Trading in the Zone: Master the Market with Confidence, Discipline and a Winning Attitude
Author: Mark Douglas
List Price: $45.00
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ISBN: 0735201447
Publisher: Prentice Hall Press (02 January, 2001)
Sales Rank: 4,089
Average Customer Rating: 4.48 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
This Book Humbled Me
I have to say something VERY strong about this book. It made me STOP trading. I realized about a quarter of the way through this book that I was NOT on my game and that I was open fodder for the real Pro's that have the skills and abilities that he speaks of. I am a professional trader and I even help run a very successful trading firm, but I've been trading by feel and emotion for too long now and have lost about 200,000 the past 3 years in the market and I just couldn't take it anymore.By reading this book, by stopping trading and re grouping, I know my trading will be much better and that every trader that trades my money or my firms money, will be required to not only read this book, but to recant the most important parts.
Dont just buy this book, learn it and trade by its valuable tenets.
Mike Levin
Rating: 4 out of 5
Shows traders how to make their emotions work for them.
Every trader knows that mastering your emotions is key to success in the market, and every would be trader has heard or read this. "Trading in the Zone" is sort of an "inner game" book for trading stocks and commodities, but far superior to other such books that I've seen. Mark Douglas gets into detail about how our beliefs, attitudes, etc, originate from our experiences, control our perceptions of the world and shape our actions in ways that may be contrary to our best interests, and then tells how to overcome these negative influences to produce positive results in the market. But, unlike most books of this sort, it isn't just "tell yourself that you're good". He lays out a specific plan for developing your "game" of trading, so that you learn how to develop a proper emotional state along with your technique. He stresses low risk trades, so that you have time to learn without being wiped out in the process. And he stresses paying yourself as the market makes profits available, so that you can enjoy positive results and their psychological benefit even if the overall trade result is negative. I think this book is also useful for life in general. I gave the book 4 stars instead of 5 because I felt that he used too much repetition, no doubt in an effort to drive home his point.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Focus on trading in the "Now" moment
Good traders dispassionately address opportunity as it presents itself. How do you arrive at this "destination state"? The author tells us that learning more about the market is a wasted effort if you first do not know about yourself. If you assume that each trade is independent of the other trades you have taken and view them as a probable outcome based on your "edge" then you are miles ahead of other traders.You will need to find another book to generate trading ideas (your edge). This tome does a great job of discussing the "trading attitude". Douglas uses some odd imagery to describe how dearly a belief is held. He says that it has "energy" and then describes how physics states that energy cannot be destroyed. He lost me on that analogy, but the point he made is that we have unproductive beliefs that have to be neutralized by adopting productive beliefs and emphasizing them over those unproductive beliefs.
There are seven principles of consistency and five fundamental truths in trading presented here that are helpful to any trader review on an ongoing basis. If you are already successful then you may note that you have these beliefs already internalized. If you are new to trading these are invaluable because it can help you avoid the pitfalls that await you.
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