Learn to trade like a wall street pro

I'm a great fan of the For Dummies series of books, so when I wanted to find more about stock trading I went onto Amazon and bought a huge pile of Dummies books!

In 2009 I did around 30 stock trades, and 28 were profitable. OK so it was a buyer's market, but even so I was amazed at how much I learnt about stock trading.

I am now happy that my pension funds and stock savings accounts are in safe hands - my own!

Let's clear up on thing straight away - you can either invest in the stock market, or you can tradeon the stock market. If you invest you are usually in for the long term, and you're not worried about the day to day fluctuations in the value of the stock market.

By comparison, trading is all about buying stocks low and selling them on
for a profit. Very often a trader will buy or sell the same stock many times
a year, and sometimes several times the same week or even the same day. The
nice thing about trading is that you can choose a timeframe that suits you.
I prefer to trade over a period of a week to a couple of months.

Anyway, first up on my list of favorite For Dummies books is Trading for Dummies.

This is a good introduction to stock trading. It starts at the very basics - which may be too basic for some people.

The nice thing about this book is that it mentions many different types of stock trading, from fundamental analysis to charting. Brief overviews are made of the popular charting analyses such as trend analysis, pattern recognition, moving averages and oscillators.

This book can be used for most types of trading, from stock and ETF trading to spread betting and forex trading. There is some good information about risk management, such as how to set stop losses and recovering from a disasterously big loss!

Once I read Trading for Dummies I started to get a feel for what kind of
stock trading I wanted to follow.

I am not a great fan of fundamental analysis - as a man of science I like the idea of statistical methods and lots of charts! Consequently the next For Dummies book I bought was Technical Analysis for Dummies.

I found this to be a fantastic introductory guide to the different types of technical analysis that it's possible to use when trading stocks. There is some good information about identifying patterns and trends and momentum. There is an introduction to the use of Japanese Candlestick charts.

There is also good information about how to develop your own trading system. This information is particularly valuable as the secret of making money trading stocks is to have your own system. In my case I developed a system after reading the section about Bollinger Bands in this book and studying a lot of stock charts I had printed out.

Japanese Candlestick charts are incredibly popular with a lot of traders.

While Candlestick charts were mentioned in a chapter of Trading for Dummies, they actually get their own dedicated book in Candlestick Charting for Dummies.

I'll be honest with you, I do not find Candlestick charts easy to get into. There is a lot to learn about them, and the more advanced Candlestick trading books run to 1000's of pages. So Candlestick Charting for Dummies is a good attempt at explaining a complex subject, but I felt that even a 300+ page book barely scratched the surface of this complex trading technique.

I don't really use Candlestick charting in my own trading, although I have learnt to recognise a few of the most obvious candlestick patterns that reveal what the market thinks about a particular stock.

Finally I also tried Swing Trading for Dummies. I found this book a little muddled as it tried to explain many different aspects of Swing trading. It also covers a lot of ground also mentioned in the other For Dummies trading books.

I do find Swing Trading quite difficult, and have had my fingers burnt in the past. It can be a good way of making money while markets or stocks are trending sideways, although when there's a sudden breakout to the upside or downside then things can get quite tricky.

So those are my four favorite For Dummies books in the stock trading niche.
After reading all four books I got a really good idea of my trading strategy
and I am no longer scared to invest my own money.

As to my trading career, well I think I'll put it on the backburner while I
get rich slowly writing for hubpages and make money from other online
business opportunities. I have no doubt that it's possible to make
substantial amounts of money from trading. But you must have a system, and
you must be good, and I mean really good! To make money trading you have to
out-think some of the brainiest and most ruthless people on the planet. Good
luck!