The Big Trade: Simple Strategies for Maximum Market Returns

If you’re looking to get into stock trading and don’t know where to start, this is the perfect book for you. This book has great tips and is simple enough for newbie stock traders to understand.

This is one of the best books for new traders who are looking for helpful and useful information. I found the book to be easy to understand and it helped me to completely understand how all of the markets work especially what many of the symbols I have wondered about what many of those really mean let alone the names of them. This book is a wonderful guide that is perfect for beginners to advanced traders.

If you are looking for a good and most importantly, easy way to understand the markets, this book does it.

I use many of the lesson I have learned in this book over the past couple of weeks to tweak my current portfolio.

I cannot easily get into this book. Although his techniques make sense, his way of explaining them is too wordy or roundabout it some way – almost as if he was lengthening the text so that he could make a thicker book. This is exactly what they tell you not to do in technical writing, and something you don’t expect out of a mathematical type of guy (which he obviously is).

Besides that, I don’t necessarily see myself practicing this kind of trading. It seems like some good solid investments would do just as well in the long run, and take a lot less time and stress in the interim. That said, if a reader is intent on becoming a trader by trade, then perhaps this is worthwhile reading. That was the case with the author, which led him to this type of trading.

It has its moments and teaches the reader some things along the way, but it is not by any means my favourite book in the genre.

There are so many trading books written every year and this book does contain some wisdom to make it’s short 150 pages worth reading but it’s also not an easy system to implement. I have been trading for over 20 years and it’s still one of the most difficult things to do well. What I really admired about the author was how he poured himself into the markets and obviously that’s what led him to write the book. His “obsession” with the market was really the difference maker in his trading and I think that is why a book simply can’t make you a great trader.. it takes so much effort and time for you as the individual that most will quit before it happens. This book can’t make up for that shortfall. In summary, I’m not sure anything in the book will help you be a great trader except the motivating history of the author’s respect for the hard work and study it takes to understand the market.

This book was very detailed and concise which is something that I exactly needed at this time. I have looked at get into trading but I wasn’t entirely too sure if I would be able to figure it all out. One of the problems I have found is that trading books often have many charts to follow and the text explaining all of them appears several pages later. I like that the author made that part easier and it saved me. Thank you.

Peter Pham takes most of the subjectivity out of trading by applying simple statistics from historical stock data. I’m a little bit skeptic about the method, but still it’s a simple and original take on the markets.

Face it, there’s very little new under the trading sun, strategy-wise, but presumably there are always new investors making their way through an ever growing sea of media, advice, literature, and historical data in search of a solid system to guide them . Sure, plenty will always be searching for silver-bullet programs to achieve fast profits, but Pham is not speaking directly to such an audience, or I suspect he’d do his best to discourage such quixotic thinking.

I’d regard Pham’s approach as a sensible extrapolation and refinement of known quant techniques pertaining to price and volume. The most important ever-obvious-but-so-hard-to-swallow idea he shares is we should abandon the notion that market behavior can in any sense be predicted.

Rather Pham believes markets can best be viewed as interconnected streams of probabilities rather than a treasure map of hidden absolute predictors.

For example, Pham regards the chart pattern matching of technical analysis as a distraction that can fool us into believing we see and know more than we do – an interesting idea he calls `multistability’ that explains our response to optical illusions. It’s no surprise the resulting false confidence can frequently cost us money. While fundamental analysis may reveal what fueled past growth honest practitioners will concede it’s in no way a firm predictor of future growth.

Pham’s approach can be summed up as stripping out as much data noise as possible and focusing on a small set of probabilities and trade setups. Trends and ranges involve interpretation and, like all interpretation, they include the potential for error and multiple viewpoints. Prices and volume are facts and, in the end, the only certainty we have as traders to base our actions upon.

He regards the four known price points (high, low, open, close) as what really matter, particularly opening range that he describes as `a slice of price, not a slice of time’ and a source of `high probability trending moves’. He focuses on building a set of small quantitative tools (formula) he believes are more useful than the multicolored dashboards of charts, screens, monitors, and calculators many firms use to appeal to potential clients.

The writing style is refreshing clear-headed and dialed-down emotionally – as Pham believes our trading actions should be. There’s none of the faux street guy toughness and macho posing I’ve read in other trading books – an attitude that often masks unimaginative takes on well-worn trading strategies that can have you looking like a genius, ‘part of the time under certain market conditions’. Nor is Pham trying to sell you on subscribing to his website or newsletter.

I appreciated the author’s candor when he says the book isn’t just for those who want to trade themselves, but should serve as a guide to communicate with the person actively managing your money.

Remove emotion, unfounded perceptions, and interpretive ambiguity from your trading actions. Simple, but far from simplistic, and requiring a discipline of mind and emotion.

`The Big Trade’ will appeal to people with some investing experience who are serious about committing time and resources to tailoring a trading system that works for them – and are put off by so much of the high-energy advice/entertainment industry that’s grown up around the markets.

So, one of the measures I use when evaluting an investing book is whether or not I’d use it…this one is clearly divided. On on hand I’d be unlikely to follow the direct advice provided. On the other hand, I would use this book to research examples and for general information on strategies that are less family. I’ve chosen to give it a neutral rating.

I’m always concerned when an author claims to have lost money during the last big downturn but then made it all back during a clear upswing in the market…rather like the one we’ve had over the past few years. Let’s face it, it’s easier to make money when everything is going up up up. Staying power and retaining those gains during the decline is when it gets tricky. Of course, in general, this book is geared toward traders rather than investors…a distinctly different audience. Many experts agree that trading is now becoming a better strategy than long-term investing….although more of a conservative nature, there is certainly some solid support for that premise.

If you have been a buy and hold investor but are interested in trading…this is as good a book as any to help show you the ropse.

This was a good trading book written by a trader who spent thousands of hours learning to become successful in the markets. What he learned through endless study and trading is the key to success is not a predictive market model of what will happen next but to simply play the historical odds of how an equity’s price action acted in the past based on the preceding price range. He suggests not to care why something in the market is happening, to simply play the price action as it unfolds. The author suggests using the opening range in your time frame for the day, week, or month as a powerful tool to trade off of and help refine your timing on when to enter a trade. I agree. This books suggests simplicity in trading using price and volume and the probabilities of a stock moving through the opening range of your time frame based on past price action. There is no prediction only probability.

Mr. Pham suggest that pre-market media chatter is just distracting as too many technical indicators, listen to price.

He writes that there are only two market states: consolidation and trending. Either the market is trading in a range around ‘fair’ value or it is trending into a new range.

I loved the quote from the book “Failures are opportunities for growth and understanding, but only within the context of being successful.” Losses should be kept with in the context of a trade, a losing trade does not invalidate your method.

Even though through trading the author initially achieved financial independence, later a bad business enterprise outside of trading caused him to lose it all.

This book is better than most because of the authors insistence on study and hard work to learn how to trade and then to simply trade price action based on the probabilities of your studies. This is a great little trading book that will steer traders in the right direction for success.

I really liked reading the biographical information about the author and his history- what led him to the financial markets; the obsessiveness and drive that brought him the success he enjoys today. i realized that i had actually read various articles written by Peter Pham in investment newsletters/websites previously, and had immensely enjoyed his conversational style and contemplative philosophy and humility, mixed with his solid knowledge of both broad economic theory as well as the minute logistics of trading.

That said, i must say, that as a lay reader, and big novice in the markets (although i’m trying to learn more, and this book was eye-opening), i felt this book was not one that would benefit someone in my novice boat, as much as another who might be very serious about trading as a profession, perhaps. Pham’s timeframes and methodologies are clearly geared towards movements in the market, up and down, during a day– i.e. focus on opening price ranges, probabilites of breaks in the price moves, volume data. all very interesting stuff, for sure, and his book is titled “the BIG TRADE” after all! Pham does lead you by the hand on how to pull historical data to try your own quantitative analysis of stocks and market trends –creating your own tools, and other goodies like that. one thing i noticed right away, however, is that i found many sites where i’d have to pay to subscribe to access some of the data (esp. historical) he is using. not being advanced enough to pay for any good subscription services at this point in my knowledge, i was holding off. But, I am considering taking the next steps.

If you want to be a a serious trader, and are driven and willing to take that plunge, this is an excellent book to read. Even though i don’t see short-term trading in my immediate future, I found this book valuable from a standpoint of understanding the market in general, differing ways data points are used, and the mind-set of those (millions?) of people moving the markets every day. All in all a good read!

This book has some useful nuggets but it is difficult to link the useful information together because of the author’s focus on his own personal story and the musical theme of the book.
I suggest reading “The Perfect Speculator” by Brad Koteshwar and “Unholy Grails – A New Road to Wealth” by Nick Radge instead for a perspective on when and why to buy certain stocks. I also suggest reading “All About Market Timing, Second Edition” by Leslie N. Masonson for additional insight on market timing. “Strategic Stock Trading” by Michael Swanson provides a good overall perspective on trading stocks but lacks the level of detail available in the books listed above. I suppose some level of psychology is part of stock trading but if you want less zen and more nuts and bolts, read the books I suggested. My focus is ETF investing but I am looking to branch (back) into stocks.

The strategy describe in the book is worth the reading. Tested it in FX and Commodity market, I am amazed at the effect fullness

I enjoyed reading this book. While the concepts presented by the book are interesting and thoughtful, I found the best part was that it challenged you to find your own strategies. It took me quite a long time to read since I would get side-tracked after every chapter. I wanted to research and apply the ideas right away. That motivation in itself is a good selling point for the book. For the cost of the book, I received a fresh outlook on investing along with some new tools to use on a daily basis.