The Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffett & George Soros Review

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(More customer reviews)I am surprised that this book doesn't get the attention that it so rightly deserved. This is indeed a hidden gem! I have read dozens of investment books over the years and this book definitely belongs to my all-time top 5 must read. The writing is simply amazing with investment advices that are clear, succint and easily applicable to our own investment situations.
The book caters to a broad audience with investment advices that will prove beneficial to even the most seasoned investors. Beginners will love the book's approach detailing a step-by-step mental checklist to go through when making investment decisons. I am truly impressed by the author's careful research of coming out with 23 winning habits employed by the world's most successful investors including Warren Buffett and George Soros. I always thought that Warren is a true long-term investor and business owner whereas George is a amazing speculator taking advantages of current market conditions. Their investment philosophies must be worlds apart. Boy, was I wrong. As the author points out, they both have the same 23 winning investment habits as they go thru the same mental checklist when making investment decisions! This book is indeed a revelation.
I won't spoil the party by telling you what the 23 winning habits are. But I promise that each page is a head-turner and you will learn so much and improve your investment record up a notch for every habit that you acquired and practiced. It is one of those rare investment books that I have read cover-to-cover for a great many times and still find the urge to refer back to it. I am sure you will too!


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Warren Buffett, Carl Icahn, and George Soros all started with nothing---and made billion-dollar fortunes solely by investing. But their investment strategies are so widely divergent, what could they possibly have in common?As Mark Tier demonstrates in this insightful book, the secrets that made Buffet, Icahn, and Soros the world's three richest investors are the same mental habits and strategies they all practice religiously. However, these are mental habits and strategies that fly in the face of Wall Street's conventional mindset. For example:-Buffett, Icahn, and Soros do not diversify. When they buy, they buy as much as they can.-They're not focused on the profits they expect to make. Going in, they're not investing for the money at all.-They don't believe that big profits involve big risks. In fact, they're far more focused on not losing money than making it.-Wall Street research reports? They never read them. They're not interested in what other people think. Indeed, Buffett says he only reads analyst reports when he needs a laugh.In The Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffett & George Soros you can discover how the mental habits that guided your last investment decision stack up against those of Buffett, Icahn, and Soros. Then learn exactly how you can apply the wealth-building secrets of the world's richest investors to transform your own investment results.

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Zero-Sum Game: The Rise of the World's Largest Derivatives Exchange Review

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(More customer reviews)What a fun, interesting, well-written book! This is not your regular old business book, it is written in first person and has a ton of pop culture references. I raced through the book, enjoyed the plot, loved the character development and couldn't help but learn (and laugh) along the way.
Zero-Sum Game, a book about the merger between Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, is an interesting read for industry veterans or those who are not part of the financial sector. I liked how Olson provided a quick overview/definition for each term, but then really focused on the fun/more interesting stuff which, again, really sets this book apart.
It is easy to follow, logically written, and kept me at the edge of my seat. I couldn't help feeling like I was along for the ride, as I followed Olson on her journey from her first interview at the Chicago Board of Trade through the day she looked back and noticed that the stature of Ceres appeared as though she was crying. Intricate and colorful character descriptions turn the main players alive and set a vivid stage for the reader.
Zero-Sum Game is one of the best books I've read in a long time. It is candid, captivating and a definite page turner. I'm looking forward to Olson's next book.

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Gold Trading Boot Camp: How to Master the Basics and Become a Successful Commodities Investor Review

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(More customer reviews)This is one of the most useful trading books I've seen in a long long time.
As a broker and former Risk Manager in the financial markets, I am usually somewhat suspicious of books by "traders" and/or "pundits". I usually find myself confronted by lots of self-serving drivel and advice that is not in any way applicable to typical traders. This book is a refreshing change from that.
Every new or newer trader should read this book. The excellent charts and analysis contained on them are worth the book's price all by themselves. What I found of particular interest, though, was his honest and refreshing approach to the oft-neglected subject of Risk. Every trader should read this portion of the book.
The book lays out in intricate detail the process a true professional trader must go through to successfully speculate. Fascinating stuff!


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Praise for Gold Trading Boot Camp
"If speculate you must, read Weldon first."—James Grant, Editor, Grant's Interest Rate Observer
"This book delivers on all of the essential elements of successful financial literature. Weldon provides a compelling context, walks through the metrics that affect the price action, and assimilates the decision-making process in kind. From soup to nuts, this is one of the most comprehensive tutorials I've read on the subject of commodities."—Todd Harrison, founder and CEO, Minyanville Publishing and Multimedia, LLC
"The gold price is rising in today's turbulent financial times. Preparation and knowledge are essential to profit from higher prices, and this book provides everything you need to take advantage of the trading opportunities thatlie ahead."—James Turk, founder, GoldMoney.com
"This book, with its insights into the current investment climate coincides with what many feel is a new bull market in gold. There is no 'one-size-fits-all' investment approach, but every investor who applies such preparation and rigor as Greg outlines will certainly have increased returns with fewer losses. It should be on every investor's bookshelf, handy for reference, and re-read every year. Greg puts paid to the notion of random walk!"—Kim Evans, CEO, Global Building and Supply

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Markets in Profile: Profiting from the Auction Process (Wiley Trading) Review

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(More customer reviews)When I initiated an internship program for new traders at a proprietary trading firm, I began by providing students with a conceptual overview of markets and the factors that make markets move. That overview drew heavily upon the book "Mind Over Markets" by James Dalton, Eric Jones, and Robert Dalton. Quite simply, that book is the most readable, lucid, and insightful work on the auction process underlying trading markets that I have yet encountered.
You can imagine, then, my delight when I had the opportunity to read an advance copy of the authors' new work, "Markets in Profile" and provide a review statement for the book's cover. I turn down these endorsement requests rather often. Frankly, many of them are simply favors being done by buddies and don't reflect an actual reading of the text. The least authors can do for their readers is keep it real.
There was no problem in my keeping it real when I wrote that "Good books teach, but the best books enlighten". Markets in Profile is one of those enlightening books, because it takes the conceptual framework from the first book and applies it to concrete trading time frames and trading scenarios. In that sense, I would say it is a worthy bridge between theory/understanding and practice.
A core theme of Markets in the Dalton, Dalton, and Jones text is the following nugget: "If you can correctly identify which timeframe is in control of market activity, and you have a good understanding of how the individual timeframes generally behave, then you are in a stronger position to trade, invest, and effectively control risk." The practical aspect of the book is that it illustrates how to read the Market Profile to grasp the long-, intermediate-, and short-term auctions and place current market activity into a proper context.
Time and again I have observed that a trading edge comes from understanding what is happening at the timeframes greater than the one you're trading. If you're in a trading range, you might want to be prepared for a breakout. Which way is it likely to break? Using price, time, and volume to see how value is being established at those larger timeframes provides invaluable clues.
As the authors also explain, observing volume patterns as the market moves away from value at one timeframe is very important to understanding whether or not we will return to value or reprice value (perhaps in line with the longer-term auctions). Seeing these dynamics evolve over time helps traders understand what is likely to occur, but also *why*.
I find the authors' use of examples, charts, and Market Profile diagrams to be quite helpful. This is not an encyclopedic work; it's a very readable 200 pages. By the end, however, readers will have a solid understanding of how to apply auction-based principles across timeframes and frame their trade ideas with that broader understanding. A particularly practical chapter is the one on day-trading, which shows how these principles are relevant to the active trader.
The authors make clear that Market Profile is not a trading system, but a framework from which trading ideas can be derived. My analogy isn't perfect, but perhaps it will make sense: Just as the periodic table helps chemists organize their understanding of elements and predict how elements are likely to interact with one another, the Market Profile organizes data on price, time, and volume to help traders anticipate market behavior. We have types of elements (metals, non-metals) and combinations of elements, and we have types of markets and combinations of markets: knowing type provides invaluable clues as to likely behavior in various situations.
It's rare that I don't have some reservations about a book. This one is clearly written, straightforward, and doesn't get away from its topic. There's no fluff, and (mercifully) there's no chest-beating self-congratulations from authors who try to make themselves out to be gurus. Markets in Profile is simply a guide for putting theory into practice at different time frames. That, in itself, is unique in the trading literature.

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Markets in Profile explores the confluence of three disparate philosophical frameworks: the Market Profile, behavioral finance, and neuroeconomics in order to present a unified theory of how markets work. The Market Profile is an ever-evolving, multidimensional graphic that gives visual form to the market's continuing auction process, revealing the myriad underlying dynamics that influence market activity. Behavioral finance posits that investors are driven more by emotional factors and the subjective interpretation of minutia than by "rationality" when making investment decisions. And neuroeconomics is the study of how investor psychology permeates and affects the financial markets. Mr. Dalton explicates the ways in which irrational human behavior influences the market's natural auction process, creating frequently predictable market structure, which results in opportunities for investors to ameliorate risk. The book will improve investors ability to interpret change in markets, enabling better, more confident investment decisions.

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Trading and Exchanges: Market Microstructure for Practitioners Review

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(More customer reviews)I have been trading for 8 years. 6 years prop trading, I now run a hedge fund. We make about 10,000 trades/day. I wish I had read this book years ago. I've had to pay Mr. Market a large sum to learn many of these lessons. Larry Harris has written what I consider to be the best book in the field of trading. He covers nearly all topics, from structural & regulatory issues, to descriptions of the players; costs to performance evaluation. Presentation is excellent - the numerous sidebars, tables & graphs serve to illustrate the text. My only complaint is that the book does not take the quantitative side far enough. I recommend a technical appendix plus specific references (perhaps annotating the excellent bibliography) for the mathematically inclined reader.
If you are interested in trading, or curious about the markets, buy and read this book!

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This book is about trading, the people who trade securities and contracts, the marketplaces where they trade, and the rules that govern it.Readers will learn about investors, brokers, dealers, arbitrageurs, retail traders, day traders, rogue traders, and gamblers; exchanges, boards of trade, dealer networks, ECNs (electronic communications networks), crossing markets, and pink sheets.Also covered in this text are single price auctions, open outcry auctions, and brokered markets limit orders, market orders, and stop orders. Finally, the author covers the areas of program trades, block trades, and short trades, price priority, time precedence, public order precedence, and display precedence, insider trading, scalping, and bluffing, and investing, speculating, and gambling.

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Inside the Investor's Brain: The Power of Mind Over Money (Wiley Trading) Review

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(More customer reviews)For most of the 17 years in which I held an endowed chair in a leading finance department. I required that my doctoral students read Fischer Black's Presidential Address to the American Finance Association titled, "Noise." In that paper, Black, a co-inventor of option pricing theory who later worked for Goldman Sachs, stated that stocks could be priced anywhere from 2 times to ½ the value suggested by market efficiency considerations. Black attributed the large deviations from market efficiency to trading "noise." Richard Peterson's book, Inside the Investor's Brain, is important because it gives rational explanations for market inefficiencies and "noise" based upon well-documented neuroeconomics findings.
While the book has a high level of professional sophistication, fortunately, it contains a useful glossary to acquaint the reader with technical terms in medicine or finance with which the reader may be unfamiliar. Furthermore, because the author has traded extensively, worked with hedge funds, and, as a psychiatrist, has counseled financial market traders, the book contains numerous practical trading and investing examples and cases to illustrate its points, which makes it interesting and fun to read.
The book contains many practical insights that can help participants in the financial markets. By understanding and controlling their emotions, investors and traders may be able to use Peterson's insights to invest more successfully. Toward that end, Peterson explains how can monitor and control the impact of their emotions on their investment decisions.

Some of the findings presented in Peterson's book help resolve theoretical anomalies in finance. For instance, he cites research that shows that people typically weight losses twice as heavily as gains in their decision making; and, consequently, peoples' decisions are made differently if they are "framed" in a loss-taking versus gains making context. A major reason for this difference is that different parts of peoples' brains are engaged when considering potential losses rather than considering potential gains. Depending upon which part of a person's brain is engaged, people will behave differently--which can explain why people and markets typically behave differently in "bull" versus "bear" markets, and why many people both buy insurance and gamble.
Peterson also shows that the workings of the "rational" planning part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, can be inhibited or bypassed by emotions stemming from other areas--such as greedy gain anticipations coming from the Nucleus accumbens or by "fearful" emotions emanating from the brain's amygdala. Acting under the influence of fearful emotions, people may exhibit excessive loss aversion and enhanced time preference. Acting under the euphoric input of greedy anticipation, people may make hurried, impulsive decisions and forego doing due diligence before investing. Rational decision making and asset pricing suffers in either case, and so will market efficiency when "herding" occurs and people respond similarly to market stimuli.
The book provides both trading and investing references and tips for recognizing emotional states that can affect markets or personal investment success. Market inefficiencies can be generated by the emotional states of others, while personal emotional states can be inimical to successful trading or investing. The book provides advice to help investors recognize and control their own emotions while investing.
It also may help them profit market inefficiencies generated by pervasive emotional states of other investors. The book should be valuable both to investors and academics because it contains voluminous recent references to the rapidly developing literature in behavioral finance and neuroeconomics as well as to recent literature in psychiatry and psychology with financial applications.
Chip Peterson
Professor Emeritus (Finance), Texas Tech University


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The Volatility Edge in Options Trading: New Technical Strategies for Investing in Unstable Markets Review

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(More customer reviews)A friend of mine in the trading industry suggested I read this gem of a book ... within a single weekend I did just that ... and what a gem it is!
Jeff Augen has put together a fine body of work in this book within which there are some seriously valuable nuggets of information.
The volatility spike graphs are a novelty in this business that anyone studying and trading volatility should benefit from. Essentially what he's uncovering is "differential volatility", in other words whether the volatility is being caused by buyers or sellers.
Typically, falling prices (due to selling action) will cause greater volatility, but not always. Sometimes the volatility is caused by rising prices. By understanding the direction in which the greater volatility of the underlying is occurring, the trader is able to position trades more appropriate to that skew. For example if the spikes indicate that volatility is caused by buying action then the calls may well be undervalued in advance of the next spike up. The trader can then make a double whammy trade, correct in direction and correctly in volatility.
Other nuggets include Jeff's slant on expiration date and earnings cycle trading, and the concept of stocks pinning to the strike, all of which are essential chapters in the book.
You'll be a more knowledgeable trader for reading this book and you should become a better trader for sure.


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"Jeff's analysis is unique, at least among academic derivatives textbooks. I would definitely use this material in my derivatives class, as I believe students would benefit from analyzing the many dimensions of Jeff's trading strategies. I especially found the material on trading the earnings cycle and discussion of how to insure against price jumps at known events very worthwhile."—DR. ROBERT JENNINGS, Professor of Finance, Indiana University Kelley School of Business"This is not just another book about options trading. The author shares a plethora of knowledge based on 20 years of trading experience and study of the financial markets. Jeff explains the myriad of complexities about options in a manner that is insightful and easy to understand. Given the growth in the options and derivatives markets over the past five years, this book is required reading for any serious investor or anyone in the financial service industries."—MICHAEL P. O'HARE, Head of Mergers & Acquisitions, Oppenheimer & Co. Inc."Those in the know will find this book to be an excellent resource and practical guide with exciting new insights into investing and hedging with options."—JIM MEYER, Managing Director, Sasqua Field Capital Partners LLC"Jeff has focused everything I knew about options pricing and more through a hyper-insightful lens! This book provides a unique and practical perspective about options trading that should be required reading for professional and individual investors."—ARTHUR TISI, Founder and CEO, EXA Infosystems; private investor and options traderIn The Volatility Edge in Options Trading, leading options trader Jeff Augen introduces breakthrough strategies for identifying subtle price distortions that arise from changes in market volatility. Drawing on more than a decade of never-before-published research, Augen provides new analytical techniques that every experienced options trader can use to study historical price changes, mitigate risk, limit market exposure, and structure mathematically sound high-return options positions. Augen bridges the gap between pricing theory mathematics and market realities, covering topics addressed in no other options trading book. He introduces new ways to exploit the rising volatility that precedes earnings releases; trade the monthly options expiration cycle; leverage put:call price parity disruptions; understand weekend and month-end effects on bid-ask spreads; and use options on the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) as a portfolio hedge. Unlike conventional guides, The Volatility Edge in Options Trading doesn't rely on oversimplified positional analyses: it fully reflects ongoing changes in the prices of underlying securities, market volatility, and time decay. What's more, Augen shows how to build your own customized analytical toolset using low-cost desktop software and data sources: tools that can transform his state-of-the-art strategies into practical buy/sell guidance.An options investment strategy that reflects the markets' fundamental mathematical propertiesPresents strategies for achieving superior returns in widely diverse market conditionsAdaptive trading: how to dynamically manage option positions, and why you mustIncludes precise, proven metrics and rules for adjusting complex positionsEffectively trading the earnings and expiration cyclesLeverage price distortions related to earnings and impending options expirationsBuilding a state-of-the-art analytical infrastructureUse standard desktop software and data sources to build world-class decision-making tools

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A Million a Minute: Inside World of Securities Trading -- The Men, the Women, the Money that Makes the Markets Work Review

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(More customer reviews)Ms. Davis might not stretch to say traders are saviors but she almost deifies them with her genuinely affectionate portrayals here. She's intent on redeeming the profession (as if it needs redeeming--it doesn't), which she imagines the Average Joe scorns and vilifies. I bet the Average Joe pays little attention to hyperactive market makers, compared to the time spent fretting over his or her own investments. Still, Ms. Davis assures us that for every rogue trader like Nick Leeson (who brought down the British Bank, Barings) or Mike Milken (wait, Mike is NOT a crook, she corrects, notwithstanding the criminal charges), there are scads of other, brilliant, hardworking people--possessed of traits you and I could only wish to have--who lubricate the capital markets and provide the fuel for growth. In other words, she's a proselytizing apologist: by compensating she overstates. If you're not in the financial business, you might find this breezy book an acceptable companion at martini time, if you're someone who will gaze in amazement at the hue of a cocktail olive. She's oddly cozy and deferential with her subjects, like a mistress. More like it, the traders are friends whom she has no desire to offend, or perhaps she plans to approach them for future employment. The trouble is, the topic cries out for a critical eye. For those who take investments seriously the text is a great failure, totally lacking in specifics, or even anecdotes that might illuminate. Imagine a cook book that attempts to describe the taste of the recipes without listing any ingredients and you'll understand the problem with "A Million A Minute." Ms. Davis, your readers can take more. A truly entertaining book (and with more meat) is Michael Lewis' "Liar's Poker" and "Pit Bull" by Martin Schwartz. Mr. Schwartz, especially, is a man who has traded for years, who can share his secrets (successes and failures) and who can live to tell about it!

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The Asylum: The Renegades Who Hijacked the World's Oil Market Review

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(More customer reviews)If you've ever wondered who on earth is behind $4 gasoline or $100-plus oil, look no further than this book, which tells the story of the untrained, rebel scrappers from Manhattan who built this stranger-than-fiction monstrosity. It's all here, which is why some haters on this page don't want you to read it. (If I were them, I wouldn't want you to, either.)
Just to clear up a few of the debates raging on Amazon and elsewhere, the oil market being discussed in `The Asylum' is quite literally where the U.S. gets its energy prices. No one contests that. (Just check any news outlet -- Nymex oil is the world's reference point.) It determines what we pay at the pump for gasoline. It has been the global benchmark for the past 30 years. When oil tops $100, where do you think it comes from? Outer space? Nope. It comes from this market and the unshaven, bet-on-anything maniacs who are running it into the ground.
How weird is it that the enemy is not outside U.S. borders but primarily a bunch of greedy people in and around Wall Street and Washington who dine and hunt and golf together (among other, more salacious things we won't get into here, due to Amazon's policy against blasphemy) hell-bent on taking their pound of flesh, to the detriment of us all?
It might be the most spectacular shell game ever devised by man.
This is the story of who, exactly, these people are, how they got to do what they are doing, and why their wild antics threaten us all. This book was released Feb. 15 -- the same day oil prices began their latest trek to $100 and up. I wonder how long it will keep going?
One thing is for sure (as made clear by 'The Asylum'): no one's about to stop it. Congress and financial regulators would have you believe that it is the Middle East and Big Oil who are solely to blame for high energy prices. Why? Because if they point to factors outside their control, they don't have to do anything about it.
The sad thing about this book is that we've met the enemy...and the enemy is us.


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