Books
Not a reading list: each book is tied to the situations and tools on this site.
Trading in the Zone
Mark Douglas, 2000
Main idea: Think in probabilities: any single trade can lose, and an edge only shows over many trades.
What to take:
- Accept the risk before you enter, so the outcome does not shock you.
- You do not need to know what happens next to make money.
- Judge yourself by following the process, not by one result.
- Treat a series of trades as one sample.
Related situations:
Related tools:
The Disciplined Trader
Mark Douglas, 1990
Main idea: Discipline is built by changing how you relate to beliefs and losses, not by willpower alone.
What to take:
- Beliefs about the market decide what you notice and what you ignore.
- Rules you wrote while calm are for the moments you are not.
- Responsibility for the result starts with your own actions.
Related situations:
Related tools:
The Daily Trading Coach
Brett N. Steenbarger, 2009
Main idea: Be your own coach: review, set small goals and repeat what works, one lesson at a time.
What to take:
- Keep a record of your behavior, not only your results.
- Work on one pattern at a time.
- Treat practice like training: regular, deliberate, reviewed.
Related situations:
Related tools:
Enhancing Trader Performance
Brett N. Steenbarger, 2006
Main idea: Performance improves when you study your own patterns and build on strengths, not only fix flaws.
What to take:
- Track the situations in which you trade best and worst.
- Change is made of small repeated steps.
- Emotion is information about your state, to be handled by routines.
Related situations:
Related tools:
Market Wizards
Jack D. Schwager, 1989
Main idea: Interviews with successful traders; styles differ widely, but risk control is a recurring theme.
What to take:
- There is no single method; each trader fits the approach to themselves.
- Surviving losses comes before making gains.
Related situations:
Related tools:
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman, 2011
Main idea: Fast intuitive judgment is useful and systematically biased; slow checks protect decisions.
What to take:
- Losses weigh more than equal gains (loss aversion).
- We are more confident than our accuracy justifies.
- A checklist slows a decision down enough to check it.
Related situations:
Related tools:
Fooled by Randomness
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2001
Main idea: Random outcomes are mistaken for skill; look at the process and at the paths that did not happen.
What to take:
- A good outcome does not prove a good decision.
- Streaks appear in random series without any cause.
Related situations:
Related tools:
Summaries are our own wording of each book's main themes, not quotations. Years are first publication years.