by Michael Sincere
by Sarah Potter
I’m reviewing these two books together because they cover a
lot of the same material. Obviously, Sarah Potter’s book, Trade Like A Pro is a
lot broader and focuses mainly on trading strategies, analysis, methodologies,
charts, graphs, and the nitty gritty details of making regular, and hopefully
profitable, trades. Michael Sincere, on the other hand, in his book focuses
only on options: what they are, how they work, and how to use them to broaden
one’s investment strategy. Although options are certainly a speculator’s game,
they also have a role in the average investor’s portfolio, whereas everything
in Trade Like a Pro is geared to the person who is going to do just that:
trade.
I found Mr. Sincere’s book much more up my alley, both from
the aspect of the types of trades and the prices of the examples he uses, to
the step by step walk through of a typical (and not so typical) options trade.
Ms. Potter, on the other hand, assumes you know a lot and are ready for some
advanced topics and analysis, and she also assumes you have a large war chest
to start with. (For example, Mr. Sincere’s typical options sample trade uses
Boeing at $88, while Ms. Potter uses Mastercard at $550. Does it matter in the
end? Not really, but I know that $50K trades in options are nowhere in my near
future, whereas $9K probably is.) I've been buying and selling equities for 28
years but had never ventured into options. After reading Understanding Options,
I opened my options account and made my first trade. It really was as simple as
reading the book, following the instructions, and executing the trade. As for
Trade Like a Pro, I gained valuable insight into trend analysis and found
remarkably similar approaches in simple moving average usage that is close to
what I already do (and have been doing for years).
Really, I think reading these books together is a good
approach, as they have similarities and differences in investment strategies
that allow the reader to creatively think about their own investments (or in
some cases, gambles). I rate Mr. Sincere’s book slightly higher because it is
much easier to read and understand and for his laser focus on this one topic,
but that is not to say it is better than Ms. Potter’s, whose book is full of
useful ideas, suggestions and strategies. In the end, reading one or both of
these books is sure to help most anyone who invests or speculates regularly in
equities markets.
