Trading Software and Books Reviews

How to Get Started in Active Trading and Investing

How to Get Started in Active Trading & Investing is a book that advocates a top-down approach to trading, combining fundamental analysis with technical analysis.

David Nassar begins by explaining why managing your own investments is superior to giving your money to the professionals, whose interests may not be aligned with yours.

David then takes a look at fundamental analysis. He begins with a discussion of how government fiscal and monetary policy has an impact on the business cycle and what the implications are for the broad asset classes of bonds, equities and commodities. With the landscape painted, the fundamental analysis finishes by drilling down into various sectors. David believes private traders are better armed if they understand where the overall economy is and what time the investment clock is showing.

How to Get Started in Active Trading & Investing then provides an introduction to technical analysis, beginning with a look at the basics of charting, prices and volume. The various stages of accumulation, markup, distribution and decline are explained, along with an investigation of support and resistance levels and how various continuation and reversal patterns provide opportunities to trade. A quick look at candlesticks and oscillators finishes David’s examination of technical analysis.

The book finishes with a discussion of tactical trading.

How to Get Started in Active Trading & Investing provides an introduction for those traders who would like to combine fundamental and technical analysis in their trading. Although the book has a U.S. focus, I have no doubt its ideas would work across all markets. If you’re looking for an advanced book on either fundamental or technical analysis then How to Get Started in Active Trading & Investing may not appeal to you. Although it is a reasonably satisfactory introductory book, I have to say that David Nasser lost me when he essentially declares success in trading is dependent on traders being in the zone, or feeling ‘zen’. I found it disappointing that he finished his introductory book on a silly trading clich?’. Even if the clich? has credibility (which I doubt), it would probably be better placed in a trading book written for a different niche.

This article was originally published in the Sep/Oct 07 issue of YourTradingEdge magazine (www.YTEmagazine.com). All rights reserved. © Copyright 2009, MarketSource International Pty Ltd.

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