Last week, I officially started writing my next book, and I want to take a few moments to share some news with you.
This book is being written to fill a need I see in the trading literature: a solid, comprehensive-yet-accessible, beginner’s book for both trading and investing. When I think about the books that helped me as I was learning (for instance, Alex Elder’s first book, the first two Market Wizards and Jack’s big futures book), I realized that I got something from many of these books, but the beginner’s books weren’t all that helpful. As I wrote my first book in 2012, I realized pretty early on that I was writing a book that would be hard for a complete beginner. Since then, I’ve worked hard to bridge that gap in blog posts, videos, and much of my other work, but I think there’s still a gaping hole in the literature that needs to be filled.
Beginner’s books today seem to fall into a few categories: you have the trivial and oversimplified “Tech Analysis Topic 101” often assembled into a free e-book. You also have the books that are essentially ads for the author’s daytrading chatroom, the books that are some kind of get rich quick scam, and then specialized books that are not really easy for a beginner. In addition, most beginners today are swamped in highly questionable “advice” from other struggling traders in Facebook groups, or ads from penny stock scammers promising they can turn $500 into $200,000 in six months. Argh. What to do about all this?
I decided to write a book that would take someone from “this is what a stock is. This is what a currency is.” to some degree of competence in both fundamental and technical analysis. That’s important: I want people to have a good working understanding of valuation, to understand how interest rates work, and to have some idea what might go wrong when they hear someone talking about a P/E ratio. We’ll also touch on some basics of options, and, even more important, how thinking like an options trader can help anyone, no matter how that person chooses to trade in the market. Of course, we’ll also wrap this in a solid understanding of price behavior and technical analysis, look at the simple math you need to evaluate a trading idea, and think about the framework (from psychology to process) you need to make this all work.
While I’m writing a book for the complete beginner, we are all beginners in some aspect, and we can all benefit from finding that “beginner’s mind” again… so I think I’m also writing a book that will have wide appeal and utility. In short, I’m hoping to write the book that will be THE definitive book for beginning traders/investors.
We’re still working on titles, but here’s a rough outline of what you can expect. Publication is expected sometime later this year.
Part 1: Learning
Chapter 1: So you want to be a trader?
Chapter 2: What you really need to know
Chapter 3: Scams, Lies, and Mistakes
Chapter 4: Fundamental Analysis
- Understanding a company
- Understanding an industry
- Reading financial statements
- Intrinsic valuation
- Relative valuation
- Putting it all together
- Non-stock fundamentals
- Issues in fundamental analysis
Chapter 5: Technical Analysis
- Elements of price behavior
- Basic chart reading
- Traditional chart patterns
- Indicators
- Price action
- Issues in technical analysis
Part 2: Doing
Chapter 6: Who are you and where are you going?
Chapter 7: Long-term Investing
Chapter 8: Reading the News
Chapter 9: Active trading
Chapter 10: Trading psychology
Chapter 11: Making Trades
Chapter 12: Where to go from here?
