Books and tools that shaped or assisted my trading philosophy. All of these should be on any serious trader’s bookshelf.
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📘 High Probability ETF Trading (Larry Connors)
Core Value: The definitive quantitative guide to high probability swing trading and mean reversion set-ups using ETFs.
How it shaped my trading: Larry Connors’ classic Time Price Scale (TPS) method reframed how I view position building. I took his foundational philosophy of scaling into weakness and optimized the size and depth of the tranches based on the Fibonacci sequence and modified to trade both stocks and ETFs.
📘 NEW CONCEPTS In Technical Trading Systems (J Welles Wilder)
Core Value: The definitive quantitative guide to high probability swing trading and mean reversion set-ups.
How it shaped my trading: Larry Connors’ classic Time Price Scale (TPS) method reframed how I view position building. I took his foundational philosophy of scaling into weakness and optimized the size and depth of the tranches based on the Fibonacci sequence.
📘 The Complete Turtle Trader (Michael W. Covel)
Core Value: Fundamentals around building a trading system, including what to trade, entry, exit, position sizing and risk management.
How it shaped my trading: While my trading style has become actually the opposite of buying breakouts, it is a masterclass in trend following using that was effective during the time. The discussions on risk management, position sizing and how a system is built are timeless.
Core Value: A number of strategies that are not aligned with bulk of systems pushed to the retail trader.
How it shaped my trading: There are a couple of chapters in the book that debunk a lot of the fear about “catching the falling knife” and promote buying fear.
Core Value: Andrew Ross Sorkin does a great job of bringing the characters to life and highlighting the hubris and misuse of leverage that gave rise to the market crash (and subsequent Great Depression).
How it shaped my trading: Your system must have guardrails to make something as catastrophic as the Great Depression not existential.