The Complete Guide to Building a Successful Trading Business Paperback – October 3, 2006

After 17 years of ups and downs in various markets, I have looked for a fundamental plan to anchor my trading and enable my taking it to the next level with a consistent income stream. Out of several hundred books and videos, this is the only book I have read that fulfills its claim as a "complete guide". Yes, it is basic in it's checklist format of multiple simple steps, but as an example, it is certainly easier to dive into a 10 lot ES trade than it is to get out when the power fails to your machine, or the Internet fails and I haven't bothered to have the trading desk number accessible since everything has been running like clockwork the last few months. Oh, by the way, the market is now moving against me fast, spelled EXPENSIVE !! Stops, stops you say? Why get stopped out when I can monitor my position in real time? Er, I mean I used to be able to see the market in real time. Right now, I'd be thrilled to be able to talk with a live person who can get me flat after which I can access the damage to see how much this little oversight has cost me.Glamorous, fancy typeset is available on the $30-$150 books that leave you wondering why you paid all that money when you're done. But if you are serious and want to build your business for the longterm with no surprises, save your money and start with this as your first book. Do ALL the steps, however boring, before you buy your next book, which hopefully Mr. King will write. If I had, I could have avoided my $4 K adventure.

I attended a seminar through the Van Tharp Institute and saw this book in the possession of another trader. He told me Paul King was in Tharp's Super Trader program. I can't verify that, but I have no reason to doubt it. So I figured I would check out this book. I have a lot of Dr. Tharp's published material - Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom, Definitive Guide to Position Sizing, Peak Performance Home Study Course, How to Develop a Winning Trading System that Fits You, Business Planning For Traders and Investors, etc. I have found this book to be of value in conjunction with Tharp's books.This book pulls most of the aspects of Tharp's books together and, in a way, gives the "trader in training" a good outline for all the work he needs to do to have a successful business. I found the sections on "The Importance of Exits", "Monitoring" and "Serial Dependency" to be quite useful. In another section the author goes through the development of TradeStation code based on a simple SMA crossover with a 12 bar exit, which then is added on to with various types of other exits and loss prevention stops. You can see how the individual steps first reduce the effectiveness of the system; then, as the right exits are added, end up getting you back to a decent system. I found that quite instructive as to what a trader needs to do to develop a sound trading system.Overall, this book covers the entire gamut of building a trading business. It is broad but not deep. I think it offers a good snapshot of all the issues facing a trader. This book is fairly inexpensive and, compared to the cost of Tharp's materials (the ones available only from his company), is a decent bargain.

I was in a process of setting up my FOREX Trading company and was creating a skeleton of my business plan (not an easy task to do from scratch) . I have read a lot of books about the process but none of them gave me what I was looking for - a detailed and step by step approach on how to do that until I found this book.I was impressed by how methodically it was written and it is VERY easy to follow. The author thought though every single detail of the process and provided a set of samples to be used to create your own plan. The book based on a real life experience of the author and provides very valuable information not found anywhere else, so far.I found this book very easy to read (and fun as well). The most important this is THE ONLY book of its kind that really gives you also a good picture of what trading business is about.The third part of it describes the life-cycle of trading systems from an idea thought a development and implementation process to a retirement stage.If you would like to built or in a process of building your own trading business - this book is A MUST to read.