Alpha Trader: The Mindset, Methodology and Mathematics of Professional Trading

Product Information

After the successful completion of Alpha Prop Phase 1 and 2 assestments, you will be ready to become a Virtual ACG Analyst. ALPHA TRADER is not a behavioral economics textbook and it is not a boring, theoretical deep dive into trading psychology. It is not worth it for speculators to stay short all that time where the is so little juice left in the trade. Often, when a major risk event is coming up, risk managers and traders lean on the conservative side until it is out of the way (due to gap risk and concerns about extreme volatility).

While traders are no different in their use of ‘intuition’ or ‘gut feeling’ to other people, the majority of them are markedly improved in their propensity to engage in reflective thinking and are less susceptible to ‘cognitive impulsivity’.If non-farm payrolls are a few days from now, what might the market do in the days leading up to the release? It isn’t a matter of flicking through a few charts, drawing a couple of trend lines, or using some automated Charty McChart.

To my mind, of all the books I had read, it’s a significant number, no-one encapsulated trading for me than he had in a single book. If the US economy has been hot, the Fed is thinking about hiking rates, and most indicators point to strong job growth… Expect bonds to sell off in the days leading up to the jobs report as traders get set for a blockbuster figure. We observe that subjects who rely on the randomized experts pick those who were successful in the past, showing behavior consistent with the hot hand belief. You need a significant edge to not only make money, but also to make enough money to exceed execution, technology, and operational costs. Count up by 2’s; Count up by a multiple; Some formula like add the first two numbers to get the third number.

Here you can converse about trading ideas, strategies, trading psychology, and nearly everything in between! If you are bearish Apple for six different reasons, and you have been watching a key level all week, and Apple finally breaks down through that level, then by all means, sell!

You will be surprised by how quickly the sequence of faulty forecasts will deliver you to a useful result. However, once you get to a basic level of understanding of markets, the battles become mostly internal. An easy read, some is likely things you've probably heard before but it was refreshing to read it all in one place from an industry veteran. But subjects were always busy testing patterns that fit their rule without ever thinking to test those that did not.Positioning: Medium-term traders, investors and systematic strategies tend to reduce risk into major events. A common thread running through each of these behavioural biases is the individual’s inability to refrain from using automatic responses and simple heuristics. Instead, be on the constant lookout for tiny improvements you can make that don’t require Herculean effort. I appreciated hearing what Brent thinks is important to successful trading, with examples, and a very well summarized "bringing it all together" chapter at the end.