Trading, Sex, and Dying

Rating:
Summary: This is pure dishonesty
Review: The last reviewer is right on. This is a good book if you want to be a better poker player. Or if you want to understand people and their actions better (including your own.) I would have given it 5 stars as well if the author hadn't been so dishonest.

I don't know why this isn't called 'Poker Sex and Dying.' Instead, they have 'Poker' crossed off, and 'Trading' written on top of it. As such, I expected that there was a previous book written by Mr. Anderson entitled 'Poker Sex and Dying,' which was now being altered to fit the trading arena. There wasn't. So why wasn't it entitled 'Poker Sex and Dying?' I don't know.

For the most part, this book goes over each of the 13 personality types, lists the positives and negatives, and then explains how to deal with these personality types if you're playing poker with them or selling products or services to them. (Mr. Anderson's experience has been in professional gambling and in selling.)

On the back of the book, claims are made that you will learn to boost trading profits by varying your bet (position size), trading only when the markets give you a good hand, evaluating your hand, considering the risk/reward on each trade, and writing options like a bookie. Aside from Mr. Caplan's foreward, which just briefly touches on these subjects, there is nothing in this book as so described.

Trading and poker are similar--but the similarity has nothing to do with the contents of this book. But trading is hot right now, and poker isn't. So maybe the author thought he might sell more books if it were supposed to be about trading.

In sum, this was a very good book that deserves 4 or 5 stars, but only gets 2 from me because of the dishonesty of the author and the lack of correspondence to the title and supposed subject.

Rating:
Summary: Awful, awful book
Review: This is a very, very bad book. The author is given to hyperbole and fixates on the "get rich quick" attitude that characterized the bubble period (the book was published in 1998). The syllogisms are relentless. Whole paragraphs are repeated every several pages, as if the book has never been edited, or perhaps was edited by an orange peel. As far as I can tell, this piece of garbage contains no insight into the markets, trading discipline, or anything else. The author comes across as exactly the kind of person that one would expect to consistently lose in the markets; and the writer of the foreword (David Caplan) writes and thinks like a child. Shame on everyone involved in the publication of this thing.

Leave the trading of individual stocks to professional money managers (most of whom lose money themselves); hire competent money managers to allocate your liquid wealth (not stock brokers!); and if you want to trade with "mad money," choose a book that stresses DISCIPLINE - such as "Trading for a Living."

Rating:
Summary: This is NOT a very good book for traders...
Review: unless, perhaps, you're a floor trader on one of the exchanges, where you're competing with people, face to face, and trying to use their strengths and weaknesses to your own advantage. I'm a bit annoyed with David Caplan, the remarkable options man, for publishing it as if it was "gambling theory for traders." It certainly is not. Don't get me wrong: This fellow, Juel Anderson, is an astonishing fellow: Almost alarmingly bright and insightful, he could use the material in this book to start a quasi-relegion based upon gambling and sales insights. The book is a wonderful read, with descriptions of categories of human nature/behavior that would be very difficult to find anywhere else. However, there is actually very little discussion of gambling / trading as such... not much to apply to your trading unless you're in the pits. This book would be better placed in the psychology or psych / personal philosophy section than anywhere else... in which section, it deserves five stars.