Which book helped you the most with your swing trading?

SteveGoodwill

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Looking for some more ways to learn and study some more books regarding swing trading, do you guys have anything that helped you?
 
Hi Steve,

John Carter "Mastering the Trade" covers a lot
Dynamic Traders "High Probability Trading Strategies" (Robert Miner)
The 123 method & Ross Hook method
Dave Landry's "The Laymans Guide to Trading Stocks"
Joe DiNapoli "The practical application of Fibonacci"
Harmonic Trading Patterns
Anything by Jake Bernstein and Larry Williams
Definitive guide to trading stocks - Kevin Brown
Trading as a business by Dick Diamond
Walter Bressert books
 
Hi Steve,

John Carter "Mastering the Trade" covers a lot
Dynamic Traders "High Probability Trading Strategies" (Robert Miner)
The 123 method & Ross Hook method
Dave Landry's "The Laymans Guide to Trading Stocks"
Joe DiNapoli "The practical application of Fibonacci"
Harmonic Trading Patterns
Anything by Jake Bernstein and Larry Williams
Definitive guide to trading stocks - Kevin Brown
Trading as a business by Dick Diamond
Walter Bressert books
Thanks a lot!
 
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"Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets" by John J. Murphy. It covers everything from basic concepts like chart types (line, bar, and candlestick) to more advanced topics such as different technical indicators, market patterns, and trading systems
That one has a freely downloadable pdf on the net.

Ebay has for about half the price of that title, "Study guide for"...(that title) from India. Anyone know what it is?
Is it a knockoff reprint?

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With swing trading you are holding trades for days or weeks or more. It is imperative to understand the economic model used by the Central Banks. I would suggest an entry level book on macroeconomics as a good place to start.

To successfully swing trade, there is a great deal more to learn than basic macroeconomics. Learning what is necessary to swing trade successfully is a very big commitment. Most retail traders won’t make that type of commitment to learn, and then develop the skill to be able to successfully apply fundamentals to their trading.

No doubt there are some traders using only technicals to successfully swing trade. However, swing trading is solidly within the province of fundamentals. I don’t see how you can successfully swing trade without a very good understanding of fundamentals.
 
With swing trading you are holding trades for days or weeks or more. It is imperative to understand the economic model used by the Central Banks. I would suggest an entry level book on macroeconomics as a good place to start.

To successfully swing trade, there is a great deal more to learn than basic macroeconomics. Learning what is necessary to swing trade successfully is a very big commitment. Most retail traders won’t make that type of commitment to learn, and then develop the skill to be able to successfully apply fundamentals to their trading.

No doubt there are some traders using only technicals to successfully swing trade. However, swing trading is solidly within the province of fundamentals. I don’t see how you can successfully swing trade without a very good understanding of fundamentals.
It depends how you define swing trading, I think. I have never seen how the "the economic model used by the Central Banks." operates over a few days. Can you elucidate? Are you referring things to the likely upcoming support of the Yen by the J bank which may boost its value?
 
Hi Cara2,

According to Investopedia “Swing trading is a type of trading in which positions are held for a few days or weeks in order to capture short- to medium-term profits in financial securities.”

The name of the game is determining which currencies are likely to strengthen/weaken. Once you know the direction the currency is likely to move verses an opposing currency, you trade in the direction of that expected movement. This in itself is a huge edge. You know which way the move/trend is going to occur. Fundamentals are frequently very good at determining the direction. The issue is timing.

As an example, the Bank of Canada started its interest rate cutting cycle recently. For our purposes here, the longer term result of this cutting cycle is that the Canadian Dollar should become less and less valuable with each interest rate cut. Against a currency stronger than the CAD we would expect a downtrend of the CAD. The question becomes will the Bank of Canada continue cutting rates to continue reducing the value of its currency? Shorting the CAD against some of the currencies that are viewed as stronger than the CAD is reasonable. This is the longer term view. As the interest rate cutting cycle continues throughout this year and maybe into next year, the CAD should continue to decline in general, but you need to take the strength of other currencies you are trading against into consideration. Sentiment can also be a factor which I am not going to get into.

Short term you are looking for indications of whether the Bank of Canada will actually continue to cut rates, when, how many cuts and how large the cuts will be. So for instance on Tuesday, the inflation data is to be released for Canada. If inflation comes in much higher than expected the Central Bank may be less likely to continue cutting rates in the near future. The rate cuts may be delayed or there may be less cuts than expected for the year. The Canadian dollar may not continue to fall in value as expected. You may not want to short the CAD because it may be viewed as stronger. It may be less likely to trend downward. If inflation comes in lower than expected or as expected on Tuesday, this supports the Bank of Canada's position of continuing with the rate cuts. The CAD will likely continue to fall potentially setting up some nice short trades. Should not matter if you are trading on a lower timeframes or on the daily. As it is much more likely the Bank of Canada will continue to cut rates devaluing the CAD, which will affect the direction of the CAD on all timeframes.

Fundamentals tend to be pretty accurate longer term in determining the direction a currency is likely to continue to move. The importance of this in swing trading is once the move starts you can continue to confidently hold the trade for days, weeks or months if the fundamentals/sentiment do not change. You can also continue to add to your position on pullbacks with intraday trades as well as adding with longer time horizon trades.

So fundamentals are not only effective over longer time horizons, days or weeks, but can be a big advantage intraday as well.

There is more to take into consideration than what is discussed here. Just trying to give you an idea of how fundamentals can be used.
 
Thanks for the full answer, D.
I have been dicouraged by wide spreads, and swap rates!
 
The best book I ever read on trading is experience, let your losses be the book that you read and analyse.

But if I had to choose a book as alluded to previously I would go for Jack Schwager: Unknown Market Wizards! Especially Ben Shaprio and his use of the COT data!!
 
Cara2,

You are welcome.

A follow up to complete the example of what I previously posted.

Inflation came in higher than expected for the Canadian economy on that Tuesday. As explained in my previous post, with the higher inflation report, the CAD did not lose value. Depending on the currency pair you look at, the CAD even appreciated. This is not an example of using short term fundamentals to take a trade, but is an example of using short term fundamentals to identify a trade not to take which is just as important. We knew in advance we did not want to short the CAD if the inflation data came in high on that Tuesday. This information should have kept us out of short CAD trades, most of which would have failed. Fundamentals were used here as a filter. For me this type of information is invaluable.

As far as spreads, watch them in reference to the time of day you are trading. Spreads tend to decrease when there is a lot of liquidity in the market and increase when there is an increase illiquidity. Also dependent on what you are trading.
 
The best book I ever read on trading is experience, let your losses be the book that you read and analyse.

But if I had to choose a book as alluded to previously I would go for Jack Schwager: Unknown Market Wizards! Especially Ben Shaprio and his use of the COT data!!
Interesting. I am currently on book 3 in the series with less than 50 pages to go, HFMW is already on the bookshelf ready to go as soon as I'm through with this one, I haven't yet bought the final book but will do so soon. Have you read all them yourself, I'm trying to discern whether UMW has been most influential/useful for you of the whole series and what kind of trading do you do?
 
THEE most impactful book read thus far I recall to be Market Wizards by Jack Schwager
Actually that's probably second, I forgot about Super Trader by Dr Tharp, that book made me realise that I wasn't working hard or smart enough previously, my record keeping and analysis of my trades improved tenfold after reading this as did my performance. I move most of my books on once I've read them but Super Trader and Market Wizards will remain with me until the end of time
 
I am rare to work swing trading to manage my account in FXOpen because swing trader has larger targets than scalping or intraday traders, this requires a strong level of margin and is appropriate with the risk tolerance. Apart from swing traders gold orders are sometimes more than a day even a week. This needs to pay attention to the swap fee as a rollover fee that will reduce the profit.
 
The Alchemy of Finance by Soros. But maybe not for everybody. It's a pretty hard book to read and you need to admire Soros to survive it.
 
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