Nothing in your life will be easy, but I think nothing in your life will be as difficult as learning to trade. Don't let this scare you, take it as warning and a challenge. If you can rise to the challenge the rewards are worth the effort.
A trader needs to read a huge amount of stuff. Everything from news letters to books, to blogs, to earnings reports. So if you don't like reading trading is going to be difficult. But there is a book so easy to read, so useful, that if it's the only thing you read you could make out alright in the stock market.
The name of that book is: How to Make Money in Stocks; a winning system in good times or bad. By William J. O'Neil.
It explains the market in a very comprehensive way, and at the same time, covers everything. William O'Neil is beast in trading. His track record is legendary, yet many forget about him when they talk about upper echelon of traders. That's probably just how he likes it.
This is a must read for every trader, but new traders that don't have many bad habits to unlearn will benefit the most from reading this book. Before I conclude, I'll give you the very first paragraph in the introduction. I was hooked after reading this:
"In the following chapters, I will show you exactly how to pick big winners in the stock market and nail down the profit in them, as well as how to substantially reduce your losses and mistakes."
I was a new trader, and I had dove right in and was making big mistakes in trading. The book lived up to this first paragraph. I recommend this book to anyone looking to understand the market young or old, novice or pro. Even if stocks are not the only thing you want to trade I think this book is still a must read. The price, time, and volume analysis contained in it is second to none.
I think every trader should start with trading stocks because that's the asset class that's the most transparent. You can move on to Futures trading, or Forex trading and your knowledge of stocks will help there also.In this interconnected market everything is trading off of everything else. There are "risk on" and "risk off" currencies. If you start with stocks and get good at trading them your transition into trading other asset classes will be that much easier.
Full disclosure, I'm not getting paid by William O'Neil & co. to write this but I am in the Amazon affiliate program, so if you click the link below and buy the book I'll get a few pennies from Amazon (get the cheapest used book from a vendor with a great track record).
If you've been reading this blog you know I've been trying to monetize this it in a way that helps people first.
Suggesting books is a great way of doing this. Books are the shit; If I can turn people onto the good ones and save them time in finding the jewels, then that's great.
This one is definitely a jewel: