Mastering The Trade: Proven Techniques for Profiting from Intraday and Swing Trading Setups

It took me almost three weeks of persistent nightly (extended hours) and weekend intense reading to complete this book. Why? Because I read it three times, it was that instructive and thorough. Mr Carter's writing style is absolutely fantastic, balancing wit and humor with big, important teachable moments. This book is full of real-time actual trading set ups and examples of simple (but not easy) methodologies for technical analysis entries and exits in the e-minis, futures and simple stock options. What separates "Mastering the Trade" from the rest of the trading books in the vast literary ocean (and I have recently read at least 30 different books on everything trading), is Mr. Carter's ability to encourage the reader to think so far beyond the specific setups. There are many books on setups that are boring and provoke no further thought than the technical execution of the trade. "Mastering the Trade" is the PERFECT title for this book, and this is why I read it three times, I did not want to miss critical information, and spent valuable time recreating many of the tracking and maintenance systems presented. Mr. Carter makes clear that, although his setups are excellent and time-tested, any trader can still blow-out his/her account without understanding and utilizing all of the other pillars supporting a complete trading business plan (excellent examples also included). This book is by far a book that I will return to continuously to keep focused and on the path to successful trading. If you follow the strict guidelines in this book, you will greatly increase your chances of becoming more successful in your trading. I am a real trader (amateur, but improving rapidly) that recognized many of the bad traits of the unsuccessful trader in myself (being brutally honest), and discovered actual measurable means to track and overcome these bad traits. Before stating some actual winning trades as a result of this book, I want to state that the BIGGEST win was not a winning trade at all. It was the recognition of my over trading and other faults, and the realization that sometimes the best trade is the trade not taken! Read this book carefully and I promise you will find fault in your trading, if you are honest with yourself. From this realization your trading will improve. Regarding my trading, I have cut my trade frequency to about half of the velocity traded prior to reading this book, yet my ROI is now higher. I take my losing trades with a better attitude and feel much less stress during any trade. On one specific trade that benefited from the knowledge gained from this book, I tweaked my option strategy based on the simple call or put buying based on the "internals" and other indicators fully explained in the book. I recently purchased 20 ITM, -70 delta put contracts at $2.20 based on a specific setup from the book. As of today, the puts are marked at $6.20 and are at a -88 delta, and have about 50 days of extrinsic value remaining. You do the math...prior to this book I likely would have purchased the OTM puts and would be lamenting my poor return or loss. This book is highly recommended...

I've never heard of John Carter or Mastering the Trade, but based on the reviews here on Amazon I decided to give it a shot. Turns out that that was a good decision. The book, the 2nd Edition, helps fill in the blanks where other books and educational materials fall short. For Example.. Why you might want to consider trading the futures markets over the equities markets. Why you will want to use larger stops (and the math that proves this point). Psychology--did you know about Type C personality and how, even if you are a Type A, it will affect your trading? How can you tell that the open of the markets will be choppy? On which days should you ignore short setups? On which days should you ignore long setups? On which days should you focus on setups that do well in choppy markets? On which days should you focus on setups that do well in trending markets? What is the best setup ever for a beginner? Are you trading the best market for your personality? Are you asking too much from the market you are trading? The book is littered with nuggets that will require you to highlight them, and commit them to memory. Most of them, I've noticed, are not to be found anywhere else, and one will want to pay attention to the information on the top of page 54 regarding winning traders vs. losing traders. This information, and this information alone, could make you turn the corner as a trader to consistent profitability. The book did have a critical psychology section in the beginning, and I thought this was good, as it wasn't just thrown in as an afterthought. Mastering the Trade also has a diet section, which I thought was interesting (you are going to want to know about heavy caffeine use and blood pH levels, something that I've struggled with). While I was surprised to read about the diet section in the book, I was really shocked that there wasn't any mention about self-hypnosis or meditation, something that has really helped a lot of traders. One can find pretty good self-hypnosis videos on YouTube to help calm a trader down and keep them objective, making them trade like they would be trading in their paper account. Also to be found in this book, and not other trading books, is information about a detailed trading plan and business plan, plus humor about a scary Arowana fish, a llama, and Mr. Carter's terrible fear of his 3 year old daughter taking a dump in his car. A lot of information not to be found anywhere else makes this a great purchase!

Pros Good sections on trading psychology. Excellent Business Plan walkthroughs. A nice window into the life of a full time trader. Cons Many of the setups outlined require purchasing indicators from the author's website. There is often no explanation about how the required indicator works so reproducing them is a guessing game. The section on health/diet is pretty out there and frankly off-topic (the author recommends drinking raw milk which makes me question taking ANY of his advice). I guess my biggest problem with the book is that the author seems to think that using any old trading setup will work fine as long as you execute it mechanically. If this were true than anyone with the ability to write a trading robot would be rich. As an engineer who has written dozens of trading robots I can assure you that even the best setups, even when fully optimized, produce very jagged equity curves and lead to unacceptable drawdowns even when they are profitable. Overall, a worthwhile read, just needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

There are "2" editions of this book, the second one is basically a revision of the original version and John has added more content as well as updated previous trading concepts as they apply to current day market conditions. Every trader should budget for their own personal trading library. I tell you this so you better understand why we continue buying books on the subject. My own library can be separated in "3" categories, Market behavior which includes internals; Setups to trade which outline market conditions and RULES for entry and exit; the third and also my favorite is actual Trader stories where individuals share the events of their journey whether it be successful or not. John's first and second editions cover all three of these categories. "Mastering the Trade" has a lot of focus on FUTURES trading and when I bought the first edition I didn't even know what futures trading was. At the time, I had been trading stocks for the better part of ten years. Within 90 days of reading the first edition, I opened a futures account and that was one of the best decisions I every made. The question you are probably asking yourself is "Will this book make me a SUCCESSFUL trader ?" Unfortunately, that's not a fair question to ask if you're considering the purchase of any book on trading. You have NO Downside to reading the book if you buy it from Amazon, after all you can return it within their guidelines for a full refund if you're not satisfied. Here's the #1 reason John Carter and his first book made a significant impact with me, John takes the time to explain the value of disversification with futures, stocks and options. While you may not have the account size to really take advantage of John's methods, that doesn't mean you can't mirror his actions on a scale that is comfortable for you. I LOVE humor and John has a great writing style that often makes me laugh. Think of this book as a way to listen to John's personal trading story and his evolvement. You can also go to youtube and watch many of John Carter's live trades in action. This book has something for every trader, regardless of experience or knowledge. Reading this book will not necessarily make you an instant success, but reading a book on how to hit a golf ball from Tiger Woods doesn't mean you'll be on tour with a winning streak next year either. Every TRADER eventually learns one thing about TRADING, success or failure starts and ends with their own actions, not the lessons taught or material presented in a trading manual. In closing I want to say, "Thanks John" and to those of you taking the time to read my review, I wish you a GREAT Trading Journey! Tim P.S. - STOP lugging books around, I'm now a Kindle fan and I can read my collection from a pc, iPad, Kindle or Android device. THANKS a MILLION to Amazon !

I started with John Carter's first book and of course bought the second one. Both I found to be very helpful. Granted every book is already a bit outdated when it comes out, but there is a large volume of information that is very critical to a good trader. The many different areas covered in this book are absolutely helpful in a day to day trading environment. John Carter explains each phase very well and there are so many items in the book you don't get from anyone else. Mr. Carter is honest in his approach to trading and imparts a wealth of information if one understands some of the issues. This book is a must for a good trader, one may not agree with all of it because every trader approaches trading differently, but certainly there is a large amount of wisdom in this book. I highly recommend buying this book. Since posting this review I reread other reviews and many I found very sarcastic. There is not one book that can tell you how exactly you should trade. John is a very very successful trader and I pretty much take all of his webinars because he constantly looks for new things and tries new ideas. Once something works he then tries to improve it again. Where else do you find this? This book is very good but if you are a novice, perhaps this is not for you. Still try it and eventually you will understand it. The squeeze comes from Hubert Senters and John Carter which is THE indicator I use always. Always. '

Absolutely the most worthy trading book I have purchased, covering all phases of trading. John Carter speaks to the 'common man' when it comes to guys like me who want to escape the corporate world and pursue our inner desires to compete successfully in the markets. Charts are very easy to read and well notated and most screen prints are very readable, although some gray-scaling may cause some eye strain in low light conditions. Kindle version might be a good choice for those who need a brighter page. You can tell that John has experienced everything thrown at him with much success, driving home the fact that there are many obstacles in the road - family, kids, employees, technology, strategies, markets, etc., all of which he covers in great detail, without a lot of fluff. And most of his commentary is without PC, so beware as some of his comments are somewhat surprising, but not offensive. I don't think there are too many trading books that reference 'pimps' and 'fake orgasms', but then again, most of the other trading books I have purchased were nearly impossible to read beyond the first few chapters. Again, this book has a lot of relevant content and reads quickly with plenty of tips, tricks, practical and profitable strategies and valuable information on trade management and planning.

This book has really impacted my trading. It helps if you use TD Ameritrade's Think or Swim trading platform as the author has many of his "studies" pre-loaded. However, I didn't even realize this until I was way into the book, and I loved the book before I knew this. It is an easy read that covers every aspect of trading as a career, touching on topics such as market psychology, keeping a trading journal, devising a daily and weekly plan and even maintaining good health. The part that has really impacted me though are the setups and indicators that he (the author) uses such as, the "squeeze indicator" and the "wave" study. I really don't know how or why I traded so long without these tools. He also has a "trend" study loaded on Think or Swim that works wonders on the regular candlestick chart. The book explains how to use all of the studies and I highly recommend it for anyone who is or ever hopes to be a full-time trader.

I wish I would have read this book 15 years ago. As someone who tried very diligently to avoid "how to" trading books for over a decade because I figured anyone giving away the secret sauce to wealth had to have ulterior motives, it’s clear that John Carter defies my prejudice. It’s a book filled with actionable trading ideas that any aspiring trader would enjoy learning about. While I don’t use any of his many, many diverse trading methods covered in this book, it gave me exactly what I wanted to know, which was a very detailed look at how one person (and his firm) has made a living from intraday and swing trading. All markets from equities to commodities to bonds to currencies are covered. There are useful introductory chapters on options and futures markets aimed giving just enough information to experienced stock traders in order to encourage them to explore these markets (which Carter argues they might otherwise overlook). Further, the book gets into the importance of what a trader needs to survive in this profession, from technology to creating a business plan. The cons are, like every other book in this field, that the author has a few plugs for his trading firm, products and training programs throughout the book. It's understandable. Also, depending on how you look at it, the other potential con is that many of his setups cannot be used by retail traders with simple trading platforms--you need data feeds like the NYSE TICK, TRIN, currency pairs (not necessarily to trade, but for intramarket analysis), and so on. Finally, and it should go without saying, but you need to do your own homework for these trading concepts--no testing data are given (which I don't think is a bad thing), and for those interested in similar approaches to trading, I think you'll be better off taking the idea and making it your own rather than trying to implement it as you see Carter do in the examples (which are largely only of successful trades). It's challenging to come across a "how to" trading book that is worth its salt, and most "how to" trading literature you’d be wise to pay serious money to avoid reading. This book is an exception, and I think a great resource for an aspiring trader to glean insights from, better understand what it means to be a trader, and the trades that best appeal to him or her.

Livro com destaque para os fatores psicológicos. Analogias interessantes e abordagem que prende.

This is a gem work from a professional trader who not only is successful (has been for many years), but is also willing to show you his methods, hands-on, no b.s. allowed . Thank you John for making such an excellent book on real trading.

C'est un must read mais très éparpillé par le nb d'instruments qu'il étudie, un peu trop léger sur les justifications techniques et à mon gout trop psychologique, mais il popularise une technique en vogue, le TTM squeeze. Cet indicateur étant basé sur les bandes de Bollinger, je conseille fortement de lire Bollinger on Bollinger Bands avant celui-ci car les exemples de John Carter, marchent trop bien. En réalité, c'est plus complexe. Ce livre fait aussi l'impasse sur les pattern et les cycles, et suggère qu'une batterie d'indicateurs astucieuse suffit à trader, avis que je ne partage pas.

This is my favourite trading book. I have a background as an equity trader and wanted to know more about additional ways of trading. In this book, John F. Carter presents a lot of actual trading setups (both short and longer term) which are easy to understand and implement. He offers guidance into money management and checklists as well as creating a trading plan. I can strongly strongly recommend this book to everyone who wants to try out trading.

The book has first part focussing on (1) Psychological aspects of a trader. This is a very very important part of the book. This has helped me identify my problems ( eg overtrading, psychologically getting attached to a position, averaging , hope etc) . The real life illustrations shared by Carter is damn good.. This part alone is more than the worth of the price of the book. Along with the details in the last part of the book, the worksheet etc. which tells us how serious a trader is and how causal a small investor is. ( See I jumped to the last part. The middle ones includes many techniques which I am reading still.) Other parts includes some techniques which I am going through so far. Even without completing the book, I can share that this was the book that I should have read long ago ( before starting trading).. Unfortunately we start trading and then start losing capital. Before purchasing the cost in Rs was around 3800 which is large for an Indian mindset. I am happy that I saved in many losing trades by just reading the book so far. So investment is recovered and there is more potential to earn!!!