The Stock Trader’s Almanac 2012 is a general reference a course in miracles that is widely used by serious traders and considered a must have by many. This is a great investment book for both experienced traders and those just getting started. Like all the best Almanacs it is crammed with useful, currently relevant information. Much of which can lead to actionable investment ideas. You will find inside graphs, historical charts, market data, forecasts, economic announcements, and a calendar of events. Along with plenty of commentary and analysis. One of the most useful aspects of the almanac is its ability to help you identify specific trends that tend to happen on a yearly or cyclical basis and assess the probability of whether or not a similar trend could take place in the current period.
The Commodity Trader’s Almanac is a great companion to the above recommended book. It has all the same great content as the Stock Trader’s Almanac but for the commodities. For commodities traders it is a priceless reference. For those who don’t dabble in commodities it can still give great insights into relationships between commodity and equities prices and patterns. Definitely worth picking up and both this and its companion are frequent go to books in my daily analysis work.
Whether trader, long-term investor, or both technical analysis is a must for your toolbox. This is the best modern all-around technical analysis books out there and my personal copy has so many “post-it” notes sticking out of it that they should probably be numbered like pages. This book is more like a reference textbook for a college course on technical analysis than a “book” in the usual sense. It is packed with all things technical and countless traders have been using it for over a decade now for very good reason. If you have a question about any technical indicator or concept in technical analysis you can most likely find the answer here. The only Technical Analysis (TA) reference book you will ever need. Not much else need be said about this book. Outstanding.
Overhyped title aside, this is a great investment book folks. Fund manager Joel Greenblatt has been beating the Dow (with returns of 50 percent a year) for more than a decade. In this insightful book Greenblatt brings you into a world of special situations from which you can profit.
The author’s approach is an event-driven one and he gives an outstanding overview of these special situations and how you can take advantage of the fact that they are so often overlooked by other investors. This certainly isn’t a book for beginners–who should concentrate on building solid foundation on the basics first–but if you are an experienced investor and you haven’t yet read this book you should do so. You’ll be glad you did. However, while it is a book for the serious investor it is also written for the retail investor and professionals involved in event-driven investing would probably find little they didn’t already know here.
The best endorsement of the book that I can give comes straight from the book itself. It comes in the form of publication of the his firm’s audited returns over a decade-long period at the end of the book. No pure theorist here and the firm’s impressive returns show that in spades. We’re talking 45-55% average returns over a ten-year period! Not bad, not bad at all. Pick this one up at your soonest opportunity.
Sticking with the theme of volatility which is, after all, the theme of the last few years and a theme which is likely to continue for several more; we bring you Short Term Trading Strategies That Work. Author, trader, CEO, and founder of TradingMarkets, Larry Connors gets it right with this one. It is a no-nonsense, clearly penned book. Published in 2008 it is still one of the best books out there for short term market traders. This is more true than ever in these volatile and uncertain times.
In this book Connors lays out 16 straightforward strategies that every trader, and I mean every trader should have in their toolbox if they want to be a successful trader. He shows back-testing results that go back several years but also includes live-trading results from Connors and his team under various market conditions.