A selection of 15 books across five areas — markets, technical analysis, risk and psychology, market structure, and fixed income — chosen by our research desk for clients who want to go further than a short guide. For each title we explain what it covers, which readers will get the most from it, and where its limits are. We do not sell books or link to retailers; the title and author are sufficient to locate any of them.
Three books on what a market is and how people behave inside one. Most useful before the first live trade.
Edwin Lefèvre · 1923 · George H. Doran (many editions since)
What it covers. A century old and still the most accurate description of what it feels like to be right too early, wrong at size, and tempted to average down. The markets changed; the operator did not.
Best suited to. Every trader. It is written as a novel and reads as one.
Note. It is not a trading method. Its value is in the psychology, not in the trades described.
Jack D. Schwager · 1989 · New York Institute of Finance
What it covers. Interviews with traders who made money over decades, and the thing they have in common is not a strategy — it is that every one of them talks about losing before they talk about winning.
Best suited to. Newer traders. It shows that successful approaches differ widely, and what they nonetheless share.
Mark Douglas · 2000 · Prentice Hall Press
What it covers. The clearest statement of the idea that a trading edge is a probability across many trades, not a prediction about the next one — and why that is so hard to act on.
Best suited to. Traders who find it difficult to keep to a stop loss once a position moves against them.
Note. Deliberately repetitive; the second half can be read selectively.
The standard references on technical analysis, several of them by the originators of the methods themselves, including clear statements of what a chart cannot tell you.
John J. Murphy · 1999 · New York Institute of Finance
What it covers. The standard reference: every indicator, pattern and term defined in one place. Where an online guide and Murphy disagree, Murphy is the authority.
Best suited to. Anyone who wants a single technical-analysis reference. A book to consult rather than read cover to cover.
J. Welles Wilder Jr. · 1978 · Trend Research
What it covers. Where RSI, ATR, the parabolic SAR and the directional movement index come from — the original definitions, with the arithmetic, from the engineer who invented them.
Best suited to. Traders using RSI or ATR who want to understand what the numbers measure. Short and readable.
Note. The parameter choices (14 periods) were made for daily commodity charts in 1978. They are conventions, not laws.
John Bollinger · 2001 · McGraw-Hill
What it covers. The inventor explaining his own indicator, including the ways it is commonly misread — in particular that a touch of a band is not in itself a signal.
Best suited to. Traders who use the bands as buy and sell lines; the book explains why that is a misuse.
Steve Nison · 1991 · New York Institute of Finance
What it covers. The book that brought candlesticks to Western trading. Explains what each shape means as a record of who won the session, rather than as a magic symbol.
Best suited to. Anyone who trades from a candlestick chart.
Note. Pattern names are memorable; their reliability is modest, as the author himself makes clear.
Position sizing, probability and the psychology of decisions — the subjects that most often decide whether an account survives its first year.
Ralph Vince · 1992 · John Wiley & Sons
What it covers. Position sizing as mathematics rather than feel: why the same strategy can compound or blow up depending only on the fraction risked per trade.
Best suited to. Traders who already have a method and want a rigorous approach to position size. Not a first book.
Note. Dense. The "optimal f" idea is for understanding, not for use at full size — Vince himself says to trade a fraction of it.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb · 2001 · Texere
What it covers. How much of what appears to be skill in markets is chance that has not yet reversed, and why survivorship distorts the record. Uncomfortable reading, and sound.
Best suited to. Traders considering an increase in size after a good run.
Daniel Kahneman · 2011 · Farrar, Straus and Giroux
What it covers. The research behind loss aversion, anchoring and overconfidence — the three biases that cost traders the most — from the psychologist who won the Nobel prize in economics for finding them.
Best suited to. All readers. It is not a trading book, which is part of its value.
Note. Long. The chapters on prospect theory and loss aversion are the most relevant to trading.
How markets are actually organised: dealers, order books, execution and the reasons prices behave as they do.
Larry Harris · 2003 · Oxford University Press
What it covers. Why there is a spread, who the dealer is, why prices gap, what a limit order really does to the queue — the mechanics of markets, explained by an academic who writes plainly.
Best suited to. Readers who want to understand execution, including why a stop fills where it does. Long, but each chapter stands alone.
James Rickards · 2011 · Portfolio / Penguin
What it covers. A readable account of why governments care about their exchange rates and what they do about it — the background to every central-bank headline on the economic calendar.
Best suited to. Forex traders who follow the news and want the history behind it.
Note. The author has strong views and predictions; read it for the history, not the forecasts.
Michael Lewis · 2014 · W. W. Norton
What it covers. Equity markets, not forex, but the best popular explanation of latency, order routing and why "the price you saw" and "the price you got" can differ by design.
Best suited to. Readers curious about execution and order routing. A weekend read.
Fixed income and interest rates, which underpin every other market and are the basis of our bond CFDs.
Frank J. Fabozzi (editor) · 1983 · McGraw-Hill (9th edition 2021)
What it covers. The professional reference on fixed income: pricing, yield, duration, credit and the Eurobond market. A book to consult rather than read through.
Best suited to. Clients trading bond CFDs who want the primary reference behind our own bond guides.
Note. Very long and expensive; most readers will need only specific chapters.
Annette Thau · 1992 · McGraw-Hill (3rd edition 2010)
What it covers. Fixed income for a person, not a desk: what a yield means, why prices fall when rates rise, how to read a bond quote. The gentle version of Fabozzi.
Best suited to. Readers new to fixed income. Start here and move to Fabozzi if more depth is needed.
Reading is preparation, not a method. Our own guides cover the mechanics of the instruments we offer; the glossary is for the words these books assume you know; and a demo account is where a chapter turns into a habit. Nothing on this page is investment advice; none of these authors has any connection with Ultimo Securities.