Markets and Momentum: How Profiling Gives Traders an Advantage - Hardcover

by James F. Dalton (Author), Robert B. Dalton (Author)

Elevate your trading strategy with actionable market insights from an industry pioneer

In Markets & Momentum: How Profiling Gives Traders an Advantage, James F. Dalton and co-author Robert B. Dalton dramatically expand on their revolutionary first book, Markets in Profile. Summarizing a lifetime of experience--from formative memberships on the CBOE and CBOT to his role as UBS Director of Hedge Fund Research--Jim challenges traders to recognize that market-understanding must be balanced with self-understanding. Jim's deep market savvy is complimented by Rob's engaging prose that adds a wealth of insight about the powerful influence of unexamined emotions, impulses, and habits on your trading success.

Jim promotes trader education through Jim Dalton Trading (jimdaltontrading.com), along with his partners Jennifer Loh and Raghu Rajput, driven by the knowledge that the only reliable, objective, actionable information is market-generated. This information is scientifically organized via the Market Profile, which is simply a contextual organization of time, price, and volume--the core components of any financial transaction.

Markets & Momentum offers:

• Deep dives into issues that lead more than 90% of day traders to lose money, including fading trend days, FOMO, doubling down on losing trades, and failing to let profits run.
• Strategies for minimizing the influence of news hype and analysis overload in order to remain focused on the only information that matters.
• Techniques for understanding your own emotional and intuitive reactions, and learning to avoid making impulsive decisions.

This book is ideal for day and short-term traders, and for longer-term investors seeking to improve trade entries and exits. Jim Dalton's trading insights are supported by six decades of learning directly from the markets, as well as from his wide base of educational clients.

Markets & Momentum is a must-read for traders looking for guidance on developing the insights and skills necessary for conquering the short-term market.

Front Jacket

Over 90% of all speculative traders active today lose money. To beat these tough odds, you must confront a daunting obstacle: the preconceived notions that will lead you to ineffective trading strategies.

In Markets and Momentum: How Profiling Gives Traders an Advantage, trading pioneer James F. Dalton delivers a startlingly insightful new take on how to interpret market-generated information while remaining calm and objective in the frenzied environment of the contemporary market. You'll learn how to reliably make profitable trades by following a "less is more" strategy--focusing on the right information, not the most information.

The author explains how the greatest impediment to trading success is you--your bad habits, illogical shortcuts, and irrational rationalizations--and how you can avoid making unwise decisions based on those factors by understanding yourself and your ways of thinking.

This is a handbook for traders beginning their investing journeys with a clean slate, as well as more seasoned investors who are ready to level-up their game and improve their returns. It's designed to help you master the foundational elements of market understanding through the only reliable, objective source of actionable information: the market itself.

Markets and Momentum dives deep into key concepts, including fading trend days, fear-of-missing-out (FOMO), doubling down on iffy trades, failing to let profits run, and overloading on news and analysis. The book also shows you how to avoid reacting to an unexamined emotional impulse as you learn to separate good intuition from illogical reactions.

Few traders possess the experience, skills, and knowledge they need to improve their odds in a discipline that punishes those who act without thinking. Are you ready to become one of those few?

Back Jacket

PRAISE FOR MARKETS AND MOMENTUM

"In recent years, Jim Dalton has been one of the premier educators in the trading world. His grounding in Market Profile has helped traders think about opportunities multidimensionally, integrating price, time, and volume. In Markets and Momentum, Jim teams up with Rob Dalton to integrate the trading of market psychology with the psychology of trading. Developing and experienced traders alike will find practical wisdom and actionable information in this readable and insightful guide."
--BRETT STEENBARGER, PHD, Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, SUNY Upstate Medical University; Trading Psychologist and Author

"Jim Dalton has imparted a great deal of useful information in this book. The most important aspect concerns delving into your own psychological approach to why you're winning or losing. This is an extremely insightful and important concept. Keeping a journal, letting your profits run, honestly assessing your performance are all things that a successful trader needs to do. Even experienced traders should be able to learn something from this book."
--LAWRENCE G. McMILLAN, Author, Options as a Strategic Investment

"Trading is a pursuit that is simple but far from easy. The mechanics are not difficult to learn, but success in the markets is often elusive until one can control their emotions, overcome cognitive dissonance, and act decisively on nuances that most others will miss. As Dalton states in his new book, it is a constant evolution towards a point 'where the subtleties of intuition dance harmoniously with the complexities of experience.' Being in the trader education space for almost 20 years now, I have rare insight into what newer traders struggle with most. Many are simply misunderstanding the importance of context, the difference between price and value, and how to make decisions according to market generated information (MGI) as opposed to news, bias, or opinion. These are the principles at the core of Markets and Momentum and the starting point for true market understanding that can lead to the consistency you seek."
--PETER REZNICEK, shadowtrader.net

"I wanted to say thank you--I wouldn't be where I am today without your knowledge, experience, and well-crafted e-courses. Your education has not only helped change my life, but also impacted my family's future. Instead of being buried in debt, we've had the freedom to live more fully and even give back. You've made a difference not only in my life but in the lives of many others as well."
--PAUL THOMAS, Independent Trader

Author Biography

JAMES F. DALTON is a trading pioneer. He has four decades' experience at the intersection of markets and human behavior. He is a former Senior Executive Vice President of the Chicago Board Options Exchange and former Director of Hedge Fund Research for UBS Financial Services. He is also the author of Mind Over Markets and Markets in Profile and the founder of Jim Dalton Trading.