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The Definitive Guide to Mastering the Psychology of Trading by Mark Douglas


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The Definitive Guide to Mastering the Psychology of Trading by Mark Douglas

  #21 (permalink)
 Fatfish 
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I looked up the book on Amazon (Kindle Store). It seems that the book were published in four sections, of which only the first section was available on Kindle, but for some reason is not available anymore.


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  #22 (permalink)
 grausch 
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Fatfish View Post
I looked up the book on Amazon (Kindle Store). It seems that the book were published in four sections, of which only the first section was available on Kindle, but for some reason is not available anymore.

I purchased the whole book for $95 although Amazon now wishes to send an update which I am of course ignoring.

Not sure why it is now delivered in 4 instalments. Probably to get the price down in the hope that more people will buy the individual volumes if they are seen to be cheaper.

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  #23 (permalink)
BrooksTrader
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xplorer View Post
I'm curious as to whether anyone has yet purchased the latest book by Mark Douglas, ​published posthumously.

Its full title is

The Definitive Guide to Mastering the Psychology of Trading: How to use a comprehensive understanding of price movement to overcome mental obstacles that prevent you from achieving consistent results

If you have purchased it and read it, what did you think of it?

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Wow that sounds interesting. As a new trader it is very difficult to overcome many mental obstacles and it's important that experienced traders share their wisdom. I know i couldn't do a lot of things if some mentors of mine wouldn't have taught me.

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  #24 (permalink)
 
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 Blash 
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Fatfish View Post
I looked up the book on Amazon (Kindle Store). It seems that the book were published in four sections, of which only the first section was available on Kindle, but for some reason is not available anymore.





Wow. I was able to buy the entire book all together just a handful of days ago. I guess it seems this is how Mark wanted it to be presented? According to the Amazon listing at least that's what it says. Have not checked but wondering if one can purchase the whole book from Mark Douglas' and Paula Webb's website?

https://www.markdouglas.com/books.html

Ok just checked and you cannot buy it there.

Ron


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  #25 (permalink)
 
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 Blash 
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SamuelClark View Post
I completely agree. Experienced traders should teach and support new ones, and then this field could get more professional and interesting. I do know of some cases where new traders get fooled and that's not fair at all. But there are so many different stories running around. I've read of bad experience with Tradenet for example but i had a very good experience with them.. I suppose you have to know a little bit what you're doing and not be naive but you also have to be willing to learn if you're new and be generous enough to teach the next generation if you're on the older bunch...

I'm sorry but I really don't agree with this much. I feel teaching is a skill set most don't possess. And to be effective at teaching something the likes of trading, one of the most difficult endeavors there is so multi faceted, is an extremely large undertaking.

Trading is a business and there are many ways to go about it. It's a very personal one at that dealing with ones own demons and all, the biggest and hardest part. There's an ocean of "educators" in the trading world but reality most are not even teaching anything of what matters most. They "teach" some entry system into the market for the greatest part or some small part/'key puzzle piece' they have latched onto that resonates with them personally but not at all the totality of what one needs to understand. To start with the exits are the harder part. But the real enchilada is the mind set to put it mildly. And very few teach it, IHMO because very few can/are able/have any understanding themselves.

As an example let's look at another business. Burger joints. Should we make them fresh or ahead of time and let them sit in a warmer? Cut fresh potatoes or use frozen ones? Have a make your own toppings bar or a standard set of condiments? Have milk shakes or only concentrate on the main meal? Make use of a microwave oven or be totally against it? Have a drive thru? Have a delivery service or just takeouts/eat in? Yet in all this we have not even spoke one word about management of the business, cleanliness, cash flow, product loss, angry customers, spoiled food, poor quality ingredients, employee theft, vacation pay, book keeping, equipment maintenance, rent/landlord/property management all the non-sexy parts come out of the wood work and if you don't know what to do, have had the training, chances are this business will be short lived.

Same exact thing happens when traders blow up their account, have margin calls they don't have near enough money to cover etc etc.

I have burned through $50k+ in my trading business. But now I have a group of mentors I trust, not sure if they actually know they are my mentors....lol, was fortunate enough to meet and briefly speak with Mr Douglas study the heck out of his work and do what I can to help others here at FIO. The main thing IMHO one must do in this business is teach yourself. Have a solid base of maturity built up inside yourself from which to proceed and seek out mentors of some degree, as I said I doubt mine even know I'm their protégé.

Ron


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...My calamity is My providence, outwardly it is fire and vengeance, but inwardly it is light and mercy...
The steed of this Valley is pain; and if there be no pain this journey will never end.
Buy Low And Sell High (read left to right or right to left....lol)
Follow me on Twitter Visit my NexusFi Trade Journal Reply With Quote
  #26 (permalink)
 
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 xplorer 
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Blash View Post
I'm sorry but I really don't agree with this much. I feel teaching is a skill set most don't possess. And to be effective at teaching something the likes of trading, one of the most difficult endeavors there is so multi faceted, is an extremely large undertaking.

Trading is a business and there are many ways to go about it. It's a very personal one at that dealing with ones own demons and all, the biggest and hardest part. There's an ocean of "educators" in the trading world but reality most are not even teach anything of what matters most. They "teach" some entry system into the market for the greatest part or some small part/'key puzzle piece' they have latched onto that resonates with them personally but not at all the totality of what one needs to understand. To start with the exits are the harder part. But the real enchilada is the mind set to put it mildly. And very few teach it, IHMO because very few can/are able/have any understanding themselves.

As an example let's look at another business. Burger joints. Should we make them fresh or ahead of time and let them sit in a warmer? Cut fresh potatoes or use frozen ones? Have a make your own toppings bar or a standard set of condiments? Have milk shakes or only concentrate on the main meal? Make use of a microwave oven or be totally against it? Have a drive thru? Have a delivery service or just takeouts/eat in? Yet in all this we have not even spoke one word about management of the business, cleanliness, cash flow, product loss, angry customers, spoiled food, poor quality ingredients, employee theft, vacation pay, book keeping, equipment maintenance, rent/landlord/property management all the non-sexy parts come out of the wood work and if you don't know what to do, have had the training, chances are this business will be short lived.

Same exact thing happens when traders blow up their account, have margin calls they don't have near enough money to cover etc etc.

I have burned through $50k+ in my trading business. But now I have a group of mentors I trust, not sure if they actually know they are my mentors....lol, was fortunate enough to meet and briefly speak with Mr Douglas study the heck out of his work and do what I can to help others here at FIO. The main thing IMHO one must do in this business is teach yourself. Have a solid base of maturity built up inside yourself from which to proceed and seek out mentors of some degree, as I said I doubt mine even know I'm their protégé.

Ron


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I'm with Ron on this one and I would add... one thing that most of us forget when we're after external advice is that the person we're looking to get advice from may have a different personality from ours. I remember a behavioural finance course where they'd class personality traits as Activists, Reflectors, Theorists and Pragmatists, and each personality trait had different characteristics.

I am not suggesting that the personality classes above are right or wrong, but people are different. If I'm an 'adrenaline junkie' looking to trade Gold or Crude, getting advice from someone who's made their (alleged) millions trading treasuries may very well not work for me. Or if a mentor has a tolerance to risk much higher than mine his/her advice to have a stop with x distance from my entry point may keep me up at night.

Best advice I ever got is something along the lines of 'do what works for you'.

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 grausch 
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I just finished reading the book. I thought the start of the book was great - Mark really guides you through how order-flow influences how prices move. In essence, he reinforced the concept that I first read in the Richard Dennis interview in Market Wizards, namely that the outcome of each individual trade is random, but after several trades the outcome is not random, i.e. a skilled trader will make money over the long run, but could lose money on individual trades. Mark explains this concept extremely well while explaining common psychological mistakes traders make.

Where I found the book a little weaker was in the steps a trader can do to address the weaknesses previously discussed. I found that Edward Allen Toppel's Zen in the Markets provides similar advice on dealing with those weaknesses, but it is much easier to read.

There are some items I don't agree with, i.e. taking 25 trades to determine whether an edge is valid. If I really wish to determine whether an edge is valid, I could backtest it over 10 years or more of data, analyze how it performs in certain market conditions and also investigate what happened when good or bad trades cluster together in the backtest. This would provide a much more in detail understanding of the perceived edge vs just looking at the result of 25 trades.

However, don't let the few negative items I mention discourage you to read the book. It does provide a lot of very relevant thoughts and ideas that would benefit most traders that are open to those ideas.

The book is in need of some editing - I have never seen a shot machine in my life and the last chapter has references to mediating rather than meditating. Several items of that nature occur in the book. Perhaps future updates will fix these issues, but I can't risk updating the book in my kindle as I run the risk of losing the last 3 "instalments" of this book since it was split into 4 after I bought it.

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  #28 (permalink)
 grausch 
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BrooksTrader View Post
Wow that sounds interesting. As a new trader it is very difficult to overcome many mental obstacles and it's important that experienced traders share their wisdom. I know i couldn't do a lot of things if some mentors of mine wouldn't have taught me.


SamuelClark View Post
I completely agree. Experienced traders should teach and support new ones, and then this field could get more professional and interesting. I do know of some cases where new traders get fooled and that's not fair at all. But there are so many different stories running around. I've read of bad experience with Tradenet for example but i had a very good experience with them.. I suppose you have to know a little bit what you're doing and not be naive but you also have to be willing to learn if you're new and be generous enough to teach the next generation if you're on the older bunch...

I thought BMT already was a very good source for that. There are also several excellent books where traders already share their knowledge freely. The Market Wizards series is a good read, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is another, the Nicolas Darvas book is another good one, and the list goes on. Unfortunately those books can't give you the exact experiences that led to the revelations of these traders (although they describe them in detail), and until you have lost enough money those lessons will probably not sink in.

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grausch View Post
I just finished reading the book. I thought the start of the book was great - Mark really guides you through how order-flow influences how prices move. In essence, he reinforced the concept that I first read in the Richard Dennis interview in Market Wizards, namely that the outcome of each individual trade is random, but after several trades the outcome is not random, i.e. a skilled trader will make money over the long run, but could lose money on individual trades. Mark explains this concept extremely well while explaining common psychological mistakes traders make.

Where I found the book a little weaker was in the steps a trader can do to address the weaknesses previously discussed. I found that Edward Allen Toppel's Zen in the Markets provides similar advice on dealing with those weaknesses, but it is much easier to read.

There are some items I don't agree with, i.e. taking 25 trades to determine whether an edge is valid. If I really wish to determine whether an edge is valid, I could backtest it over 10 years or more of data, analyze how it performs in certain market conditions and also investigate what happened when good or bad trades cluster together in the backtest. This would provide a much more in detail understanding of the perceived edge vs just looking at the result of 25 trades.

However, don't let the few negative items I mention discourage you to read the book. It does provide a lot of very relevant thoughts and ideas that would benefit most traders that are open to those ideas.

The book is in need of some editing - I have never seen a shot machine in my life and the last chapter has references to mediating rather than meditating. Several items of that nature occur in the book. Perhaps future updates will fix these issues, but I can't risk updating the book in my kindle as I run the risk of losing the last 3 "instalments" of this book since it was split into 4 after I bought it.

thank you graush for your helpful review...

Regarding the bit about disagreeing with measuring 25 trades to determine whether an edge is valid, what would your advice be for someone who does not necessarily trade off signals that are quantifiable over the long term such as moving averages, bollinger bands and what not, and instead chooses to (also) trade off order flow tecniques such as Depth Of Market? You can't really backtest those, so how would you go about it?

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  #30 (permalink)
 grausch 
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xplorer View Post
thank you graush for your helpful review...

Regarding the bit about disagreeing with measuring 25 trades to determine whether an edge is valid, what would your advice be for someone who does not necessarily trade off signals that are quantifiable over the long term such as moving averages, bollinger bands and what not, and instead chooses to (also) trade off order flow tecniques such as Depth Of Market? You can't really backtest those, so how would you go about it?

I am afraid I don't have any advice for that. Perhaps someone who has worked with Depth of Market could comment. I should note that Mark used the order-flow examples to illustrate his point that the outcome of individual trades is random.

Based on this post - - and my reading of the book, I get the feeling that Mark believed intuition plays a big role in trading. I come from more of a mechanical trading background, so I would run backtests to determine whether an edge is valid. Just because I would approach this differently than Mark does not mean the book is wrong, it is merely a matter of my perspective vs Mark's.

I get the feeling you are very interested in the book. If that is the case, I would definitely recommend you read it. I found it to be a very good read and definitely got value from it.

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