The Part-Time Trader: Trading Stock as a Part-Time Venture

This book is a complete waste of time. It covers in nauseating detail how to hide your trading activity from your boss and co-workers. It repeats this information a minimum of three times, with various anecdotes (likely made up) sprinkled in to pad the page count. There are a dozen, full-page diagrams of how to arrange the furniture in your office so that passerby do not see what’s on your screen at work. Really? More wasted space.

There is NO useful trading information in this book. The 5-star reviews were obviously submitted by the author, his family, and friend. Or maybe the publisher?

If you find anything of value in this book, you should also consider repeating elementary school.

One heck of an entertaining read with so many practical examples of how to think about a career in corporations and trading.

Solid advice, and let’s be clear, you will not be a trader after reading this. You will however know about how To set you’re self up.

So tech advice might be outdated. But that’s always the case. I found the entire read entertaining, and filled with valuable truths. Two of my favorites

You have to be good-great at your job. And if you’re not then you better fix that before introducing another distraction. – so true

On trading, it’s a system and you should approach it like Ichiro or Jeter getting consistent base hits. Don’t expect home runs every time you got to bad. There’s no overnight success, it’s going to take a lot of experience.

In the end you’re going to go to shareplanner.com if you like Ryan’s philosophy, which I’m a fan of. So I think it’s worth checking out.

This book suffers from some serious shortcomings as described below:

1) Based on the title, I believe what most people would expect to see is the real technical tactics in trading that are suitable to people whose main jobs are not trading. Rather, 90% of the book was spent to talk about his life in the office, how he managed to avoid distractions/problems in the office so that he can trade effectively.

Unfortunately, I can say that you can easily use your common sense to know what to do or not in what he spent a lengthy amount of space in the book to describe. For example, there are a couple diagrams to show how you should arrange your desk in an office. Basically, it’s whatever way that allows the minimum exposure of your monitor to other people.

Seriously? If you don’t know how to do it, then I think you couldn’t even graduate and get a job as a middle-class salary man!

2) Even if you choose to spend a lot of space on this kind of topic, the way the author did is very ineffective. He talked in circle. Even though there are chapters/ headings throughout the book, the topics revolved around the same couple things throughout. For example, I don’t know how many times the concept of “don’t go high-profile” was described in the book, one way or another.

Some other specific topics that show up more than once are like the concept of not looking in the dollar gain/loss, and his warning to avoid penny stocks. Note that I viewed these two topics to be good and useful ones to tell the readers, but the way they show up here and there makes the messages less important.

3) A small one. I could find many typos in the book or even some grammatical errors. It’s like the author rushed to finish the book and makes the work look less professional. I don’t blame him that much for this issue – ultimately, he’s a trader.

Overall, it’s fun when he described the lives of various colleagues including his, but is that supposed to be the main purpose of the book? Or when the author described several other things that seem to be real lessons to teach, couldn’t you know that anyway by your instinct? Comparing the price of the book vs the knowledge to be gained, this is not a good one.

If you’ve ever wondered, “I think i might like to trade stocks,” this is a great read for you. Ryan helps you develop a plan for getting into the market and doing so without devoting your life to it. The book gives you an insight on the logistical and psychological plan you need if you want to get involved in trading (while maintaining your sanity and job), and he’s honest and real about his experiences and will tell you about his successes and failures. This being my first year trading, i’ve had some frustrating moments and Ryan’s book gave me both a sigh of relief that i wasn’t the only one and also a few “ah-ha” moments that have provided a positive result in my trading.

Aside from the book being a fantastic resource for those getting started, Ryan also has a website, shareplanner.com, which has been an unbelievable benefit to me. It’s a great community, and although he does offer a paid-subscription service, the fee is extremely minimal when considering the gains you get by following his plan and the insightful education he (and the others in the group) can provide.