Home / Topics / Best Trading Books for Beginners

Best Trading Books for Beginners

A sane starting order for a new trader: one orientation book, one method book, one reference, and the psychology book before bad habits set in.

1

Trading for a Living

Alexander Elder · 1993 · Level: beginner

Elder's classic trio: psychology, a trading system (Triple Screen), and money management, written for the independent trader.

For prop traders: The risk rules (the 2% and 6% rules) are a workable template for evaluation loss limits.

View on Amazon About this book

Best Trading Books for BeginnersBest Day Trading Books
2

The New Trading for a Living

Alexander Elder · 2014 · Level: beginner

The updated edition: modern markets, updated tools, and the same backbone of psychology, method, and risk control.

For prop traders: If you buy one Elder book, buy this one; the original remains fine on the psychology.

View on Amazon About this book

Best Trading Books for Beginners
3

How to Make Money in Stocks

William J. O'Neil · 1988 · Level: beginner

The CAN SLIM system: earnings growth, new highs, cup-and-handle bases, and strict loss cutting. The root text of modern breakout trading.

For prop traders: Nearly every momentum method in use today, including the ones prop traders run on futures, descends from this.

View on Amazon About this book

Best Breakout and Momentum BooksBest Trading Books for Beginners
4

How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market

Nicolas Darvas · 1960 · Level: beginner

A dancer trading by telegram develops the Darvas box: buy strength breaking out of a range, trail a stop, ignore the noise. Short and readable in a day.

For prop traders: The simplest complete breakout system ever put in a book, and a clean first read before O'Neil.

View on Amazon About this book

Best Breakout and Momentum BooksBest Trading Books for Beginners
5

Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets

John J. Murphy · 1999 · Level: beginner

The standard textbook: trend, support and resistance, chart patterns, indicators, and intermarket relationships in one reference.

For prop traders: The reference to own before the pattern encyclopedias. Most prop traders only need the first half, done properly.

View on Amazon About this book

Best Technical Analysis BooksBest Trading Books for Beginners
6

Trading in the Zone

Mark Douglas · 2000 · Level: all levels

The book on trading psychology: thinking in probabilities, accepting risk on every trade, and removing the emotional charge from losses.

For prop traders: Evaluation accounts are lost to revenge trading and rule-breaking far more often than to bad strategy. This is the standard fix.

View on Amazon About this book

Best Trading Psychology BooksBest Books for Prop Firm Traders
7

Market Wizards

Jack D. Schwager · 1989 · Level: all levels

Interviews with the great traders of the 1980s: Paul Tudor Jones, Ed Seykota, Bruce Kovner and others on entries, exits, and above all risk.

For prop traders: The single best calibration for what real traders obsess over. It is not entries.

View on Amazon About this book

Best Trading Interview and Story BooksBest Trading Books for Beginners