My teachers

Alexander Elder is known by everyone, everyone read him, and someone attended his seminars, separate “more quick-witted” people even were in a stock camp (you’ve definitely guessed whom I’m talking about).  All trade as they traded but something has been changing little by little in the minds of those who can’t stop learning…

He is a delicate people expert (a people connoisseur), a leader, and a rarely witty man. He speaks (в значении владеть) such intelligible, individual and elegant English at the same time that one would like to kneel! How exact and short-spoken (laconic) he is in his books! As for me he became a bridge to fearless plunge into the stock market sea of people and literature abroad. In time it became to transform into successful trade deals (bargains).

He has a brilliant intuition, an art to see the picture entirely (his method of triple screen is well-known and broadly quoted) to recognize figures and to read charts. He doesn’t like to make decisions at gunpoint, when it is unclear what is happening in the market and who is dominating: bulls or bears. He likes when a bargain jumps at him from the screen and tries to catch his face, I mean when the bargain is obvious. Besides he is an example for me how to structuralize boundless stock information. The whole book is devoted to the shorts or short positions. Read how it seems easy from the first sight to trade futures with his assistance. And options? I haven’t started yet reading Macmillan that is on my book shelf, but thanks to Elder, he is waiting for his turn in my own educational program. Thereof how options trade is written in his book, I may conclude options will be clear for me in time.

You experience (sense) physically the strength and keenness of Alex’s mind (he doesn’t recognize the name and patronymic in Russian) while reading his recommendations to use this or that indicator. I mean it is impossible to get to the bottom of elusive chart signs of incipient market trends without considerably sitting in front of the screen for months and years and analyzing without end. This is the economy of my time, this is the economy of my life cycle, and this is of great value!

Van Tharp is the author of some best-seller books. He practices a calculated, probabilistic and systematic approach to the trade. Favorite examples are a game with taking balls from a shut capacity and a determination of mathematical expectation based on available probability. The results are obvious, instructive and he develops his theory of trade psychology according to them. It should be said that the notion of stationarity is ignored in this example because market is a capacity in which a wicked person is throwing the balls from his stores and sometimes these balls are such balls  (he throws such balls) that probability fails. Certainly he is one of the most famous people engaged in market researches and nicety of the right trade psychology.

As for me Van Tharp and his team is a pattern of self-discipline, openness and succession. There is a great service of seminars, manuals and games sales (but all are in English yet).

One from the main manuals is “Position sizing”. It attaches determinant importance to the trade’s results. One has to agree.

Alan Farley. Probably not everyone knows him though I’m sure many people have read him. An ode to swing-trading is rather an artwork though probably there were some translation difficulties because I haven’t read it in English. He uses a tremendous quantity of own terms, a rigorous intersection of fine details in public things as one would think. Such things are support-resistance lines, gaps, Fibonacci retracement, waves, and candles. A reference to cycle models runs all through this artwork but there is no accuracy. It is hard to read, impossible to use but it inspires.

Mark Douglas. His “Disciplined trader” was extremely busy but rather incantatory book till I had managed "Trading in the Zone". I had been reading “Zone” in Istanbul resting from the noise which the garrulous Turks produced. Exactly in this place I was filled with it against the beauty of Byzantine architecture. Notions written in this book became for me a foundation for self-cultivation, for further growth, for the most remote perspective.

Classics. Charles Dow, Edwards and MackGy, John Murphy. John Murphy is our contemporary who wrote the most volumetric work “Technical Analysis of the Futures Markets”. Beauty and completion notions do quite well for this book including an obvious excellent translation. An Alphabet! An ABC book!

“Visual investor. How to spot market trends” is good one. “Intermarket Analysis” is very useful. I’m flatted by the fact of being acquainted personally, had a chance to communicate and got “Visual Investor” in the second publication like a present. As one may say I took it “off his master back”.

Other authors. Eric Nyman’s “Small Encyclopedia of Trader” is for certain. You begin to understand it in time. Recently I have searched a memorized citation in it. I got carried away and read half a day in Sunday.

Appel, Burnham, Ballinger,  Vine, Williams, Vins, Demark, Luis, O’Neal, Colby, Lefebvre, Lihovidov, Luca, Morrison, Niderhoffer,  Nissan, Plammer, Rashke, Sperandeo, Soros, Taleb, Shvager are just a small quantity of the outstanding authors, traders who wrote the great books with philosophy of technical analysis and love to market trade. Hardly have you managed to pass them but generally speaking you may not read.