I am a big fan of trading books. How big? I have read over 300 books related to the market, investing, and trading and reviewed almost all of them on Amazon.com. Some trading books have the ability to lay out the principles that lead to profitable trading while others are not written by traders, but instead only about trading by writers who never traded an option or future contract in their life and contain little value beyond basic facts.
Here are the top trading books that really changed my trading process from haphazard to the clear focus of profitability. These books could change everything for you as a trader. Some are classics and some are more modern but I believe they all stand the test of time in helping a trader on their path to profitability.
Let me save new traders the task of reading hundreds of trading books looking for the pearls of wisdom and just direct you to where the gold actually is.
I did a survey on social media to see what books helped traders make the most money in the markets and these ten books were the result of hundreds of votes.
Here are ten of the top trading books ever written summarized in one sentence:
#1 How to Make Money in Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times and Bad by William O’Neil: Buy only the best innovative growth stocks at the proper buy point out of price bases and let them run as far as they will go.
#2 Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre: It’s a bull market you know and the big money is made in holding good positions over the long term and not trying to trade inside the day to day noise.
#3 Market Wizards, Interviews With Top Traders by Jack D. Schwager: Here are how the best money managers in the world make money, will you listen to them?
#4 How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market by Nicolas Darvas: Find the best stocks that are being accumulated in high volume near their all time highs once you find them add to the winners and cut the losers short and let them run as far as they will go.
#5 Trend Following: Learn to Make Millions in Up or Down Markets by Michael Covel: Give up your opinions, forecasts, and fundamentals and use a robust system to trade the market trends by following the actual price action.
#6: How to Trade In Stocks by Jesse Livermore: Trade the pure price action of the leading stocks as they go higher and higher understand that they do have normal pull back reactions but learn how to not be stopped out until they have ran their full course.
#7 Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom by Van Tharp: Quit looking for the Holy Grail of trading and instead focus on developing a trading system that fits you and trade it while managing risk.
#8 Trading for a Living: Psychology, Trading Tactics, Money Management by Alexander Elder: You must manage the three M’s of trading to be successful: manage the money, the mind, and the trading method to be profitable.
#9 Trading in the Zone: Master the Market with Confidence, Discipline and a Winning Attitude by Mark Douglas: Trading is more of a mental game than a mathematical one and it takes faith in your system and yourself to give you the confidence to trade with discipline and mental control.
#10 The Complete TurtleTrader: How 23 Novice Investors Became Overnight Millionaires by Michael Covel : Richard Dennis showed some everyday people how to become millionaires by trading his firm’s capital with a simple trend following methodology based on breakouts with a few filters while using risk management.
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What’s your favorite trading book? Leave a comment below.
