Looking for advice on how to get started trading?
Will you follow that guru on the internet who told you how he lost $6,000 options trading (not naming names)? Or someone who turned $100 into $1,000 in a week (but didn’t mention what he lost last week)? Or maybe the guy who shows you all the fancy things he bought with the money he made from picking the “best” stocks?
If you’re looking for reliable information on how to get started in trading, you need to consider the source—carefully.
Here are some of my red flags:
- Obviously makes tons of money from sensational YouTube videos.
- Only shows wins, never process or losses.
- Talks in certainties and exaggerates.
More insidious are those gurus who will absolutely and without any qualms, feed you some bullshit because they do want you participating—but not on the winning side.
You should suspect everyone.
Even me.
Yes, I also want you participating 😊
But I know that maybe 5 percent of you will be any good. (Sorry—95% of traders fail. That doesn’t mean you won’t be one of the winners.)
So if you’re new to trading, there is a much better starting point. Reading my articles—in order—will serve as a quick-start guide.
Why would I just hand out this information for free (you should ask). This website was born from that love of teaching (and, honestly, maybe from the fact that I always have too much to say). I also know I haven’t yet paid forward everything good that has happened to me in my lifetime.
You’ve heard the saying: “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.” Well, I love trading, and I also love teaching, and I have decades of experience as an educator. So here I am, giving back, showing you how to fish.
The trapdoor trader way.
My hope is that you’ll take what’s here and use it to develop your own method—your own edge—and discover what makes you, personally, good at trading. Here is the raw material you need.
Read these books.
P.S. By the way, not everything you see here is on Audible, or at your library. You may need to buy the hardcopy book. You might find at first some content appears out of date, but most is evergreen, timeless, and above all, honest.
Mindset & Trader Psychology#
- Trading in the Zone – Mark Douglas
- The Disciplined Trader – Mark Douglas
- The Daily Trading Coach – Brett N. Steenbarger
Every new trader wants setups. Very few want to hear that they are the problem.
These books explain why consistency has nothing to do with intelligence, prediction, or confidence—and everything to do with probabilistic thinking, emotional regulation, and internal contradictions.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: I understand these ideas conceptually. I can explain them. I can teach them. But even I still break my own rules sometimes.
That’s why I reread these books. Also, as you’re new, you probably won’t really have an understanding to ground the ideas you read. So read, then practice paper trading, then read again.
Psychology isn’t something you “finish.” It’s something you rehearse—because under pressure, you default to old wiring. These books keep the ideas present when the market is doing its best to make you forget them.
Core Day Trading Fundamentals#
- Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques – Steve Nison
- How to Day Trade for a Living – Andrew Aziz
- Advanced Techniques in Day Trading – Andrew Aziz
- Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets – John J. Murphy
These books give you structure: routines, terminology, common setups, and a shared language traders use to communicate ideas.
Not every strategy here will be your strategy—and that’s fine.
The goal at this stage is not mastery. It’s orientation. You’re learning what exists, how traders think about markets, and how price, volume, and structure interact.
Some of this material is old. That’s a feature, not a bug. If an idea still holds up decades later, it’s probably not fragile.
Risk Management & Trading as a Profession#
- The New Trading for a Living – Dr. Alexander Elder
- Come Into My Trading Room – Dr. Alexander Elder
- Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom – Van K. Tharp
- Technical Analysis Using Multiple Timeframes – Brian Shannon
- Anchored VWAP – Brian Shannon
Risk management is not a side topic. It is the job. These books force you to think in terms of expectancy, position sizing, timeframes, and execution context.
Brian Shannon’s work, in particular, bridges old-school technical analysis with modern tools like Anchored VWAP — something institutional traders care deeply about.
Elder’s books go far beyond risk management and trading as a business—they’re also a deep, practical education in reading charts. Skip the Audible version and buy the hardcopy. The Audible version is heavily edited to remove “dated” material from the pre-computer era, but that edit strips out a significant amount of critical information on indicators and oscillators. (Elder’s The Complete Trading for a Living combines a workbook with questions to ensure you understand what you’ve read).
Price Action, Volume & Market Behavior#
- Reading Price Charts Bar by Bar – Al Brooks
- One Good Trade – Mike Bellafiore
- The Trader’s Book of Volume – Mark Leibovit
This is where trading stops being theoretical.
These books teach you how markets behave, not how they’re marketed. You’ll learn how momentum forms, how it fails, and how volume confirms—or exposes—moves.
One Good Trade is especially important because it shows how professional traders are trained: through review, accountability, and pattern recognition—not hype.
This is also where many retail traders realize why fading, breakouts, and reversals are not interchangeable tactics. Context matters. A lot.
Build Your Own System (Not Mine)#
- The PlayBook – Mike Bellafiore
- The Art and Science of Technical Analysis – Adam Grimes
- Building Winning Algorithmic Trading Systems – Kevin Davey
One note here: Kevin Davey’s book leans toward algorithmic thinking, not day trading specifically. That’s intentional. Even if you never automate a single trade, learning how systems are tested, validated, and stress-tested will make you a better discretionary trader. It teaches you to stop trusting vibes and start trusting evidence.
Bellafiore’s PlayBook drives the core idea of this site: you must build your playbook, not borrow someone else’s highlights.
Habits, Focus & Longevity#
- Atomic Habits – James Clear
- Trading Habits – Steve Burns
- Deep Work – Cal Newport
- Peak Performance – Brad Stulberg & Steve Magness
These aren’t “trading books,” but the most important factor in success is YOU and these books will help you work on you, your productivity, your ability to focus, and your ability to get things done.
Consistency comes from systems, not inspiration. Focus is trained. Discipline is practiced. Burnout is managed—or it ends careers early.
Trading rewards people who show up the same way on boring days as exciting ones.
Reading Is Not Enough#
If you just plow through some of this reading, it could be “in one ear and out the other.” Go slow. Practice what you read. For example, when you read about a market indicator or oscillator—such as volume, the MACD Histogram, or Williams %R—in The Complete Trading for a Living, or another book, open DAS Trader Pro (or whatever platform you use), add the indicator to a chart, and watch how it behaves in real time.
See how these behaves across different stocks and conditions. If you need more visuals, use your reading as a scaffold, but go find a video on the topic. Seek to understand thoroughly, not just to finish the reading.
Plus, all of this knowledge is only a base.
Every concept should be paired with actual trading in SIM (i.e. “paper trading”), as you are in the learning stage.
Also, I personally saw some success paper trading before finishing this whole list I created for myself. So you may not need to read everything here to find your edge and become profitable. But reading always gives you more ideas and can prepare you for such things as what to do when your edge wears thin.
Final Thoughts#
Books alone won’t make you profitable.
But they will give you something far more valuable early on: the raw material for working independently.
They teach you how traders think, how markets behave, and how edges are built—not sold. They protect you from outsourcing your judgment to personalities, including mine.
If you want to learn trading, start where traders always have: with ideas that survived long enough to be written down, published and republished.
As much as you want to know the information yesterday so you can be making money already. Go slow. Be methodical. Be patient. And then stag that lunch.
Just like a trapdoor spider.