By Noble DraKoln

John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, N.J.

274 pages, $70

What started out as a response to his anger related to investors losing money trading has now reached its sixth book, which expands and elaborates on material covered in the author's previous publications. Nine of the 15 risk-management strategies included in this book present new depth and details from his earlier book, Winning the Trading Game, and he has added six advanced strategies that can help a trader manage an increased level of risk.

Part I introduces readers to traits of retail and professional traders - both unsuccessful and successful - and some of the essentials of trading and the trading industry and serves as a good review. DraKoln stresses the importance of risk management - what you do when faced with the risk of losing your principal and profits - vs. money management and sets out the core components of a trade setup - entry price, loss price and profit price and whether you are trading with the trend or the countertrend.

Part II covers basic strategies, showing how the spot market is protected by the futures market and how options can protect both the spot and futures market, broken down into several sections dealing with the time frame for which each is best suited. Some strategies will be familiar to options traders, such as straddles or strangles, but DraKoln focuses on when to use them and what you hope to accomplish with your position, citing a number of examples and how they look on a chart.

DraKoln discusses using options as primary and secondary alternatives to stops and stop loss orders, working through several market scenarios, and he covers the use of option collars at several different stages of a trade. He also shows the advantages of synthetic options and covered options and deals with traditional spreading techniques as well as options front spreads and back spreads.

The more advanced strategies in Part III, DraKoln explains, have "some risk management components associated with them, but also provide more exposure to the unlimited risk aspect of selling options." Synthetic futures or selling naked options are more sophisticated strategies that should probably be reserved for more sophisticated traders, who may be able to capitalize on their margining advantages. DraKoln illustrates how to manipulate or combine those strategies to convert one position into another when necessary.

Mixed in with the options-related strategies is a section on intercommodity spreads featuring seasonally-based trades, the soybean crush and energy crack spreads and trades based on ratios between related commodities such as silver and gold.

For serious traders who have a background in reading charts and are ready to begin converting their chart interpretation skills beyond just basic buy or sell into more advanced trading strategies, this book provides some valuable insights that can help make the transition from being a typical retail trader to a professional trader. With a very readable style and numerous chart illustrations, DraKoln explains how the strategies can be implemented in a wide range of markets from commodities to forex to single stock futures.

Review Date: May 2009

About the Author

Noble DraKoln is founder of SpeculatorAcademy.com, a futures and Forex educational company, where he focuses on the development, management, and promotion of the company's core philosophy of "focusing on the trader not the trading." Prior to this role, DraKoln served as the president of Liverpool Derivatives Group, Inc., a futures and Forex brokerage, for eight years and as a professional sugar trader. He speaks regularly at industry conferences in the United States and Europe and has written articles for numerous financial publications. DraKoln is also an NFA Arbitrator, as well as the author of the Wiley title Winning the Trading Game.