Reading List to Build a Good Foundation for Your Pursuit of Day Trading

If you are interested in building a career in trading, you need to learn many things before you are ready to give it a try. I explained the importance of the technical knowledge on writing trading strategies in the programming language of your platform. This time, I will give you a list of books that you should read. It is important that you read them with the intention to learn from them, not skim over the text and assume you know better.

I have written reviews on many of the books listed here. I moved the book reviews and other non-technical writings on trading to a separate site called Essence of Trading. So if you are interested in looking up what I wrote about these books, or that you are still interested in the more traditional approach to trading (and the related struggle), you can check them out over there.

The list is very long because, as you should expect, trading is not like any other business venture that you are going to pursuit. In short, if you are successful in transforming yourself into someone with higher awareness whom has the drive and motivation to get things done, you are not ready for trading, yet. Building your trading business adds a whole new level of complexity due to its probabilistic nature as I explained in the previous article.

Almost every books you find in the list below has one or two good things that you can pick up from. Whether that fits your need depends heavily if your trading style is similar to the one that author employs. This is really the reason why I have written my trading courses and manuals – it takes tens of thousands of hours to digest and learn from all these books plus the time wasted on books that do you more harm than good. At the end of the day you still have to find a way to distill them down to what you need to know. Having one set of reference that takes you from learning to mastery surely beats that.

This is the first part of the list that builds the proper foundation for your pursuit of day trading. It focuses on what you need to know, not what you want to know “now” like books on specific trading related matters. If I see fit, I will add more books to this list.

Fix Yourself

Your personality, physique and psychological barriers are all going to affect your ability to master day trading. There is no escape from this as how you conduct your life will be reflected in the way you handle the market and trading. You must fix yourself first for a better chance at making it in day trading.

Learn How to Learn

Many people do not know that learning is a skill, a perishable one nonetheless if you simply learn things with your inane ability. It is important to acquire the skills to enable yourself to learn faster and more effectively. Trading is not a single discipline maneuver thus being able to draw knowledge across many domains can help forge a successful trading career more efficiently.

Logical Thinking

The very knowledge that leads human into the technological revolution over the past 200 years has always been a rare commodity in our societies. Being logical is much harder than many people believe. As a trader, you need to train yourself in logical thinking so that you can acknowledge your mistakes and biases in your beliefs as they are formed.

Basic Business Skills

Many people jump into trading without the minimal business skills needed to manage their trading businesses. Understanding the basics on how to run a business properly will go a long way.

Part of the A Smarter Way to Learn Day Trading E-Mini S&P 500 series

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