The Disciplined Trader

click here for more details, find new or used items	Douglas Our price £22.45 (£24.95) New from £13.78 Used from £14.30 Pages: 256 (Hardcover) ISBN: 0132157578 Pub: Prentice Hall Pub date: 1990-05-01 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 100176

Reader Reviews:

the last 20 pages worth a look - ignore the rest (1/1 people found this helpful)

The author highlights important questions in psychology of trading but fails to give a clear answer and/or very least to speculate on the subject in comprehensible terms. Make no mistake, I have a PhD and CFA with 10 years of trading experience but I found this book very difficult to comprehend.

The first two hundred pages are full of cumbersome mix of thoughts on amateur trading psychology, biology, physics, and computer. Imagine reading two hundred pages of something like "the mental environment would correspond to the electrical energy that makes the computer run as well as store and carry the various forms of information the computer is designed to handle and the computer hardware (physical, mechanical, atoms and molecules) would correspond to the brain.
The nondimensional quality is probably the hardest concept to grasp, about the nature of energy, because even though the energy is nondimensional, it can take some form that is visible to our eyes".

Fortunately, the last twenty pages are better read. I would advice to read only the last 13-17 chapters on "How" to become a discipline traders and skip the first 200 pages on "Why"

In summary, I gave this book three stars
* for highlighting importance psychology in trading
** for attempting to address the issue on the last 20 pages

No stars - for making this book artificially 200 pages thicker than it should be.

Parts I, II and IV are great; Part III not so great (0/0 people found this helpful)

I had high hopes for this book, because I strongly believe that the psychology of trading is half the battle. Sure, you need to know the technicalities of how to use various stockbroker order types and how to spot opportunities based on fundamentals or price action; but you also need to make decisive entries and exits unhindered by the emotions of fear and greed. In fact, other traders' fear and greed may be your ally.

Parts I and II of the book were what I expected -- psychology in the context of stock market trading.

Part III was very disappointing; the kind of pseudo-psychology to be found in many self-help books. Not only did this have little or nothing to do with trading, but it was also based on very dodgy science. I quote from page 100 "The experiences [...] will be transformed into electrical impulses of energy [...], the experiences will carry an eletrical charge [which] will be either positive or negative." I get this as an analogy; but to state baldly that positive experiences will be stored in the brain with positive charge whereas nagative experiences will stored with negative charge is ridiculous and plain wrong.

Part IV had the right trading bias, and contained useful information about market support and resistance points as a function of the market participants' psychologies and future expectations. In this part, the book redeemed itself -- but it was too little, too late, for me.

Throughout the book there is an undercurrent of advice to cut your losses efficiently without emotion when the market does not go the way you expect. Sound advice.

Tony Loton, author --
DON'T LOSE MONEY! (in the Stock Markets)
Financial Trading Patterns

Could use some editing (0/0 people found this helpful)

This is despite the presentation a great book. Poorly organized but well worth a read. I am a professional trader and have no use for another book on technical analysis or investment fundamentals. My main struggle is to stick to what I know and to keep confidence. The author does an excellent job explaining the psychological pitfalls facing traders. Recommended.

Essential addition to any trading library (1/1 people found this helpful)

Trading is 90% psychological and 10% technical, you need courage to buy near the bottom and patience to wait through all the fluctuations and retracements. This book helps you get to grips with the psychological stresses of trading and is a must read for every trader. You MUST read this book!

Poorly Organised, UNREFINED but WONDERFUL ARGUMENTS (15/18 people found this helpful)

I have read this book more than 3 times, and am still reading it because of two reasons:
1. The ARGUMENT holds water and can defenitely be USEFUL in effecting positive change in trading behaviour and consequent trading results.
2. The ideas are UNREFINED, presented CLUMSILY and poorly organised with a lot of repitition and unnecessary rattling of words. There are general marking of the direction but no clear road marks for a trader to follow.
That is why I am reading it again and again in a hope to refine the ideas into a more practiceable form. I would not vote against it if you are ready to put effort to organise yourself the ideas in this book. However, as a trader with necessary knowledge of psychology, I find this book dangerous at points when author becomes too specific suggesting tools to effect psychological change with an apparently poor knowledge of psychology, hypnosis and NLP.
I have given it 3STARS only because of it's fundamental arguments about the nature of the market and mental resources needed for trading success. These ideas are no doubt worth knowing at this price.

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