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Trading to Win
Book

Trading to Win

The Psychology of Mastering the Markets

Ari Kiev
Wiley, 1998
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Editorial Rating

7

Recommendation

Zen Buddhism, yoga and single-minded dedication to stock trading come together in psychiatrist Ari Kiev’s examination of super traders, those stock market Olympians who, without particularly wanting to make money, pull in millions in trading profits. Kiev offers advice to professional, institutional traders and to those trading to build or supplement personal finances. His writing style is simple, with short, encouraging paragraphs and some repetition of ideas. He intersperses his checklists with numerous anecdotes and profiles of traders. Kiev discusses subjects that technical finance and how-to trading books don’t often treat – especially inner dialogue and emotions, and the use of Eastern meditation practices to facilitate trading. getAbstract recommends his 1998 classic to traders and to those who are considering trading.

Summary

“Trading to Win”

Trading to win calls for setting goals, developing strategies, and abandoning patterns of thinking and behavior that hurt your performance. It involves trusting “a higher power” while detaching yourself from the desire for achievement and the thought of profit. Being attached to the goal of financial gain hurts your investing performance. Letting go of that goal liberates you as a trader.

To improve your odds of market success, pay attention to what happens in the market. Success requires understanding the direction of the overall market and the directions of individual stocks. In the trading-to-win framework, money is just “a way of keeping score.” So-called “master traders” derive more satisfaction from being right about the market than they do from making money. Better traders face bigger market challenges, and may have to make bigger bets and handle greater complexity.

As traders go more deeply into their thought processes, they identify personal motivations and reasons that may not be immediately apparent in the uncertain, unpredictable environment of trading. For example, some traders may feel they don’t deserve to win, and punish themselves...

About the Author

Ari Kiev, MD, is a psychiatrist, trading coach and management consultant to several New York trading firms. His books include Hedge Fund Masters and The Mental Strategies of Top Traders.

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