Book Review – "Trade the Trader," by Quint Tatro

One more book about trading various financial assets ... Shouldn’t the world be tired of these?

I guess not. Trading is a financial knowledge field which advances at a blistering pace, not only technologically, but also behaviorally. Take for example the way the introduction of the iPad has changed the trading behavior of the masses – now you can research, plan and place your orders online, straight from your morning coffee table. Isn’t this brave new world wonderful?

Yes it is, my friends. But it is also dramatically different from one year ago. Think about it a little – how many traders are now online compared with five years ago? This means increased competition, right? How many tools are you using today compared with one year previously? How did the playing field changed?

“Trade the Trader,” by Quint Tatro, does not attempt to answer all of these questions – that would be foolish. What it tries is to show how you can play the market by anticipating the others’ moves. Tatro thinks that the market depends very little on the fundamentals of a stock – at least on the daily trading basis, when no important news is released. So the most important factor is to watch the collective behavior of the market traders and act accordingly. In a sense, Tatro’s market is a self-fulfilling prophecy which comes alive second after second, for a very short while.

This doesn't sound complicated or beyond Dodd’s “Intelligent Investor” words ... but it is. What Tatro brings in is his blend of practical experience and theoretical knowledge on exactly how to interpret the market as it unfolds to you, participant by participant. He speaks directly and in plain words the truth ... whether you want to hear it or not.

What I enjoyed a lot was that the book was alert and very well written. It is like watching the memories of a predator confessing to his prey: what you did wrong, my dear prey, where you should have stayed aside, how you should behave next time, now go and give me a good game! The book is so well written that you can read it as a novel – and it keeps you interested from the beginning till the end. So coming back to our first question – yes, it is possible to have fun and read about trading at the same time. Enjoy!

Book published by Financial Times Press and available at ftpress.com.

Disclosure: No position