Net-trading: Strategies from the Frontiers of Electronic Day Trading

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 380 pages
• Published by: Financial Times/Prentice Hall
• Edition: 1st Edition March 19, 2000
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0273645021
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0273645023
• Book Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 0.9 inches
• Weighs: 1.7 pounds

Product Description
Written for online traders by an online trader, with the best tips and strategies from other online traders; people who do well, for those who want to do better. Softcover.

From the Inside Flap
Preface Even Polynesians do it E-trading is fast becoming as mainstream as owning stocks. And owning and trading stocks is becoming as essential to making money as having a job. By 2002 one in three investors will have an online account; there will be 25 million online accounts in the US alone. In 1996 there were a mere 1.6m. Whoever you are, whatever you do, if you want a piece of the action, you need to know the leading profit strategies of online traders. That is the aim of this book. The popularity of online trading is not a purely American phenomenon. You know you are on to a winner when someone opens an online trading account from Easter Island, a Chilean territory in Polynesia. What's more, by 2002 there will be an estimated 8 million online accounts in Europe, a collection of independent countries located several thousand miles to the east of New York State. Not just your average run-of-the-mill book This is your book. It is written for online traders by an online trader, with the best tips and strategies from other online traders; people who do well, for those who want to do better. Each strategy is given in detail so you know the level of risk, what to look for before executing it, the precise entry point with examples, and the exit point. What this book covers:

day trading (with ample warnings) as well as other short- to medium-term trading trading of stocks and also futures and options. All three have similar risk profiles and attract similar audiences and technology, meaning that all three are possible for the average investor, yet no one book combines all three for an online day trading audience topics never before seen in one volume, that logically belong together: online trading; psychology; systems; money and risk management; strategy; advice from both online traders and leading institutional traders. What is in the book No book is enough to make you a good trader. This is especially true of short-term trading. Just as clothes do not maketh the man, nor do computers, software, modem, and books maketh the trader. What a book can do, however, is teach you so much that you can avoid every mistake possible just by reading. From a book you can learn enough to make as much profit as possible from reading books alone. Why we trade online: masters of the universe and barbarians at the gates We online traders trade online to save commissions, to be in charge of our investments, to be more in control of our futures, to keep more of the profits, because we refuse to pay underworked, overpaid, underperforming, overeducated, talentless fund managers. No longer are we obliged to hand our cash over to the institutions because they hold all the information. They can strive to be masters of the universe all they want, but know this: we barbarians are at their gates. Their palaces, paid for by our toils, will stand no more. The internet has further democratized capitalism. The right to own property is a fundamental human right. We vigorously exercise our right to trade property in the form of securities. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all traders are created equal, that they are endowed by the internet with certain inalienable rights, that among these are inexpensive trading in the pursuit of wealth. That to secure these rights, brokers are instituted among men and women, deriving their income from the commission from traders. That whenever any form of brokerage becomes destructive of this end, it is the right of traders to abandon such form of brokerage, and to institute new forms of brokerage, laying their foundation on such principles and organizing their facilities in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their e-trading's best interests and wealth. Is it safe? I cannot highlight often enough, and believe me I repeat the warnings many, many times throughout the book, online trading can be risky - like any trading. Popular perception has it that online trading is some secret possessed by the few who are in the know and who therefore make a fortune, while the rest of us can merely look in from the outside. The truth is that online trading is like most activities that carry some degree of risk, be it exercise, driving, drinking, smoking - they can be dangerous and highly risky depending on YOU. You will undoubtedly have met the two stereotypes of e-trading. They appear in every one of the thousands of articles written in near-identical fashion. You know the ones. They begin: "Jason used to work as a dentist, now he only has to walk from the bedroom to the living room to get to work. He dons a baseball cap, jeans and sneakers, and stares hypnotized at the screen for hours each day . . ." So, in the same fashion, let me reacquaint you with our stereotypes. First, meet Richard Traderman, his friends call him "Rich:" Rich is 25 years old. He used to wait tables in a rough neighborhood in the Bronx, New York. His other job was as a cleaner at JFK. He worked on minimum wage. Last year he left his job, borrowed $2000, and decided to day trade. In little over six months he had turned $2000 into $300,000 and moved to a studio flat in Manhattan. By the end of next year he aims to have made his first million. Now meet Lucy Spinster. Her friends call her "Loser" for short. A Harvard graduate, she practised in a prominent New York international law firm. The pay was excellent, she lived in a penthouse apartment in Manhattan but she dreamed of taking charge of her destiny, living an entrepreneurial dream. Last year she scraped together her savings of $100,000 and started online treading. She would monitor her positions at work and do research at night. After three months she felt confident enough to leave her high-powered job to trade full time. But losses mounted. It was not as easy as it first seemed. It was as if having more time to focus on her trading led her to chase the markets and overtrade. She sold her apartment last week to pay off outstanding credit card debts. The buyer was a certain Richard Traderman. There are many more Lucy Spinsters than Richard Tradermans. Short-term online trading is not for everyone. Some would be better off buying and holding. Some would be better off giving their money to a fund manager. This book is also aimed at helping you to determine if online trading is for you. Unlike other books there is no promise of guaranteed wealth for all. Some people should not trade online. Inside you will discover if you are one of them. If you are, then at least you will know. The vast amount of information on the internet has the ability to create the illusion among traders that they are experts. But they are no more expert for having access to information than a law librarian would be as a law professor. Trading is difficult, it requires far more skill than knowing where the books are. This book tries to help you to avoid the potholes, and takes you through what experienced online traders know about:

creating systems strategies online to extract market profit best web-sites using technical indicators the importance of trading psychology. If you ignore these things, then, yes, online trading can be risky. Just as risky as driving without having taken any driving lessons. Why is online trading so popular? In the USA 15,000 new online accounts are opened daily. Why? The answer does not lie in trite, well-trodden statements about technological advances, the internet, ECNs and the desire to save commissions. The answer lies in history, in culture, and in character. If James Bryce were writing The American Commonwealth today instead of in 1888 he might have written: How does online trading tell on the character of the people? They are naturally inclined to be speculative. The pursuit of wealth is nowhere so eager as on the (Internet), the opportunities for acquiring it nowhere so numerous . . . It can hardly be doubted that the pre-existing tendency to encounter risks and "back one's opinion," inborn in the Americans, and fostered by the circumstances of their country, is further stimulated by the existence of so vast a number of stocks . . . Similar facilities exist in the Old World; but few of the inhabitants of the Old World have yet learned how to use and abuse them. The Americans, quick at everything, have learned long ago. The habit of speculation is now a part of their character, and it increases that constitutional excitability and high nervous tension of which they are proud. It was the observers of an America early in the twentieth century who unknowingly provided the truth behind the popularity of this activity long after their deaths: What prevails, what sets the tune, is the American scale of gain, more awesome than any other, and the fact that the whole assumption, the whole theory of life, is that of the individual's participation in it, that of his being more or less punctually and more of less effectually :squared." To make so much money that you won't, that you don't "mind," don't mind anything - that is absolutely, I think, the main American formula. The American Scene, Henry James, 1907 Alpesh B. Patel Alpesh-patel@msn.com

Reader Reviews
A very detailed and timely title that takes online trading help to the next level. The strategies are well presented. The first section on system development, why so many systems fail, what a good system tries to capture. The book details the best web sites for executing these strategies and where to get them. All in all the best yet of all the online trading books.