Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom

Rating:
Summary: A very mixed title
Review: "Trade Your Way To Financial Freedom" starts with an unfortunate three chapters of poorly presented material of very little value to anyone about Holy Grails and psychological issues. Then we get a few more average quality chapters about systems development. The real meat starts in chapter 7, where Van introduces you to six different trading systems of various quality levels (the best of which is the William O'Neil CAN-SLIM approach popularized in his books and in IBD). These systems are all torn apart and analyzed in terms of their entry, stop loss, profit taking, and position sizing approaches. A careful reading of this hundred pages forces the reader to come to terms with how expected profitability and trade size all interact in similar ways no matter what trading approach you are using.

The strongest parts of this book are those that relate to optimal position sizing. The constant and unavoidable looks at mathematical expectation required for this may seem difficult if you're not used to thinking this way, but this is more approachable than the more comprehensive and considerably more complicated books covering similar material by people like Ralph Vince.

For short-term swing or day traders, it's probably more harm than good because it discourages several things I don't think Van really understands that are useful approaches for intraday trading. But this is a perfect intermediate level book for systems developers, fairly long-term investors, or people managing a substantial amount of capital who want a better handle on how risk analysis can be used to drive your trading.

Rating:
Summary: After 48 yrs if successful trading--this is the Best Book
Review: The best of over 200 trading books, cd's, video's--if you have failed at trading ( the majority have ) read, re-read, re-re-read etc this book to improve your trading

Rating:
Summary: where's the success?
Review: This book introduces the reader to the importance of position sizes exit strategies , and risk management. These are all important aspects. However , inspite of the fact that the author repetedly mentions about the importance of position sizing , it is dealt with at a superficial level at best.
It looks like you have to pay additional money to go to Dr Tharp's site and buy his products , this book skims along the surface for what is supposed to be the main topic of the book

Rating:
Summary: a joke
Review: A truly great book. Practical. Well written. I came away with more knowledge I can actually apply from this book than anything else I've read. Not for beginners. But an absolutely invaluable book!

Rating:
Summary: A realistic view of the market
Review: This is an excellent book that provides the reader with a realistic view of the market and how to trade it. He points out the important things that help make you successful. But more importantly, he points out the traps that most people fall into and explains why this happens. Most readers will feel as though he is writing about them! There is a lot of information and it's probably worth it to take notes, though the summary at the end of each chapter is quite helpful to look over afterwards to remind you of concepts learned (in case you have a bad memory like I do!).