Best books to learn trading?

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Liars Poker for an entertaining introduction into S&T.

Market Wizards to learn about different types of traders and their personalities.

Search function for the rest, boy.

wtf.... out of all the times I see people posting a period to subscribe to a thread, I get shit on?

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This is golden. Thanks so much

I would start reading marketwatch and other markets related journals and blogs first. It will give you a general overview and you'll pick up the context in which trading occurs. Then from there, you'll probably develop some intuition for trading and hopefully the research thereafter will come naturally.

Get a WSJ membership. Choose a market and follow it. Try to write down every word you don't understand and then look it up. When you start, you probably do not understand the most of the material in articles. First of all, you need to get knowledgeable. Read, read and read!

Python Machine Learning - S. Raschka

im working through the Hull book right now and heard on the street. also working more on understanding the principles i learned in my math classes so i can use them for what i want. the stuff is kicking my ass. i think if i get all this down and still cant perform in an interview, then i just would have to admit im not cut out for this.

good luck to you

thanks man, the Hull book looks intersting, and complicated, I might get it.

best books to start with are 'intelligent investor' (graham), 'random walk down wall street' (malkiel), and imo, 'stocks for the long run' (siegel). discounted cash flow is a broad concept, but it's actually pretty intuitive - any of fabozzi's fixed income math books would be a good source, and then some.

I don't necessarily agree with or endorse everything these books mention, but they form a good base.

I like any of the investing books by Peter Lynch and B. Graham. For IB preparation I always recommend Scoop Books Guide to Investment Banking, M&A and Corp. Fin. Other than that I would recommend getting a subscription (student discount) to WSJ or Financial Times. I would next set up an online brokerage account and choose 4-5 stocks (based on companies that you like and understand the business model). You can start a portfolio with as little $1K although its best to start out with a larger sum due to fees and the like. Good luck.

For IB the scoop book is great. It might be too detailed for a rising freshman. The vault guide has a good overview of those technical questions too.

www.sharpeinvesting.com

For the scoop book, do you recommend purchasing the ebook or is whatever is on Google books enough?

Here is the link (most of it is there): http://books.google.com/books?id=GZ6RqWIG04wC&printsec=frontcover&sig=6…

I couldn't find a link to the other ebook (Practitioners Guide)

I'm interested as well.

If you're interested at all in currency trading, www.BabyPips.com has a great schooling program that goes into boundless detail.

Necessity is the mother of learning.

study how exchanges work...

and you'll never find a book that teaches you markets... they change all the time...

thanks connor!

couchy- could you elaborate a little on your first response? i'm a total novice here, don't quite understand what you mean.

http://www.getcollc.com/index.php/getco/tertiary/market_making_explaine…

cool i will check that out. thanks!

traderfeed.blogspot.com

thanks spoonfork! i really appreciate the help, lots of good info on there.

A good start would be The Intelligent Investor. It provides a general foundation of stock investing. Take a look at the books on the most recent WSO poll. Other than that the more you hang around this site the more you will learn.

^Thanks for the advice! However I'm looking for technical knowledge that can be applied practically. Books like The Intelligent Investor are great but they don't have technical content. I've already read a book like that

What kind of trading? Prop trading? Algo? Day? Swing? Forex? There are so many things out there, so I'd just start with a basic primer like this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Neatest-Little-Guide-Market-Investing/dp/04522986…

From there, you can find other specialty books that focus on the particular areas you want to trade in. Intelligent Investor is a great theory book but I find it a little dry and not very "how-to".

youtube has a lot of decent stuff optionsalpha keeps his stuff simple

Wallstreetsurvivor. com got a nice bunch of courses for beginners

What are you looking for...industry info or actually learning how to trade/invest?

trading isnt really something that you "learn". Its not a skill per se, its more a collection of knowledge and experiences.

Read Warren Buffet's biography and see how he learnt his stuff... and focus on your high school... and above all have FUN!

Website: babypips and a couple forums if you like. Best way to learn is to actually trade your own hard earned money and lose it. Pain is what motivates 99% of traders to improve.

I would recommend playing with a mock trading account before using your own money. It will give you a chance to play with some stocks and see how it turns out. Give Questrade a try - they have a good trial account platform. Also, with $600, you will have to come up with good consistent returns just to break even on trading fees/commissions.

Judging from your experience, make sure you are ok with never seeing the $600 again. Not saying you aren't smart or that you won't be good at it but losing a few is part of learning. Also, as mentioned above it is very hard to actually make anything with such small amount.

You are better off spending it somewhere else or use as a learning experience with high chance of losing. Take care.

Spend that 600 bucks on other outlets for learning to trade. Buying 1.7 shares of apple isnt going to teach you anything

I do agree with al865149 advice. You may first have a practice account before giving up your money, since forex market is really volatile compared to the other financial securities.

Thanks. Well how much do you think I should have upfront to be in a good position? $600 does seem a little low but how much should I put it? I'm not trying to put in $10k and risk losing it all, especially since I'm new to this. Well I got the $600 as a gift and It would take some time for me to get 3x's that. Is there another way you guys know of that can help me make some money from the $600? I really don't want to just waste it or spend it on anything and I don't want to just leave it doing nothing. I'm not scared to risk it if there's a possibility to double it.

I think the best investment you can make is to use the 600 dollars to self-educate. You will not see a direct monetary return; however, when you do it will pay dividends for life. Please, do not look past this advice. Run a fake-account like some people have suggested; take it seriously and see how you do.

It will seem a bit dated; however, go ahead and look for One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch. It will give you a good non-mathematical look at trading. In your free time read around in http://www.investopedia.com/university/stocks/#axzz1W6zhQqJH It will give you a pretty good idea about what stocks are and how markets work. Coming from high school you might not be all too familiar with it all. Reach out to friends of your family and see if anyone can act as a mentor...this greatly helps. The key at this stage should be to learn about the fundamentals of risk, return and valuation. Go ahead and look for the Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (I think that's the title)

If you have specific questions, send me a pm.

Here's a good trade- invest that $600 in SAT prep classes and college admissions counseling services.

Seriously though- you're not going to be trading large amounts of money, you're not going to be able to trade much else than equities (since most fixed income contracts are in denominations of $1,000+), and you're not going to be trading with high-frequency.

So you should pick the online broker that is the absolute cheapest.

I agree with most everyone else that you should use the money to educate yourself more. $600 is incredibly tough to trade b/c your transactions fees would rip you apart. A simple open and close would eat up 2-3% of that amount. You would really need large swings to make any actual profit. Do a fake account or paper trade for awhile just to get an idea of what you P&L would be.

You don't need a certain amount to trade, but at 5k for example, the same transaction costs would be ~40bp instead of 200-300, and you would keep more profit.

Thanks guys and gals. Can someone give me some good mock trading sites I can use to start today? I'd prefer if it doesn't require me to put bank account info/SS#

Sign up for a free trial on Questrade.

Updown.com is completely free and doesn't require any any personal info. I'd recommend that

go to a strip club with that 600

paper trade and learn till you get more capital