One Good Trade: Inside the Highly Competitive World of Proprietary Trading / Edition 1

by Mike Bellafiore

Overview

An inside look at what it really takes to become a better trader

A proprietary trading firm consists of a group of professionals who trade the capital of the firm. Their income and livelihood is generated solely from their ability to take profits consistently out of the markets. The world of prop trading is mentally and emotionally challenging, but offers substantial rewards to the select few who can master this craft called trading.

In One Good Trade: Inside the Highly Competitive World of Proprietary Trading, author Mike Bellafiore shares the principles and techniques that have enabled him to navigate the most challenging of markets over the past twelve years. He explains how he has imparted those techniques to an elite desk of traders at the proprietary trading firm he co-founded. In doing so, he lifts the veil on the inner workings of his firm, shedding light on the challenges of prop trading and insight on why traders succeed or fail.

An important contribution to trading literature, the book will help all traders by:

• Emphasizing the development of skills that are critical to success, such as the fundamentals of One Good Trade, Reading the Tape, and finding Stocks In Play
• Outlining the factors that really make the difference between a consistently profitable trader and one who underperforms
• Sharing entertaining, hysterical, and page turning stories of traders who have excelled or failed and why, many trained by the author, with an essential trading principle wrapped inside

Becoming a better trader takes discipline, skill development, and statistically profitable trading strategies, and this book will show you how to develop all three.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780470529409
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	08/02/2010
Series:	Wiley Trading Series , #454
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	258,614
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

MIKE BELLAFIORE is a cofounder of SMB Capital, a proprietary trading firm in New York City. He has had numerous trading articles published in SFO Magazine. SMB regularly appears on CNBC and TheStreet.com. SMB also hosts four trading shows a week on StockTwits TV, the first Web-native finance television network. Bellafiore's trading strategies have been featured in Brett Steenbarger's book, The Daily Trading Coach, and his trader training program was recently highlighted in Trader Monthly and on the TV documentary Wall Street Warriors. Bellafiore is a regular contributor to the SMB blog, which provides market stories and trading advice. He was a speaker at the 2009 Traders Expo in New York. Bellafiore is a graduate of the University of Connecticut School of Law and a former member of the University of Connecticut Board of Trustees.

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Table of Contents

Preface vii

Acknowledgments xi

Part I Inside a Prop Trading Firm 1

Chapter 1 These Guys Are Good 3

Chapter 2 One Good Trade 31

Chapter 3 A Good Fit 53

Part II Tools of Success 83

Chapter 4 Pyramid of Success 85

Chapter 5 Why Traders Fail 117

Chapter 6 Live to Play Another Day 141

Part III Getting Technical 163

Chapter 7 Stocks In Play 165

Chapter 8 Reading the Tape 193

Chapter 9 Maximizing Your Profits with Scoring 223

Part IV The Trader’s Brain 249

Chapter 10 Trader Education 251

Chapter 11 The Best Teacher 285

Chapter 12 Adapt to the Markets 305

Chapter 13 The Successful Trader 335

Bibliography 339

About the Author 347

Index 349