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In today’s episode, you’ll discover the pro traders who had made a huge impact on my trading journey.
So tune in right now…
Resources
The Price Action Trading Strategy Guide
Trend Following Trading Strategy Guide
Transcript
Hey, hey, what’s up my friend?
In today’s episode, I want to take you behind the curtains and share with you my trading heroes whom I learned the most from for trading.
First and foremost, I have learnt a lot from a ton of traders out there. I’m not a genius whatsoever, so I read a lot, I analyse what other traders are doing. And in today’s episode, I want to share with you, who had the biggest impact on my trading.
One thing to note is that the traders that I’m about to mention might not necessarily be the creator of certain concepts or whatsoever, some of these concepts or techniques might have originated from someone else.
But the reason why I credit these traders is because they share their knowledge in a way which resonates with me, even though they might not be the original creators of those concepts. I hope you understand where I’m coming from.
Also, sometimes I don’t even know who the original creator is. But the following people have the greatest influence on my trading and they are the people whom I’ve learned the techniques and strategies from, even though they might not be the ones who created the strategies.
Let’s split this episode into two parts since I am both a discretionary trader and a systems trader (or otherwise known as a quantitative trader).
I’ll first talk about the discretionary trading aspect and which pro traders I learned a lot from.
My discretionary trading hero: Adam Grimes
The first trader who comes to mind is Adam Grimes. He wrote an amazing book called The Art and Science of Technical Analysis.
The reason why I love his work is because he quantifies technical analysis, which is usually too subjective to deal with. He shares with you his thought process to what other technical aspects you should be focusing on.
He explains the why behind it, even backs it up with statistics and shares with you some timeless trading patterns that you can use to trade the markets. And that book is really insightful.
It dives deep into technical analysis, while most other books are just touching the surface. So really, Adam is a great person and that was a great book. I’ve learned a lot from him.
My discretionary trading hero: Stan Weinstein
Stan Weinstein wrote this very low profile book called Secrets of Profiting in Bull and Bear Markets. He is very low profile trader, I’m not sure why that book was not read widely but that book is amazing and opened my eyes to the four stages of the market:
- Accumulation stage
- Advancing stage
- Distribution stage
- Declining stage
That book also helped me understand relative strength, where you want to buy stocks which exhibiting signs of strength. Meaning that if the stock market goes up 5%, these stocks would go up 30%.
You want to find such stocks which went up more than the broader stock markets because these are the stocks which are “on steroids”. They are the ones that go up the most and have greater relative strength.
That book again opened up my eyes to the four stages of the market and the relative strength concept.
My discretionary trading hero: Lance Beggs
Lance Beggs from yourtradingcoach.com has been in the trading business for many years, even way before me. If you look at his blog, although it seems old-school and stuff like that, but trust me, the content is timeless.
He breaks down price action trading in a way where he doesn’t just treat it like a chart, but as a matrix, where you’re understanding where the participants are coming from and where are they going to put their stop orders, where will they get trapped and stuff like that.
If you’re interested in understanding the metagame of what other traders are doing, their thought process, where they will get trapped and how you can profit from them, that is the person you want to study from – Lance Beggs. He is a price action trader as well.
My discretionary trading hero: Bob Volman
Bob Homan wrote a couple of books on forex trading. But the first book was the one that taught me a very important concept of looking for a buildup before the price breaks out. And that’s a concept that I learned from Bob.
There are more traders out there who I’ve learnt from. But these few traders made a huge impact, to my own discretionary trading, my own price action trading. Check out their works on Amazon and stuff like that, you should be able to find their books.
Moving on…
What about systems trading or quantitative trading? Who did I learn from? There are a group of traders whom I want to credit and acknowledge their work.
My systems trading hero: Andreas Clenow
I believe he manages a hedge fund and is its CIO, and he wrote a few books. The first book is called the Following the Trend. This book pretty much shares with you what futures trend following is about.
So before the book came out, I am into trend following but I just couldn’t piece the puzzles of systematic trend following, wondering what the hedge funds are doing.
That book pretty much gives you an insight into the way professionals adopt trend following and it gives you a trading system that you can use, validate, backtest. It explains the concepts, the logic behind it.
It’s a wonderful book, for those of you interested in systematic trend-following, this really brings you into the professional hedge fund trading world and how you can adopt systematic trend following.
My systems trading hero: Nick Radge
Nick Radge is an Australian trader who’s been in this business for like 30, 40 years. He wrote several books and the beauty about Nick is that he is very generous in his teaching. He has books, newsletter, courses, etc.
But if you’re not prepared to spend thousands of dollars, then just check out his newsletter, his website, and his e-books which you can get cheaply on Amazon. Those books are of substance. They actually share with you trading systems that work.
Well, you have to do your own backtesting and validation to see if it works for you, but he provides the full system for you to go and test it out, which helps you reduce your learning curve. That’s something very generous.
He doesn’t just write one or two books, I think he writes a number of books. So I highly recommend you to check it out as well if you’re into systems trading.
My systems trading heroes: Larry Connors & Cesar Alvarez
Larry Connors and Cesar Alvarez wrote a few books together. I think they wrote Short Term Trading Strategies together. Larry Connors also wrote Buy the Fear, Sell the Greed.
Their works are very tuned towards mean reversion trading in the stock markets. Basically buying dips in the stock markets and they explain to you why this works. They also give you rules that you can trade on (but you have to do your own backtesting and verification first).
But they are very generous in the realm of a mean reversion trading systems. And also another special shoutout to Cesar Alvarez, because he helps me with my own backtesting.
He is the kind of like the brain guy behind me doing all this backtesting work in the realm of quantitative trading.
So these are the group of people who have made a huge impact on my trading. I’m not sure about you, who has made the greatest impact for you? Whatever the case is, learn as much as possible. You don’t just learn trading for once and it’s over. No.
Because if you can see the evolution of my own trading, I started with discretionary trading at a prop firm as a short term day trader, then I traded the higher timeframe, swing trading, position trading, then I explored trend following, I moved into systems trading.
So as your circumstances and your goals change, your trading methodology has to change as well. And the reason why I’m starting to move more towards quantitative trading is because I’m running TradingwithRayner as an education business and I have a family to look after.
I can’t spend all day staring at the charts and I need to optimize my time and I need to do something that offers a greater ROI.
So quantitative trading is something that really suits me well, given my current circumstances. It might be different for you, but whatever the case is, whatever your goals are, you have to identify what is it and then find the trading strategy to fit your goals.
Sounds good?
With that said, I’ve come to the end of this episode and I’ll talk to you soon.