Inner Voice of Trading, The

Description

Traders must learn how to match strategies to their own personalities: strategies they can both execute and tolerate over the long haul.

• Quiet your mind, develop an “inner voice” you can trust and make it your most important trading ally.
• Learn why deep self-knowledge is so crucial to successful trading.
• Listen in on the “conversations” world-class traders have with themselves; draws on discussions  with legendary traders who consistently avoid the spotlight, including Michael Marcus and Ed Seykota.

Want to be a successful trader? It’s not enough to master generic trading strategies: you must first know yourself. You must understand your own emotional predilections and psychological tendencies. You must learn how to match your strategies to your own personality. You must choose strategies that are sustainable over the long haul, that you can tolerate–and execute.

Michael Martin’s The Inner Voice of Trading explains why deep self-knowledge is so crucial to successful trading, helps you gain that self-knowledge, and guides you in applying it. Drawing on interviews and discussions with great traders like Michael Marcus and Ed Seykota, he shows how to quiet your mind, develop an “inner voice” you can rely on, and make it your most important trading ally.

As seen in Barron’s, Minyanville.com and HuffingtonPost.com

Traders must learn how to match strategies to their own personalities: strategies they can both execute and tolerate over the long haul.

• Quiet your mind, develop an “inner voice” you can trust and make it your most important trading ally.
• Learn why deep self-knowledge is so crucial to successful trading.
• Listen in on the “conversations” world-class traders have with themselves; draws on discussions with legendary traders who consistently avoid the spotlight, including Michael Marcus and Ed Seykota.

Want to be a successful trader? It’s not enough to master generic trading strategies: you must first know yourself. You must understand your own emotional predilections and psychological tendencies. You must learn how to match your strategies to your own personality. You must choose strategies that are sustainable over the long haul, that you can tolerate–and execute.

Michael Martin’s The Inner Voice of Trading explains why deep self-knowledge is so crucial to successful trading, helps you gain that self-knowledge, and guides you in applying it. Drawing on interviews and discussions with great traders like Michael Marcus and Ed Seykota, he shows how to quiet your mind, develop an “inner voice” you can rely on, and make it your most important trading ally.

“In The Inner Voice of Trading, Michael Martin recounts his own quest to become a successful trader, illuminating his journey with engaging trading episodes. Join Martin at his trading desk as he provides important insights into the art and science of balancing thoughts and feelings—and catching the big one.”

—Ed Seykota

“Some people trade and either don’t or can’t teach; some people teach and have never traded; Michael Martin can teach extremely well and is an experienced trader. This rare combo is a necessity to those who want to succeed in the markets. Read and learn!”

—Victor Sperandeo, Founder, Alpha Financial Technologies, LLC

“The Inner Voice of Trading provides insights that may help both discretionary and systematic traders adhere to their extensively researched and tested trading programs and be better insulated from their occasional emotional (fear, greed, pride, and so on) temptations to deviate into uncharted waters.”

—Bill Dunn, DUNN Capital Management

“Michael Martin provides a toolbox to fortify the most important aspect of successful trading: the six inches between your ears. With fresh insights from many of the market’s greatest traders, The Inner Voice of Trading will put you on the path to improving your profits and losses.”

—John Del Vecchio, Portfolio Manager, AdvisorShares Active Bear ETF

“Too many new and developing traders move from strategy to strategy in the hope of improving their under performance. In The Inner Voice of Trading, Michael Martin helps us understand how we first must work on ourselves before we can become the trader we want to be. Find a place in your trading library for this latest gift to the trading community.”

—Mike Bellafiore, Partner, SMB Capital, and Author of One Good Trade

Trading is 20% intellectual and 80% psychological. Success begins with the ancient Greek adage: know thyself. Rote, mechanical trading models set you up for failure. To succeed, you must harmonize your trading systems with your emotions. By doing so, you can achieve the inner calm and confidence that translates directly into better decisions—and higher profits.

This book will help you find your inner voice as a trader, so you can act on what your analysis systems tell you and crisply execute winning strategies without hesitation.

Michael Martin examines your most common trading decisions from an emotional standpoint, helping you “feel the feelings” driving your actions—feelings that often have nothing to do with money. Through compelling interviews, you’ll discover how legendary traders, such as Ed Seykota and Michael Marcus, integrate reason and emotion to make better trades every day—and how you can do it, too.

•  Traders are humans first
How your trades reflect the human propensity to pursue pleasure and avoid pain

•  Choosing strategies you can sustain over time
How to find trading approaches you can tolerate—and consistently execute

•  Letting go: You don’t need to be right all the time
Stop seeking validation from your trades—that’s not what they’re for

•  Reducing your losses through self-discipline and surrender
How emotionally aware traders improve performance by keeping their losses small

Michael Martin has been a successful trader for over 20 years. He’s been teaching for the last 13 of those years through UCLA Extension and the New York Society of Security Analysts (NYSSA), a member society of the CFA Institute. During that time, he also served as Associate Editor at Trader Monthly. He was born and raised in New York and now lives in Los Angeles.

He contributes to The Huffington Post, The Business Insider, and his blog MartinKronicle.com. He has also been published in Barron’s.

His interest in trading commodities began as a student, both in the classroom and at work. It was during a random work-study program that he got introduced to creating seasonal models for Heating Oil and Natural Gas for a large hedger using Lotus 123.

That led to working on Wall Street and trading commodity accounts. The commissions were gigantic, but he figured he could earn several times more by earning an incentive fee. After only 3 years at a brokerage firm, he started his own company.

After moving to Los Angeles from Manhattan, he started his own CTA and also began teaching. Around that time he joined the Incline Village Trading Tribe and flew from Los Angeles to Lake Tahoe for meetings. He also formed the Trading Tribe in Los Angeles, for which he was Chief. Coincidence or not, he was ranked #1 by AutumnGold around that time.

His trading courses are available online and can be found at MartinKronicle.com.

Chapter 1: Introduction     1
Chapter 2: Surrender     17
Chapter 3: My Tuition     35
Chapter 4: Two Traders’ Paths     53
Chapter 5: Conventional Wisdom/Market Timing     71
Chapter 6: Emotional Blind Spots     91
Chapter 7: You Are the Black Box     105
Chapter 8: Relative Value Trades     119
Chapter 9: The Abundance of Losses     133
Chapter 10: Becoming an Emotional Specialist     143
Chapter 11: Listen to Your Inner Voice     155
Endnotes     167
Index      175

Additional information