The Investor Diary Entry #49: September 20, 2023
Although I started trading in 2004, I still consider myself a novice trader. The main reason is that I have not succeeded in my trading journey and stopped live trading in 2011. In previous entries, I mentioned that I started a new journey based on learning and training before getting myself into live trading again.
Apart from taking an offline trading course, I have searched for books on the topic. Many say that there aren’t many books that are worth reading. One trader in particular said that he cannot recommend any trading book. Therefore, we come to the conclusion that there is nothing called the best trading books of all time whether for beginners or otherwise.
Nonetheless, I still want to educate myself in trading. Therefore, I was successful in creating a list of books that caught my attention and several traders agreed that those were books of good value.
My List Of The Best Trading Books For Beginners
- Technical Analysis Of The Financial Markets by John J. Murphy.
- The Art And Science Of Technical Analysis by Adam Grimes
- Reading Price Charts Bar by Bar by Al Brooks
- A Complete Guide To Volume Price Analysis by Anna Couling
- The Wychoff Methodology in Depth by Ruben Villahermosa
- Wycoff 2.0 by Ruben Villahermosa
- Master The Markets by Tome Williams
I only bought the first two. Not only they are quite heavy and long, but also I wanted to give myself some mental space. Reading those two books might interest me to specialize in an area that is not within the current list of trading books.
My Current Methodology
In the last couple of weeks, I have been testing a methodology that involved Support and Resistance, simple moving averages, and an indicator that predicts the next direction based on sampling the moves of the last three cycles.
My win rate last week was high, but no conclusions can be made just yet. The win rate was 4:1 with an RRR minimum of 2.5 reaching in some trades to 7.
This week I opened a demo with a new broker as a way to try their services out. I reset my balance and will start my journey to doubling my demo balance as a personal target before opening a live account.
Education Is The First Phase
In any field, one needs to be educated to be able to practice a certain discipline. I am not restricting the word education to academia or to training courses and books. Whatever the education source is, one needs to spend time and effort learning the skill that one wants to practice.
The need for education increases when there is a risk involves more than time and effort, or money that was paid for education. The trading discipline involves risking your money through the practice itself.
The ease of entering into trading made us witness many people losing their hard-earned money, or even their assets, and ruining their lives and the lives of the people around them.
Many practice trading the same way as if they were in a casino. I realized that this is what I was doing between 2004 and 2011. I was gambling not trading.
I do like trading a lot. This is something that I realized lately and even told my wife that for me trading is a hobby that I am passionate about. I also confessed that as much as I like trading, I am still not good at it. I simply want to learn how to become a good trader because I want to practice trading.
Reading As A Source of Learning
I am someone who enjoys reading, and I learn from reading, but reading alone does not teach me much as I also need to practice what I am reading. I am more of a person who learns by doing. Therefore, I need to read and apply immediately. This way the information sticks.
If I leave something for a while, I need to start from the beginning to get my feet wet again. My mind does not retail knowledge for a long time if it is not applied continuously. I have the same challenge with names and routes.
When I started my investing journey last year, part of my investment education was reading books, and dedicated several entries on my investment readings.
Conclusion
A couple of days ago I received my first Amazon order ever. The order contained two books; Technical Analysis Of The Financial Markets, and The Art And Science Of Technical Analysis.
I started reading the first one. I thought of stopping my trading until I reached a point where there was a methodology that I wanted to try out of my reading. Then, I decided that this was not a good idea. Instead of taking out sections from my routine which has been heavily disturbed since July 2023, I want to get back into a rich routine.
This is why I am writing this entry. I have not come near my diary for a long time and that caused me some frustration. I will trade, write, and read.
The trades that I chose today all involved JPY. I avoided all USD pairs as today is the Fed news regarding US interest rates.
I took the EURJPY spot short at 158.382 Targeting 157.086. I have a short pending order on the GBPJPY at 183.381, and a Long pending order on the AUDJPY at 95.585.
On the AUDJPY, I feel that I might have missed the opportunity and should have taken it spot at 95.67. I will leave the pending order and restudy it next Monday.
Wednesday 20 September 2023
About The Author
I started to look into individual stocks in January 2022. I created this diary initially for myself to track my investing progress, and second, as a place where I can share my ideas publicly hoping that others will share their ideas and learn from each other, and lastly, as an online business where some links that I share are affiliate links, and if anybody bought anything by clicking those links I will get a commission based on that successful sale, which of course will not affect the price that you are buying the product or service at.
For more detailed information on my affiliate disclosure please refer to the Full Affiliate Disclosure page, and if you are interested in building your own online business you can check this post here.
Furthermore, this site is in no way or form giving any financial or investment advice, nor it is encouraging or discouraging people to buy or sell any financial instrument. This is a personal diary in which I track my progress and share it for informational, educational, and entertainment purposes.