Some of these books are pretty expensive. Check your local library before you spend a lot of money, or buy a used copy at Amazon.com from somebody who already gave up trying to be a trader. ;>) If you do buy new, please use the links below rather than going straight to Amazon. They say they'll send us 5%, which would help pay the expenses of running this website.

The Disciplined Trader: Developing Winning Attitudes, by Mark Douglas. Read this book first; it will save you a lot of money! Most traders have to learn the hard way that you are your own worst enemy. That's why 90% of would-be traders fail, not because the odds are stacked against us.

Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom, by Van Tharp. Corny name, but a lotta good stuff here: proof that most popular indicators are pretty useless; why trading someone else's system doesn't work, and how to come up with a system that does work for you, "expectancy" concept for evaluating trading results.

Trader Vic: Methods of a Wall Street Master, by Victor Sperandeo. Vic is da man with his cold, hard rules for identifying tops and bottoms. He coined the terms 1-2-3 top/bottom and 2B top/bottom. We usually see at least one of these reversals every day in the e_mini index futures. The 2B reversal is my all time favorite trade entry.

Sun Tzu's Art of War for Traders and Investors, by Dean Lundell

The Day Trader: From the Pit to the PC, by Lewis Borsellino. A teamster in his youth, Borsellino has become one of the biggest "locals," or private traders, ever to work the S&P pit at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, trading 1,000 lots of the big S&P contracts. Aside from the fascinating story of his life and his rise from working poor to multimillionaire, this book provides unique insights into the inner workings of pit trading and the ongoing transition to electronic trading.

Market Wizards: Interviews With Top Traders, by Jack D. Schwager. Great motivation here. It's good to know just how far trading can take you, and how many different ways there are to get there.

The New Market Wizards: Conversations With America's Top Traders, by Jack D. Schwager. More fascinating interviews with regular people, many of whom you'll never hear about anywhere else.