"Trading in the Zone" Book Review
Don't get me wrong, I like Mark Douglas and I like the ideas in his book Trading in the Zone. The big problem I had with his book however was just getting through its 200-odd pages of turgid waffling. I read a lot of books and some are a breeze to read, but this book is as painfully slow as the Dow Jones Industrial Average on a Sunday afternoon.
I wondered if this book was a transcription of a talk, with the constant restating of the same ideas using different words so that I would "get it," like you might hear in a lecture. OK Mark, I GET it! Next Point!
Enough with the complaining. If you have trouble pulling the trigger, have been burned by a string of bad trades or are thinking of looking for another career or hobby then Mark's book is worth looking at.
It's not until the end that you get to the meat of the book, and there you get a practical implementation of his 5 principles of the market, which helps you approach the market from a realistic perspective:
1. Anything can happen.
2. You don't need to know what is going to happen next in order to make money.
3. There is a random distribution between wins and losses for any given set of variables that define an edge.
4. An edge is nothing more than an indication of a higher probability of one thing happening over another.
5. Every moment in the market is unique.
So just because you might have a string of losses in a row does mean that the next trade will also be a loss.
Mark gives you a trading plan to follow to help put the 5 principles into practice and this practical application of the principles is what makes this book worth the effort.
Unfortunately, Mark doesn't include all the record-keeping aspects that are necessary with implementing a trading-plan, so please beware that he isn't giving you a complete trading system, however he is focusing on one important aspect - the mind.
So, if you've been battered by the markets or are frightened by the prospect of losing any money while trading then have a look at Trading in the Zone.
I wondered if this book was a transcription of a talk, with the constant restating of the same ideas using different words so that I would "get it," like you might hear in a lecture. OK Mark, I GET it! Next Point!
Enough with the complaining. If you have trouble pulling the trigger, have been burned by a string of bad trades or are thinking of looking for another career or hobby then Mark's book is worth looking at.
It's not until the end that you get to the meat of the book, and there you get a practical implementation of his 5 principles of the market, which helps you approach the market from a realistic perspective:
1. Anything can happen.
2. You don't need to know what is going to happen next in order to make money.
3. There is a random distribution between wins and losses for any given set of variables that define an edge.
4. An edge is nothing more than an indication of a higher probability of one thing happening over another.
5. Every moment in the market is unique.
So just because you might have a string of losses in a row does mean that the next trade will also be a loss.
Mark gives you a trading plan to follow to help put the 5 principles into practice and this practical application of the principles is what makes this book worth the effort.
Unfortunately, Mark doesn't include all the record-keeping aspects that are necessary with implementing a trading-plan, so please beware that he isn't giving you a complete trading system, however he is focusing on one important aspect - the mind.
So, if you've been battered by the markets or are frightened by the prospect of losing any money while trading then have a look at Trading in the Zone.
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