The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Day Trading Like a Pro by Peter J. Sander

Summary: This book is an overview of daytrading US equities and future markets. All basic aspects on daytrading are covered with reasonable advices on risk control and expectations. The examples on the trading tools are outdated and a number of brokerages mentioned in the book no longer exist. Overall a tourist guide to daytrading – you get to know the names of the things that you are supposed to look up for but it stops there.

Review

Part of the Idiot’s Guide series, this book is created for those with no experience whatsoever about trading in mind. The book walks thru all the basic information about trading, from what it means, what to do, and finally how it is done. Things that should concern any beginners in trading are brought up with reasonable guidelines like what it takes to be a trader and taxation issues faced by traders. A good introduction for anyone who has no idea what they are doing but determined to become a daytrader.

The section on introduction to the markets available for trading has a lot of details, which is important but boring for those people who are interested in daytrading with no prior experience as they do not care about these things at all.

The rest of the book focuses on the tools that daytraders use like Level 2 screen, charting, etc. Examples are given but the platform used in the book is not a good choice as that is not a decent trading platform at all comparing to what is available nowadays. The treatment on technical analysis and trading styles has also failed to put the readers into the correct mindset as the advices are just generic hearsay that are not specific enough. Many trader websites are doing a better job at this.

Although I am not a fan of this book, it probably will surprise you that I also made this book a must read for summer students who worked for my software firm with no background in financial markets. The reason is that there is no good introductory materials on trading that are written for people with no knowledge about financial markets. Telling you the truth, some kids are offended in the beginning but they all thanked me afterwards.

The bottom-line is, it does not matter this book is called an Idiot’s Guide – it has the information you need, it is a well written book, and you will be able to absorb the information quickly.

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