Mastering The Trade by John Carter: My Review

Call me cheap but I always try and find a bargain when buying training material. I got a like new copy of John Carters book for about $33 shipped from Ebay. I tore through it this weekend and got it read. I skipped a lot of charts, since I already understood the concepts behind his setups.

I figured the $33 was would more than pay for itself in the education I would get.
I will sum up the major concepts and list them as pros and cons in my opinion.

Pros:
Top down approach, researches all markets, has an idea of the big picture.
Theories on stop runs moving the markets churning the novices.
Psychology - most important aspect of trading.
Market Internals
Setups for Trades
Business/Trading plan

Cons:
Gap Play
Theories on 5m Market Volume predicting market direction for the day
Computer advice
Brick Play
3:52 play

These are just my opinions. The most important thing for me was seeing a real trading plan. I finally understand just how detailed it should be to give the trader a direction every trade and every day for the whole year. This alone was worth the price of admission.

Some of the trading strategies just do not resonate with me. The computer advice was good for the average computer owner, but was not helpful to me.

I suggest any trader or novice read this book. There are many good self checks in the book to help keep you out of impulse trades. I really took away a sense of needing to tighten up my plan and really focus on getting consitent following strict rules and goals. I plan to revisit this book many times and maybe backtest some of his setups more. Perhaps I am missing the market direction analysis and not understand it deeply enough right now. He is really a swing and position trader at heart (I think) so he tends to really analyze the bigger picture and timeframes.

I like the top down approach to the markets by doing daily checklists and research. I may not see the relevance for my particular system in doing so. This may change over time as I oneday hope to swing trade, position trade and daytrade all at the same time. His trade setups are valid and there are many many chart examples. I found the most value however in the last chapters especially getting to see his trading plan example.