Real Traders, Real People: How People Like You are Making it in the Markets Book

"Tell us about your family?" "What were you like as a kid?" "Did you work at the hardware store?" "How did you meet your wife?" Not the obvious ingredients for a great trading book but somehow, by a complete reinvention of the genre, Adrienne Laris Toghraie and Murray Ruggiero have cooked up a triumph. The importance of psychology in trading is widely recognised and there are many classics to explore--Market Wizards, New Market Wizards and Mind of a Trader. The received wisdom is as follows: "modelling yourself on someone who is successful is the fastest and most effective way to achieve positive results while avoiding many of the pitfalls along the way." Where Real People, Real Traders differs from existing work on trading psychology is in its choice of subject. Real People is not for the big shots of Wall Street, the men and women profiled here are "just like YOU", we're told.The 14 defiantly non-superstar traders interviewed--people distinguished only by the fact that they make a consistent living from trading--are gently probed for information about their early years, the development of their ideas, their experiences and their trading systems and approaches. If it sounds like an interrogation, in fact there is a real rapport evident between the authors and their subjects. Toghraie and Ruggiero both bring a wealth of psychological and technical skills to the task. After each interview, the material is dissected in detail and complex individual and technical profiles drawn up. The significance of some of the more personal elements probably boils down to broad recognition. If you don't happen specifically to have lived through humble, middle-class beginnings in Chicago, experienced little teacher support at school and then sold vacuum cleaners for a living, not to worry. What will hit home are the trader gems, snippets o f home-spun philosophy in a fundamental, intuitive, psychological, mechanical, analytical and technical vein. The final section of each chapter features an excellent Analytical Modeling Study by Ruggiero, in which he explores and expands on that trader's techniques, and a fascinating Psychological Modelling Study by Toghraie in which she focuses on the shaping of each trader's personality, techniques and product choices.Initial uncertainty over why these particular subjects were selected is soon forgotten. The point is not who they are but the broad trading wisdom that can be extracted from observing what "real people" do. --Iain CampbellRead More