Minervini retweeted this list of stock trading books, and I think it's a great starting place if any of you want to learn to be a stock and/or etf trader, which I think has potential to be one of the most liberating businesses you can have if you want to do the Happier Abroad thing and be a nomad, or live overseas making solid $$$ independently of the ups and downs of the local economies where you live.
The original tweet was posted by a pro trader on there who said these books were his foundations after reading tons of other books and 100s of hours of seminars and so forth since 2006.
I've got all these but haven't read Mark Douglas yet (but will do that this week), and I agree based on all the others for sure!
The list shown (in text) is:
Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard (Minervini)
How to Make Money in Stocks (William J. O'Neil)
Think and Trade Like a Champion (Minervini)
Stan Weinstein's Secrets for Profiting in Bear and Bull Markets
Trading in the Zone (Mark Douglas)
If you end up getting into trading as much as me and loving it, some great historical additions to the list:
How to Trade in Stocks by the legendary Jesse Livermore, who started operating as a speculator as a teenager in the late 1890s (very interesting story), then wrote "How to Trade in Stocks" in 1939.
(Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre was about Livermore, but I haven't read it yet.)
How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market (Nicolas Darvas), another great one by an interesting guy who learned to trade in the 1950s.
A few points I'll leave behind here to encourage anyone who drops by (just on the off chance any MGTOW who are currently a little too deep into negativity wonder?):
These basic trading systems in these books are NOT scams!
You can get started with an extremely small amount of money on a commission-free brokerage (some of which even let you buy fractional shares, so you could easily start with $100 or less if you want to learn and gain experience, then take bigger positions when you're proven that your trading rules you use work for you and bring in consistent profit).
Also, you can control the size of your losses with a stop-loss order on every trade (as well as locking in profits by raising your stop above breakeven when trades go in your favor), so there is nothing to fear about losing money while you gain experience.
The old-timer Livermore was both a gambler and speculator, but as a trader today you can virtually guarantee you won't lose money by using a disciplined stop-loss order strategy, so that you don't lose much on trades that go against you.
Guys who lose a lot of money trading puzzle me, but in the cases where I found out details, they almost always involved them getting it into their heads their "thesis" about the direction prices are going supposedly had to be right, so they didn't place a stop, and then they often also hang on to losing trades that go divebombing down into double-digit losses waiting for them to come back (which sometimes they never do). I, on the other hand, can happily be a dumbass and be wrong about what the market's going to do and never even come close to losing 10% on a trade, since I always have a tighter stop than that placed the moment I take any position in a stock or ETF.
Nailing down your trading rules and systems takes a learning phase, and then some disciplined effort, but it definitely works. You can also choose what timeframe you operate in: I'm getting to like short-term trading or even day trading more and more, and prefer short timeframes, but on the other hand when you get a big winner that sails up well over your entry position, you can add to your position size and set a wider stop, but hold it for as long as it keeps going up. (That worked well for me in some trades in oil, commodity, and uranium ETFs last year, but lots of smaller short-term trades are often even better as a new trader, because you're applying your rulesets and learning and refining your system, and even getting 0.5% to 1% on a daytrade or sometimes multiple daytrades can add up to more money than being a small trader waiting weeks or months for a lower winning trade that brings 5, 10, 20%, etc., but takes longer.)
Geez, that's a big wall of text I just put down there...
I love trading stocks and ETFs!!. I's becoming more and more one of my personal favorite enthusiasms in life, after scoring with women.