Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom

by Van K. Tharp

List Price:	~~$29.95~~
Average Rating:
Lowest New Price:	$12.95

Editorial Reviews
Product Description

Your own strengths, style, and personalityand the steps found in this bookcan revitalize your trading program!

"Van's book gets directly to the heart of what it takes to be a successful trader. It's the best book I've read on trading successfully; not fluff or hype like so many others."Tom Basso, President, Trendstat Capital Management, Inc.

"The trading public owes Dr. Tharp a debt of gratitude for this insightful masterpiece." -Edward Dobson, President, Traders Press, Inc.

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars

Excellent, 2008-06-26
This is the best book I've ever read about trading. The position sizing topics alone are gold and can be the difference of being successful or not. but there's much more. Excellent to guide you to create your own system. This book is gold. You won't be disappointed.

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars

A must to be read, 2008-06-09
This book is a must to be read for everyone struggling with trading. Well written, very practical and useful.

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

1 out of 5 stars

the book stinks, 2008-06-03
I had not read the reviews here before i bought the book at a local bookstore. But after reading the first couple of chapters i started wondering if it's me or the author. I could not make any sense of his writing. He is laborious, verbose, with too many references to elusive hints. The book tries to be ponderous but in my opinion is a cover up for light weight information. He seems to oversimply the complicated and complicate the simple things, as another reviewer mentioned. Save your money.

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars

necessary informatiion for traders, 2008-05-27
To be an excellent trader you need to understand each trade's risk and reward. This book helps you calculate share sizing based on risk. It is a very important work that needs to be incorporated in everyone's trading plan. If you don't have a written trading plan then you must have this book. Then write your plan. Use the risk calculation and you will be a much more profitable trader.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2 out of 5 stars

An excuse for an education, 2008-04-25
The book came highly recommended to me. Unfortunately, the book was quite verbose. He fills pages with dribble that is not required to get the point across which he subsequently fails to do repeatedly. I kept thinking what is the point Van? He does not trade himself. How could he possibly know what it is like? How has he been training traders since the early 1980's. When and where did he get the knowledge to do this? It appears that he is an academic, he studied the subject and called himself an expert. The chapter on position sizing is the most important part of this work, yet after having gone through the whole chapter he simply discounts the most important part of position sizing (the percent risk model) by saying that it does not work well and that therefore he had mentioned that it was only for tight stops. Then he admits that Gallagher's model is actually a pretty good way to trade (but how would he know that since he is not a trader?) Mmmm, so what was the whole point of this chapter then? Well I can answer that question for the entire book. There is no point other than to get another signing bonus from a publisher and bilk unsuspecting readers out of yet another 30 bucks and their precious time. Call me a skeptic. Even if he was a trader I'd like see his trading record before believing a scrap of "advice".

What you will get out of this book is having your brain stimulated into thinking about the issues he brings up. Then use your own IQ to address these issues from the information you already posses (from other books and seminars no doubt as well as your own experience) get on the PC and draw up your own spreadsheet to deal with how you see position sizing as it applies to your portfolio and personal needs. In other words do not expect Van to tell you what and how to do it. He will not do that. Based on what I saw in this book I will write a trading book shortly myself, but this one will give you step by step action plans for what you need to accomplish if you want to succeed - written by an actual trader. Let me know if you want one.

He does contradict himself: He says in the beginning it is all psychological but then in the end of that book the only thing he deals with is statistics. He also refers to an example of a game he played hundreds of times and posits that as proof that the results are valid, but it is just a standard bell curved result that he was getting, not valid proof of his statement. He does a great job writing and selling books, some of the content can be used if you put your brain to work and make it yours and you are able to discern the wheat from the chaff.

I made it work for myself but in the end I was disappointed by the book as its reputation far outstrips the contents.

Let me tell you that it is no small task to become a successful trader. You need to dedicate a serious two years worth of daily study AND trading time in front of the PC to become consistent and profitable. Not or the faint of heart. Everything you do and read adds to your overall knowledge so reading this book is still a very good idea, you just have to know what you are in for.

Another book I will write is about how this trading game is played and how the deck is stacked against you. It is worse than the Las Vegas Casinos. If you doubt that statement then read something by Richard Ney. That will open your eyes very quickly as to the shenanigans that are perpetrated upon us daily in the markets. But what is the alternative? If you want your money to work for you you can hire someone else or you have to find a system for yourself. Only the most determined will make it.

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