Trading to Win: The Psychology of Mastering the Markets (Wiley Trading) by Ari Kiev

Product Description

A breakthrough programfor achieving new heights of trading success

The product of a five-year collaboration between Dr. Ari Kiev, a leading psychiatrist renowned for his success with Olympic athletes, and top equities trader Steve Cohen, Trading to Win gives you the essential tools to overcome outmoded, self-limiting beliefs and mindsets that may be keeping you from a higher level of success. Illustrated with real market scenarios and applications, this powerful program will help psych you into a less stressful, more self-possessed mastery of the trading game and help you reach goals you may never have thought possible.

"The strategies in this book will unleash the hidden trader in you, and can substantially increase your trading profits." —Jay G. Goldman, Hedge Fund Manager.

"Ari Kiev has written a wonderful guide for money managers, traders, brokers, and investors alike. Sharing his thoughts with us regarding our behavior patterns enables us to take a step back and look at ourselves more objectively." —Seymour W. Zises, President and CEO, Family Management Corp.

The trading arena has produced its share of select "super-traders," market practitioners who set themselves apart from the rest of the field with one distinct advantage: mental and emotional toughness. Like outstanding athletes who stay focused, remain calm, and stick to their game plan, these master traders in this highly risky, highly competitive arena possess an edge that keeps them from being distracted by fear, self-doubt, greed, and other emotional components that can cause major losses and prevent gains from soaring to new highs.

Trading to Win presents a step-by-step, goal-oriented program for building the mental and emotional stamina not only to win, but to win on an unprecedented level. Created by a leading psychiatrist for a top trading firm, this proven approach spotlights a set of philosophical and behavioral principles designed to assist you in implementing proactive trading strategies, as well as developing the mindset needed to trade effectively in the realm of uncertainty. Delving into your underlying thought processes when you trade, Trading to Win enables you to understand what is motivating you, whether it is consistent with your game plan, and whether you are in any way sabotaging yourself.

Fully supplemented with real market trading scenarios, Trading to Win shows you how to apply key concepts where it counts—in actual trading room situations. For both professional traders and sophisticated investors, this remarkable program offers a rare opportunity for both personal and financial gain.
Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #83213 in Books
Published on: 1998-10-06
Number of items: 1
Binding: Hardcover
272 pages
Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Buy low, sell high. Sounds simple? Hardly. As most traders will tell you, finding the right entry and exit points in a market is too often a stressful and even gut-wrenching experience. Ari Kiev, author of Trading to Win, wants to change all that. Kiev spent five years with a group of professional traders at SAC Capital Management, a $500 million hedge fund, studying the psychological and emotional aspects of what makes for a successful trader. Kiev found that what hinders many traders is ego, fear, emotion, and "false beliefs about yourself and the markets." Gaining mastery as a trader means seeing "the market as it is, not as a reference point for your own existence." Kiev advocates a disciplined, Zen-like approach to the markets that begins with articulating a specific goal then committing oneself to attaining that goal in the most objective way possible, overcoming the emotional baggage that too often leads to poor decision-making. Trading to Win is for professional and amateur traders of every stripe who are looking for insight into their own behavior and approach to the markets. --Harry C. Edwards

The publisher, John Wiley & Sons
Virtually every top trader and investor attributes their success to a strong mental capacity and the ability to master their emotions. Even the best "system" can prove disastrous if the trader or investor doesn't have the ability to stick to their strategy. Yet, holding fast to a strategy can be extremely difficult while immersed in the trading game, since in essence, the mind seems to conspire against itself more than ever while in this milieu. The Psychology of Trading presents a step-by-step, goal-oriented approach to trading that emphasizes ways to keep emotions in check, overcome self-doubt, and focus clearly on a winning strategy. This new approach to trading has been developed by a leading psychiatrist, with expertise in sports psychology, and practiced by a top stock trader. While a plethora of books, seminars, and consultants address this vital area, no program has yet been developed by a trader and a psychiatrist. This is a proven approach, and it is outlined in an accessible and concise manner in the book.

From the Inside Flap
The trading arena has produced its share of select "super-traders," market practitioners who set themselves apart from the rest of the field with one distinct advantage: mental and emotional toughness. Like outstanding athletes who stay focused, remain calm, and stick to their game plan, these master traders in this highly risky, highly competitive arena possess an edge that keeps them from being distracted by fear, self-doubt, greed, and other emotional components that can cause major losses and prevent gains from soaring to new highs. Trading to Win presents a step-by-step, goal-oriented program for building the mental and emotional stamina not only to win, but to win on an unprecedented level. Created by a leading psychiatrist for a top trading firm, this proven approach spotlights a set of philosophical and behavioral principles designed to assist you in implementing proactive trading strategies, as well as developing the mindset needed to trade effectively in the realm of uncertainty. Delving into your underlying thought processes when you trade, Trading to Win enables you to understand what is motivating you, whether it is consistent with your game plan, and whether you are in any way sabotaging yourself. Drawing on his widely acclaimed work with Olympic athletes, psychiatrist Ari Kiev covers every major aspect of enhancing your trading performance, including new ways to rehearse your moves, strengthen your powers of concentration, deal with stress, and overcome common mistakes. Along with tapping into personal resources you might not know you had, and breaking unproductive, even self-destructive behavioral patterns, you'll learn how to:
Let go of false beliefs about yourself and the markets
Trade in terms of the amount of money you have and the kinds of profit percentages you want to produce
Play through feelings of anxiety
Avoid the dangers of both despair and euphoria
Abandon energy-draining behaviors, like impulsiveness, chest-beating, and whining
Achieve total commitment and experience the exhilaration of "the zone," where everything flows effortlessly
Fully supplemented with real market trading scenarios, Trading to Win shows you to apply key, concepts where it counts—in actual trading room situations. For both professional traders and sophisticated investors, this remarkable program offers a rare opportunity for both personal and financial gain.
Customer Reviews

A waste of time and money
This and his other book, Trading in the Zone, are a complete waste of time. Instead, read the books by Mark Douglas (he is not even trained as a psychologist) and Richard McCall if you really want something that will change your mental makeup towards trading.

Read it ! A Gold Mine of Skills needed to become A Master

The Trading profession is a tough one because there is not 1 school that teaches it per say. So being only about 300 to 400 good books on trading. You need to get a bit from each and discard the rest.

There are a few but very valuable pieces of information that can be applied in this book. Just because 80% of the content of a book does not apply to you does not make it bad , you have to be objective and open in your assessments.

If you are a trader and want to be a Master Trader then this book is really for you.

I personally only trade futures at the moment so all of the Stock examples did not really apply to me.
But that does not make the book bad, there are little gems in there you will seem them sparsely around the book specially in Part 1 and Chapter 12

Chapter 12 is worth the price of the whole book on its own !!

At the beginning of the book there is some really good content on behaviour modification for traders the chapters at the start of the book are worth the price of the book in it self.

No book is ever the perfect book for you unless you wrote it yourself. You need to get bits and pieces from here and there and make your own.

If you like Mark Douglas's "Trading in the Zone" then you will love this book.

This is an absolutely excellent book, but all of the goods are in 20% of the text.


Too Repetative
This book is about developing the right attitude and relaxing. It can be applied to almost any risk taking endeavor or competative profession.

The parts that profess to teach about trading per se are not useful. This book will not teach anybody anything about buying or selling financial products.

It repeats a lot of the same stuff over but the real message is to chill out and get serious about performance. Be a winner, examine your losers and why you went wrong and vow to change for the better. Again, have the right attitude and approach and learn to control stress with breathing exercises and muscle relaxation. To be a good trader, one must learn to endure stress and not react to it just to releive it but focus on the trade and do what is right based only on the objective analysis. This is hard to do because it is pleasurable to close out a trade and avoid the stress of being in it.

The book is useful in order to help one focus and work through stress. I imagine there are a number of self-help books that are similar in this regard. Nothing special.