehow "apart" from the individual trader, and that all the trader needs to do is learn how to "out maneuver" the crowd by more sophisticated means. The danger here is that it creates an unnecessary schism in the mind of the trader who doesn't know any better.
   
   To take your trading game to the next level, you must back away from the illusion of "me versus the markets" like spilt hot coffee. The reality is that the financial markets are YOU and you ARE the markets. The same primitive drives that run amuck in the markets are what also drive you to make irrational trading decisions. You can't hide forever behind your trading system if you have not squared up with yourself. Don't look down at the markets, look at the man in the mirror.
   
   3.You are god
   
   When you read this book, you may get the impression that more stock is given to trading indicators and other external factors. I understand that this appeals to those who have yet to enjoy consistent trading success and are more interested in "tips and suggestions." But if you want to play this game from a position of strength, then you must stop giving away your power to technical indicators and other external devices. Again, trading is 90% inner game. You show me someone who declares that "XYZ trading indicator no longer works," and I will show you someone who is looking for trading salvation outside of their self. The ideas that Dr. Elder present in this book or any trading concepts you create or acquire are for you to breathe life into and not to be worshiped.
   
   When you buy Trading For A Living and take these points to heart, trading success will began to be IN you and not on you like a t-shirt.
   
   
   Henry "Solomon" Billingslea, Jr.
   author of:
   
   Pimping Wall Street The Player's Guide To Trading The Markets, Vol. I

5 comments about Technical Analysis for Dummies.

1. I want to like this book more than I do. I appreciate the author's friendly and no-nonsense tone. Although I'm a beginner, she seems to know what she's talking about. But I strongly object to how the book is organized. For the first 70 pages, she hints at indicators and approaches, constantly saying "I'll explain this in Chapter 4, I'll explain that in Chapter 11." So, you learn very little, but have high hopes for chapters ahead.
   
   Then, she jumps deep into the vagaries of backtesting, without having shown you how to do something a little more elementary, like draw a support line. Like I said, I'm a beginner; I'd never even heard of backtesting, and I really didn't want to wallow within a mysterious and unidentified piece of software before the author showed me how to recognize a resistance line. Hello? Plus, some of the charts could use quite a bit more labeling, and one so far seems to be missing.
   
   Hopefully, if I read this book two or three times, I'll squeeze out of it what she put in, but the organization is frankly infuriating.



2. This book has exactly what I expected and what I was looking for. Although I studied and work in Finance, I have never done any trading beyond the most basic fundamental analysis. I had heard of technical analysis but was completely scared off from learning it by the charts and graphs and technical terms that were really foreign to me. Through much research on my own, I decided that if I ever want to be truly successful in trading that I really needed to get a handle on Technical Analysis, so I bought several dummies books on trading, including this one. I have started to read all of them at once as much of the information overlaps and complements each other, but this is the one I seem to be going back to more and more, and it is the one I am furthest along.
   
   For me, this book has been a source of immense knowledge. I chose this book because I wanted to scratch the surface before jumping in with both feet first. I am completely green and needed a blank canvas approach. I like the Dummies books because they are an easy read, but are written by experts on the subject. This book is no exception. I feel like I am getting a very well-rounded overall understanding of technical analysis without being overly whacked with technical jargon and complicated mathematics.
   
   This has been great because I now have a big picture view of TA. From here, I can really narrow in on specific forms of analysis that I have learned about in this book. I have learned that most traders use 3-5 different analysis techniques out of the dozens or possibly hundreds that are available. This book has allowed me to uncover the 3 or 4 different forms that I am most interested in and would like to read about further. Of course that will require additional book purchases, however, that was the whole purpose of getting this book - was so I could figure out what works for me.
   
   If you're looking to get a big picture overview of technical analysis, as well as get helpful hints and techniques that I see as invaluable insider input, then this is a great book for your collection. And because it is sprnkled with so much helpful information, I'm sure it will be a reference on my shelf that I will refer back to for years to come.



3. I am not new to investing but am a beginner in day trading, technical analysis and the forex market. Now I've read several books on those subjects. I read Day Trading for Dummies which was OK, basic, and kind of what I expected. TA for Dummies was more than I expected for a Dummies book. It covers loads of the important indicators, is well-written and easy to follow, and offers lots of clear, understandable charts that illustrate the point well. I know these technical indicators are complicated and there is much more to each of them, but I agree with other reviewers - if you are a beginner trying to learn technical analysis, this is an excellent place to start!



4. This is a great, informative book.
   It is clearly written and approaches the subject of technical analysis in a concise, clear and comprehensive ways. The sections on chart reading and analysis I found to be particularly invaluable and highly informative. This book talks in detail about the major candlestick indicators (which I didn't know about before) and I found the sections on candlestick indicators to be very valuable. This book also goes into detail about all major technical indicators and how to use them and their pros and cons(MACD, RSI, Fast and Slow Stochastic Oscillators, Bollinger Bands, DMI indicator, etc...).
   
   It talked in a clear and informative way about identifying trends and identify trend reversal signals using technical indicators like the MACD as well as with chart reading and candlestick indicators.
   With what I've learned through this book I almost find myself wondering why people think stock trading is so hard and how could an educated person not make good money on the stock market? There are so many indicators of market changes, so many guiding indicators like the MACD, Stochastic indicators, etc...
   
   This book has taught me invaluable and significant information that have already greatly influenced my ability, confididence and profitability as a trader. If your a beginner or intermediate trader, get this book!!
   
   The personality of the author did turn me off. However the clarity, value and informativeness of the book absolutely overrode any dislike I had of the author. This is a great book.



5. I've learned one thing after reading the first six chapters of this book: I need to stop trying to trade until I understand what I'm doing. I really didn't know what I was doing. Now that I know that, I'm going to finish reading this book, and I've already ordered another book listed in the appendix of this one.
   
   Without knowing much about technical analysis yet, I'd say that this book seems to be opening a door to a whole new world for me. As far as the quality of this book goes, it seems to be touching on all kinds of topics that can be further investigated.
   
   If you have an interest in the stock market and want to trade (not invest -- that's different), (and as someone who doesn't know much about it yet), I HIGHLY recommend this book as a starting point.

5 comments about Understanding Options.

1. This book is great for beginners. Michael explains all aspects of option trading in words and examples that are easy to understand. This is a great place to start if you think you might want to trade options.



2. I needed to diversify my investments by going into options. I had absolutely no clue about how they worked. This book is just what was needed. Michael has a very simple way of explaining a difficult subject. His use of simple illustrations is also a big advantage in this regard. It was especially good to see that he it made it realistic. Even though with leverage options can be a big money maker this writer ensures that you understand clearly the risks involved so that you don't get carried away.
   
   After reading this book I felt confident enough to begin trading options.
   
   I would recommend it to any beginner.Understanding Options



3. This was my first book on options and I'm glad it was. The book covers the most basic strategies and leaves you with an understanding of the basics. The style is easy and conversational making for an easy read at Starbucks on a Saturday morning. Get it for your introduction to options!



4. This is a good book for a beginner to understand the Option trading. I also readed the other book named Option make easy.



5. I think there are three prerequisites to writing a successful "how to": a structural (academic) knowledge, practical experience and, perhaps most important, a sincere desire to share. The combination of these elements puts "Understanding Options" in the "WOW" category.
   
   Even though I recognized it was probably outside the scope of the book, I wanted a bit more in two sections: picking the right underlying stocks and Black-Scholes. In the Kindle edition, there is a technical glitch which causes a portion of the very end to be repeated. That said, for me, the book flowed like a well written dramatic piece complete with a climax (comments by Sheldon Natenberg) and the author's thoughts, the denouement.
   
   I think of succeeding in options as making many correct decisions. After reading "Understanding Options", I felt the decision to start with it was definitely a step in the right direction.

5 comments about Come Into My Trading Room: A Complete Guide to Trading.

1. I just finished reading this book for the second time and it's awesome. I read it back in 2003 and remember thinking the same thing. In the technical analysis section, I really like how the author not only explained the theory behind each indicator, but also included the formula used to calculate it. This book teaches you how to keep good records and also how to manage your losses using a 2%/6% stop-loss method.
   
   You can tell there was a lot of thought put into this book. It was very well written and everything was explained in detail. The psychology of trading was included in each and every one of the chapters. You learn the thought process of the traders behind the market(s) and also what to think about when creating your own indicators. The author shares two of his personal indicators, "Force Index" and "Elder-Ray" and why they were designed the way they were.
   
   There's a lot that both beginning and advanced traders can learn from this book. The lower reviews that I have read on this book seem to be due to lack of material or applicability for/to day trading. The author does not focus much on day trading in this book, but even though I am not a day trader, I think a lot of the concepts could be applied to any type of trading (day trading included).



2. Other reviewers have done a good job describing how the first two adjectives listed in the title of my review--"informative" and "enlightening"--apply to Elder's book. I would like to focus on the third adjective: inspiring, because I believe this is a characteristic that differentiates Elder's work from so many other trading books--even the most informative and enlightening of them.
   
   When Elder suggests what sort of books the aspiring trader should read, he insists: "When it comes to books, I avoid those written in bad English. Language is a reflection of thought, and if a guy cannot write clearly, his thinking probably isn't too clear either" (p.31).
   
   This may seem like a strange quote to single out from a book on trading, but it gives you some idea of what sort of writer--and more importantly, thinker--Dr. Elder is: one who brooks no "double-talk," favoring instead straight-forward language without the bells and whistles relied on by inferior writers who need to mask their lack of substance with fancy catch-phrases and cliches.
   
   What this means is that in addition to the valuable information Elder provides, the reader finds in him a model for how the successful trader thinks: CLEARLY. And that is refreshing when there are so many trading books out there that give one the impression they were written into a vacuum rather than, as in Elder's case, to a reader the author communicates with directly and whose intelligence and potential for success he refuses to underestimate.



3. I work with several colleagues of mine in late 30's and early 40's studying their MBA. They spend quiet a bit of money, time and family time ( cases where kid's tv addiction linked to parents doing their MBA). Few of them managed to get promotion,some had their titles changed, some moved to different companies doing similar jobs etc. I asked some of them what was their objective of studying MBA at this age. Most have a vague objective,but as Dr.Elder quotes "A caged animal trying to grab it's tail"!. All of them have invariably tried their hand in stock market, got burnt and move back to the comfort of 'cubicle jungles'.
   
   Had they spend the $20,000 or $30,000 they spend on MBA with proper training on trading, losses, trial and error in stock market, software many would have come far ahead in trading and 'self reliance' and 'early retirement' . Instead they fear the corporate layoffs and meaningless promotions that involve travel and less family time and divorce and rebellious kids. I have started the trading career like most others and lost money and thankfully got access to Dr.Alexander Elder's materials before a wipe off!
   
   So now, we have a better way of self graduating to "MBA of trading' where you can be self reliant and retire by simply digesting Elder's books, his suggested reading materials, software ( ex : Metastock , tradestation), bite the painful bullet of losses, enjoy the pleasure of successful trade and slowly evolve to a mature trader. If you are a working professional, you will spend as much ( or more) time as a regular MBA Course, but at least if you happen to be a person fit for becoming an "MBA In Trading", you will be far better off than a MBA in a corporate culdesac.
   
   
   Here is the suggested order to graduate yourself to an "MBA in Trading".
   
   1. Trading for a Living: Psychology, Trading Tactics, Money Management ( You will need to read it twice)
   2. Start making journals and learn from your on trading experiences
   3. Come Into My Trading Room: A Complete Guide to Trading (Masterpiece...Read 4 or 5 times to absorb the spirit and content of the book.)
   4. Entries & Exits: Visits to 16 Trading Rooms (Wiley Trading) (Read couple of times)
   5. Sell and Sell Short (Wiley Trading) (Read couple of times)
   6. Read the books mentioned by other full time traders in "entries and exits" ( ex: Trading in the Zone: Master the Market with Confidence, Discipline and a Winning Attitude)
   7. Understand Metastock, Tradestation, esignal type tools.
   8. Attend his seminar if you can afford it.
   
   Think about all the time ,money and effort you are going to put into it, it will be similar to the money spent on an MBA...and your title might be "Work from home CEO" with your job description like Self reliant full time trader who looks forward to Monday Mornings and for whom work is an everyday vacation and will work during a vacation also. He is available when kids need him
   
   Reviewing his book in solitude will not serve the reader since it is a sequence of learning material in a tough world and should be treated as such.
   
   I would call Come Into My Trading Room: A Complete Guide to Tradingas his masterpiece,but Trading for a Living: Psychology, Trading Tactics, Money Management is highly recommended because of the sections like all technical indicators explained. Some tools might be tailor made for you. In Come Into My Trading Room: A Complete Guide to Trading, the book has narrowed down to exact trading tools Elder uses which is great,but for a newbie , it is better to read the entire menu ( Trading for living) and then chose your dinner ( Come Into My trading room). In trading parlance, The above two books will have to be your "core" positions .
   
   Entries & Exits: Visits to 16 Trading Rooms (Wiley Trading) And Sell and Sell Short (Wiley Trading) are the perfect desserts.E and E is a classic which walks through some sample trades and also a glimpse of tools those users use. All of the traders are trading for living, some with less than 250k equity . Elder looks at their trade and see how simple he makes his trading decision . Sell and Selling short is more like an addendum to his previous books with focus on exit strategies.
   
   I know there are plenty of readers who read financial (and wealth making) books for entertainment. If you are one of them ( The way to check is if you read financial books constantly AND do trading BUT do not have proper records), still this book will fit your case. Choice of words all along the book and subtle comedy makes it an equally interesting read.
   
   EXAMPLES of some punch lines (not verbatim):
   > A person who pees against the wind has no right to complain of laundry bills
   > Newbies swarm to options to get more bang for their bucks,but it is usually their head that gets banged.
   > What beginners call gut feel is usually an urge to gamble, and i tell them they have no right to a gut feel.
   > If you pay high above EMA, you will find a greater fool who will pay even more
   > Traders dream of profits but often freeze like deer in the headlight when a loss hits them
   
   Whichever book you read in whatever order, make sure to read it, read again and read again .. tread carefully on stockmarket.You might win and in small and subtle ways it is happening to me!



4. This is a book written by a psychiatrist who is also a professional trader. It gives beginning traders an introduction to the world of trading. The most important thing for anyone to be a successful trader is to have the right foundation, and this is exactly how the book starts. One has to know the difference between investing, trading, and gambling. Many people have this confused, and this is dangerous. The author writes:
   
   "Investors profit by recognizing new trends in the economy and buying into them before the majority wake up to opportunities."
   
   "Investing requires a great deal of patience and an immense supply of self-confidence."
   
   "Traders make money by betting on short-term price swings."
   
   "Beginners often assume they can make money because they're smart, computer-literate and have a record of success in business."
   
   The last quote is probably the most lethal combination. Smart people are most likely to fail in trading as well as investing without proper knowledge. This book also helps readers in deciding what to trade, and it gives an introduction to technical analysis. If you want to be a trader, educate yourself first.
   
   - Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market? Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market



5. Are you a trader?It doesn't matter if you are already or planning to be one I suggest you READ this book and you read it as soon as possible . This is by far one of the top-notch books on trading and should be present in every trader's bookshelf . If you don't read it you miss BIG time . It does not matter what you think about trading . This book will reveal you amazing things and will teach you how to think and act as a professional trader. Leave the crowd of amateurs and losers with Mr Elder's masterpiece . It is not easy to find such great books so do yourself a big favour and buy this book and you will not regret for a minute. I think that the combination of being professional trader and psychologist silmutaneously helped Mr Elder to write such a masterpiece . Rarely such good books are produced and if you are seriuos about trading you simply can't afford to miss this one . Sure ,it will take some time reading it but it pays to read books like this , believe me . It doesn't matter if you are option , futures or stock trader - it includes everything . Mr Elder will teach you everything you need to be a successful trader . This will be the most wisely spent dollars . You do not need formal education . All you need is more books like this one .

5 comments about Options as a Strategic Investment.

1. Excellent book for anyone interested in trading stock options.
   It covers the subject A to Z with many examples. The cost of the book was money well spent.



2. Options as a Strategic Investment
   Text is organized well with the more elementary material at the beginning of each major section followed by advanced strategies. Author stays focused on his purpose as expressed in the title of how option strategies can be used for various purposes in a portfolio, not just techniques to apply mechanically. Many examples, charts and graphs are presented to increase understanding. This book is very comprehensive and will cover material suitable for the professional or very advanced trader, in addition to basic concepts. Text will also serve as a great reference for future use.



3. This book is full of useful examples for pretty much every single detail. Heavy but easy reading. Perfect reference book for students.



4. book is very informative and well organized. It is a great reference book to keep on the nearby shelf



5. This is the most in depth and complete coverage of Options that I've seen. It covers every possible strategy I've ever heard of and has good discussions of the positives and negatives for each strategy. I liked the examples and the "what if's" throughout the book. When I have an Option idea or question, this is my "go to" book because the answer is probably in there. Highly recommended.

5 comments about The Rookie's Guide to Options: The Beginner's Handbook of Trading Equity Options.

1. Great book but I would purport that it is not just for rookies and that unless you are a power investor with years of experience this book could still be useful. The author has a blog site that is also a great resource.



2. I don't view myself as a complete "Options Rookie" since I've been trading options for a few years and have obtained steady positive results over the past year....typically using the methods described in this book. In addition, I have read several other options books and studied other option training material. However, I decided to read this book for the additional education. I'm glad I did and strongly recommend it to anyone fairly new to options.
   
   The other reviews posted here provide good overview of the book's details so I won't repeat them. Frankly, my objective in posting this review is to add to the total number of positive reviews on Amazon, since this book deserves the praise.
   
   "The Rookies Guide to Options" provides a level-headed, realistic approach for making money with options. Equally (or more?) important, it provides good background on how to minimize losing option trades......which WILL happen! Therefore, understanding risk management is essential even when pursuing "high probability" option strategies. I was happy to see good emphasis on that subject throughout this book. When applicable, the book also offers comments from the different perspectives of a Trader, versus an Investor.
   
   Bottom line, this book is well-worth the money and well-worth the time to read.
   
   Good Trading!
   Steve T.



3. Good beginners book. A consice and conservative approach to trading options. I've bought several copies and given to friends and family to allow them to become aware of another way of investing in the stock market.



4. This is a great book on using options as a hedge and for generating income in concert with your stock investing plan. The author works through the uses for options beginning with the most simple buying/writing of options to advanced strategies that feature substantial downside. There are many detailed examples of the analysis that the author uses to assess a potential trade. There are detailed strategies for every level of risk tolerance.
   
   I am surprised at how quick a read the book was and how painlessly the author teaches options from the basics to advanced.
   
   If you want to really learn the uses, risks, and upsides to options trading get this book. You'll be able to approach your first trade with confidence.



5. This is the second book I've read on options,(after "getting started.."). I found this book very helpful, and will be rereading parts again and again. The author does a good job explaining how and why options pros trade the way they do. He makes very good use of real life examples and has a small quiz at the end of each chapter. The only thing missing in the book, was a discussion on the tax issues of selling qualified and unqualified covered calls. Overal, I'm very happy to have read the book, and would strongly recomend people new to options do the same.

5 comments about Trading Options at Expiration: Strategies and Models for Winning the Endgame.

1. I liked this book. I liked how it focused on such a specific element: trading options near expiration. I only gave it 3 stars because actually pulling off some of the strategies is quite difficult especially in today's lower volatility environment. Some focus on higher level maths may also turn some readers off. Overall I think it is a good addition to a trading library and any reader will benefit from some of the knowledge and ideas contained in the text



2. I found the book difficult to understand, but then I realized it is the subject, not the writing, that is hard. The author does a remarkable job of explaining his approach. I would rate this the best book on trading I have found in years.



3. I have and I have read my fair share of options books, but this little title was an eye opener and my best trading investment to date.
   
   Jeff Augen has taken the time to study, analyze and put in paper for the rest of us a thorough description of option market phenomena (pricing efficiencies) that take place during options expiration week, especially expiration Thursday and Friday.
   
   These efficiencies are the way the markets -that is, human traders, market makers and the systems they have built- compensate for the differences between the theoretical options pricing models and the real risk (or relative lack thereof) carried by an options contract that approaches expiration.
   
   Options models like Black-Scholes-Merton assume a continuously (i.e. 24h/day) traded instrument and "frictionless trading" - i.e. no fees, no spreads and infinite liquidity. These assumptions do not hold in general, but they get totally disconnected from the trading reality during the last days in the life of an options contract. As expiration gets closer, "dead" (i.e. non-trading) time becomes an increasingly larger amount of an option contract's value. Market makers and traders respond by progressively varying implied volatility, which is the only non-deterministic variable in the options pricing formulas.
   
   This tug-of-war between options sellers and options buyers creates a predictable pattern of implied volatility behavior during expiration week. The pattern is in itself a market efficiency: it's the way the market has come up with for adjusting the risk closer to reality, so it persists across expirations. The pattern's "depth" is relatively limited, in the sense that it does not represent an opportunity to institutional-size investors. That is why it is allowed to persist, after all. But it does represent a great opportunity to private traders who will take the time to study it and trade around it. Jeff's book lays the groundwork for it all.
   
   This is a small and simply written book but not an easy book to digest due to the huge distilled experience it conveys. I have more than once had repeated "aha!" moments from the very same lines when revisiting (repeatedly) the text after a few more trades. So it pays to revisit it regularly.
   
   So, this is a cookbook in the sense that you must know about cooking and are willing to experiment a little. In this respect, I disagree with the reviewers that claim the bar is set too high for the "average options trader". It is definitely exploitable "as-is", without going into the full length of duplicating the author's data and volatility decay curves. All it takes to verify is having a feel or a good understanding of the behavior of the suggested trade structures (long ratios, straddles) and try a few small or paper trades - live on an expiration day. Some recipes are easier than others, and this book is about exploitable market phenomena that are allowed to persist and repeat because they represent efficiencies to the system. So the distance between being "average" and "successful" is of the shortest ones you can find.
   
   That said, the book might be enhanced in a second edition by adding some more detailed explanations of the underlying math; For example, I happened to find out that the "noise" in the implied volatility curves that another reviewer (Christian Farman) mentions can be reduced significantly if not eliminated when one calculates it exclusively using the out-of-the-money option; Close to expiration, time premium is so thin that the in-the-money bid-ask spread crossing when trading is enough to corrupt the in-the-money contract's implied volatility curve.
   
   Bottom line - if you are or if you are willing to become your own trader, this book is bound to save you an awful lot of research and make you look forward to the next expiration week as a good risk-reward, recurring money-making opportunity - the closest you can come to something resembling a salary in this business. As for the "erratic options week behavior" most financial journalists love to report on - there is method in the madness, and a lot of the hows and whys are written in this little gem. An unambiguous five stars, as far as I am concerned.



4. Unless I am missing something, this is pretty much the only book on this subject. And what a subject it is. Most option traders are desperate to get out on expiration day if they still hold same month options; this author says this is the day to get in! I plan to use his strategies to see if they work; based on my previous experience, I believe that they will as most options are absolute true value on Friday morning of expiration day and even a small underlying stock price change does impact the option price dramatically. An excellent book, well worth reading. I would have liked to see slighty clearer language and perhaps better summaries at the end of each chapter. However a valuable addition to the subject of options.



5. This book contains ideas that worth exploring. However, the presentation is extremely misleading. The author tends to present trades that worked under a specific scenario without devoting a fair space to analyze the risk involved. A novice trader could be easily mislead by the mirage of easy money. Although the author touted the attractive risk/reward ratio of his strategies through the book, no systematic analysis of risk/reward is included. In order to make use of the ideas, readers need to fill in the details of a strategy (entry/exit/etc), and have a back test plan to find out what the true risk/reward ratio is. Unfortunately the data needed for such an analysis is prohibitively expensive. If you are starting out with options, please DON'T read this book! It WON'T help you AT ALL! If you are well versed in option greeks and strategies, this book may give you new ideas to think about. Lastly, I borrowed this book from a library.