Today's Quote: “Man is a tool-making animal.” Benjamin Franklin

There are several good books out there about trading that should be on every trader’s must read list. If you were forced to choose one and only one, the only possible pick would be “Tools and Tactics for the Master Day Trader”. We are going to run a series of excerpts from the best selling book for the next series of lessons. Now in the words of the master trader himself, Oliver L. Velez…

It has always been my belief that the mastery of a few trading tools is all that’s necessary to become a highly successful trader. Most would-be successful traders are incapacitated by the false notion that in order to trade for a living, one must have accumulated a wealth of knowledge over countless years of experience. Not only is this not altogether true, the exact opposite is actually closer to the truth. In fact, it has been my experience that those who possess a limited amount of trading knowledge have a much better chance of becoming effective market players than their so-called overly experienced brethren. Why? Because varied market experiences, if not utilized and interpreted correctly, help to crystallize inaccurate beliefs. And inaccurate beliefs, which are allowed to exist over time, eventually flourish into full-blown, faulty ideologies that ultimately result m the trader’s ruin. Knowledge is power, but only if it’s the right knowledge. By mastering any two or three of the many trading techniques contained in the Tactics section of this book, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a consistently profitable trader. It literally only takes two or three workable techniques to rise to the top of this game we call trading, and we are certain you will find more than enough of them in this book. The best traders are minimalists. They find two or three tactics or techniques that work consistently. Once they’ve found them, they simply implement them over and over and over. Repetition really does have value.