Ran Neuner

Jim Paul's meteoric rise took him from a small town in Northern Kentucky to governor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, yet he lost it all―his fortune, his reputation, and his job―in one fatal attack of excessive economic hubris. In this honest, frank analysis, Paul and Brendan Moynihan revisit the events that led to Paul's disastrous decision and examine the psychological factors behind bad financial practices in several economic sectors. This book―winner of a 2014 Axiom Business Book award gold medal―begins with the unbroken string of successes that helped Paul achieve a jet-setting lifestyle and land a key spot with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. It then describes the circumstances leading up to Paul's $1.6 million loss and the essential lessons he learned from it―primarily that, although there are as many ways to make money in the markets as there are people participating in them, all losses come from the same few sources. Investors lose money in the markets either because of errors in their analysis or because of psychological barriers preventing the application of analysis. While all analytical methods have some validity and make allowances for instances in which they do not work, psychological factors can keep an investor in a losing position, causing him to abandon one method for another in order to rationalize the decisions already made. Paul and Moynihan's cautionary tale includes strategies for avoiding loss tied to a simple framework for understanding, accepting, and dodging the dangers of investing, trading, and speculating.

This book can be described as 1/3 trading psychology, 1/3 risk management and 1/3 technical analysis. My early days of trading were filled with frustration, confusion and constant losses. After making some of the same mistakes over and over again I began to adapt and learned a few tricks to minimize my losses. As I began passing these tricks on to my fellow traders through my twitter account and blog (chedstrading.blogspot.com) it launched me on a path of learning and teaching. With enough time that path led to dedicated studies of Japanese candlesticks and classical charting, and ultimately CMT certification. My career and brand have been built on “helping new traders avoid my old mistakes”, and this book is a natural extension of those efforts. This book is also a natural extension of my “Complete Beginners Guide to Trading” that I wrote back in 2017 when I was undergoing chemotherapy for lymphoma. I subsequently beat my cancer and wrote a book about that experience, and have since continued to grow in my journey as a trader and teacher. Building on my years of work with my twitter account, learning blog and various other writings on trading subjects, I am happy to now bring together in one place all those bits and pieces that have helped to make me a successful trader. I have personally made every single mistake mentioned in this book multiple times and therefore can speak from the heart, which I hope makes each lesson a little bit easier to learn. Thank you for reading and best of luck in your trading journey. Author's note: This version of the book has been updated to reflect the release of the audible format. Typos have been fixed and some of the words have been changed around to create a better flow.