The Business of Trading

101 steps to trading success

John Piper

• Editore: Harriman House
• Anno: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780857192028
• Argomento: Personal Development
• Categoria: Personal Finance

John Piper has been trading successfully since the 1980s. To him it is a business, and one that he runs from all over the world. He would not swap the lifestyle - the freedom, the financial rewards, the barbecued seafood - for anything. And in this course he reveals how others can enjoy it for themselves too.Over 101 short and easily digestible chapters, this eBook takes readers behind the scenes of the life of a professional trader: from how to get started all the way through to staying in the game for the long term. Find out what a profitable strategy looks like. Discover the cardinal rules of effective risk management. Get a true handle on the kind of mindset you need to succeed. And watch some of Piper's own trades in action with exclusive links to online videos.Collecting his acclaimed 'Trading Intelligence 101' emails together for the first time, this is one of the most candid guides to making a living in the markets that you will ever read.

1. Welcome

Welcome to Trading Intelligence 101!

My name is John Piper. I have been trading successfully since the 1980s and I now work with people like you who want to:

•learn to trade successfully

•make the leap to living off their own trading/business earnings (trading is a business)

•live a life of financial abundance

•run their business from anywhere in the world they want.

Sound good?

Well I am here to tell you it is better than good, it’s great!

I have been running my business from all over the world for some years now and I would not swap the lifestyle for anything.

Over 101 short and easily digestible chapters/modules, I hope to help you get to the same place.

Each module is to the point – with no unnecessary fluff. Every tenth module I will summarise the key points so far.

Some of the modules are extracts and/or summaries of material in my various books. Others include video clips of trading tips or actual trades I have taken. Some devices, such as the iPad, will be able to open these up in browsers if you tap on the links. On Kindle and other eReaders, you’ll either need to copy out the link to a browser on your computer, or just use the desktop app for that brand of eReader and click through from there.

In this first module I am now, very briefly, going to introduce a concept which we will explore in more detail later in the course – trade what you see, not what you think.

Joe Ross, a well known trader from the US, said this and I have expanded it slightly to …

Trade what you see, not what you think or feel.

Many people get fixed ideas about a trade and then carry it our regardless of what they see.

Many others simply want to trade emotionally and do so for that reason.

Often it is the very impulse that gets us involved in trading in the first place that causes this and for this reason it pays to closely examine our motivation.

Exercises

Occasionally in this book an exercise will be suggested. You have three choices: you can ignore them, do them as they come up, or wait until every tenth module and do all of the exercises for that group in one go.

Book recommendations and websites

As we go along, I will include book recommendations, and direct you to useful websites if I think these will be helpful.

I really hope you enjoy this project and should you find anything confusing, badly written (!), non-working links or have any suggestions, resources or stories, please email me directly on [email protected].

What you can do to get ready for the next module – The Very Basics of Trading

Complete this statement ‘I want to trade because ............... ’, writing down as many things as you can and then consider what these motivations will mean in terms of when you trade.

Will they help you make money?

2. The Very Basics of Trading

In this module I want to look at the very simple mechanics of trading – the essential trade-off you make when you enter any trade.

However you trade you are taking on the risk of loss in return for the prospect of reward.

Let’s categorise the risk you might take. It might be …

•fixed, or

•variable.

Think about this for few minutes – which would you prefer?

Would you prefer to know exactly what you might lose or would you rather be unsure?

But there is another part to this equation: your reward . Guess what? That also can be either …

•fixed, or

•variable.

The most popular form of trading in the UK is probably “spread betting” (roughly equivalent to futures trading in the US) ...