Mastering Trade Selection and Management

by Jay Norris and Al Gaskill

A slow starting book, I didn’t think much of this tome as I started wading through the early introductory pages. As I often do when reading something I’m not very familiar with, I tried to think of myself as someone other than myself, namely, a day trader, which I take to be the target audience of this book. Even at that, I was thinking this couldn’t possible more than a three dollar sign book, maybe even only two. It was highly technical even when addressing very general subjects, and the tone seemed a bit condescending. I also didn’t care much for the fact that the authors kept flogging one of their earlier books. As I continued reading, however, I began thinking that not only would I give the authors three dollar signs, I might stretch it to four, because everything they were saying was making sense. Sure, it was still very technical, and it was definitely becoming more and more geared for a specialized, limited type of short-term trader, but the charts (candlesticks) made sense and accurately illustrated the authors’ points, and the strategies continued to be sensible and feasible. As I neared the end of the book, despite reading for the umpteenth time that such-and-such was a topic covered in their other book, I found myself thinking that the information conveyed in this book is valuable, useful, practical, and reasonable, and anyone who is serious about making money in some kind of financial market would probably be able to use some of what this book contains. They close out the book with concrete trading plans (not strategies or analysis) tailored to different markets and traders and built on their earlier chapters of analysis, trend spotting, and trade timing, which was something I’d never seen before from a book like this. So finally, I was convinced I was reading a five dollar sign book. True, had I not received a complimentary copy from the publisher, this is probably not a book that I would have read, but I have to say, even though I’ve no intention of becoming a short-term trader or delving into forex and commodities markets, I learned a lot reading this book and it gave me plenty of ideas which I think will work for long-term stock trading. Who knows? I may even pick up Norris and Gaskill’s first book.