The Day Traders: The Untold Story of the Extreme Investors and How They Changed Wall Street Forever - Hardcover

Millman, Gregory J.

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18 ratings by Goodreads

9780812931860: The Day Traders: The Untold Story of the Extreme Investors and How They Changed Wall Street Forever

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0812931866 ISBN 13: 9780812931860

Publisher: Times Business, 1999

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The gold rush that is revolutionizing Wall Street and the markets--the story of day trading as it's never been told
In The Day Traders, Gregory Millman goes behind the scenes to reveal the truth about a modern gold rush that has people from all walks of life playing the market online, in real time, just like Wall Street's biggest pros. This is the story of the extreme investing scene, where the upside dazzles and the threat of financial injury is dire. And whether the day-trading phenomenon lasts a hundred years or ends tomorrow, the markets we know as "Wall Street" will never be the same. Millman chronicles how that happened and why, who wins and who loses.
Here are just a few of the players you will meet:
�  The "King of the Bandits," the first upstart to beat the Wall Street establishment at its own game
�  The techno-rebels who launched a revolution in the markets and put the New York Stock Ex-change and Nasdaq on the run
�  The shady courtroom antagonists whose im-broglio of lawsuits and investigations have pried the lid off day trading's best-kept secrets--including allegations of fraud, money laundering,
corporate espionage, racketeering, and more
This is a story of people testing themselves against almost impossible odds. "Trading is incredibly intense," says one psychologist. "It can suck you in. At the end of the day you feel good or bad about yourself as a person based on whether you've made or lost money." One young doctor won so much playing the markets in med school that he left medicine for the life of a trader, only to spiral down into compulsive gambling, barely escaping the worst.
Step inside a day-trading course with Millman and take an objective look at the methods and lessons of the game. Meet other would-be traders: a mother-and-daughter team, a Thai immigrant, a former small-business owner seeking a new career after disability ended his first, a onetime mining engineer trying to regain his self-esteem after being laid off for several years. All of them are eager to join the virtual gold rush and try their luck at a high-stakes game whose first rule is: Forget everything you ever knew about investing.
Millman shows why the game gets harder even as it gets bigger, and shows how technology is turning day trading into an international phenomenon, opening new markets and breaking old rules. Some have found a way to make millions even on losing trades--like the failed Texas trader who lost big online but won bigger in court by suing the investor who lent him money to cover margin calls.
The Day Traders also includes "The Extreme Investor's Manual"--a handy how-to look at day trading that includes the principles of successful trading as well as a guide to taking your broker to court if things go awry, as they frequently do in this high-stakes world.

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Review:

If you're thinking about day trading for a living, take a cold shower and then read The Day Traders. If you read the book first, you may not need the shower. If you do both and still want to day trade, you may well have what it takes to succeed, and this book will certainly help. Gregory J. Millman, a financial journalist and author of The Vandal's Crown, tells a behind-the-scenes story of how technology and scandal brought bucket shops to cyberspace, how ordinary folks, exploiting the disintegration of the old order, are becoming gunslingers in an extreme financial video game offering danger to all who try it and limitless rewards to those few who succeed.

Day traders must have intense focus and discipline, keen minds, fast reflexes--oh, and plenty of capital. Their prosperity depends on entering up to 300 trades a day, successfully pitting themselves against the best professional traders at the biggest Wall Street houses. And it's not getting any easier, for as day trading has made markets more efficient--narrowing spreads and increasing liquidity--more efficient markets make successful day trading even more difficult as the spreads narrow. Millman interviews the patriarchs and prophets of modern day trading, along with technologists, regulators, lawyers, market makers and of course--lots of day traders. A psychologist who treats many day traders says the game is pathologically addictive with sometimes fatal consequences. There's a chapter devoted to the bucket-shop wizard of the Gilded Age, the first day trading master, Jesse Livermore, whose penetrating insights are gospel for many traders (and immortalized in Edwin Lef�vre's Reminiscences of a Stock Operator). Both Livermore and a recent Atlanta day trader blew their brains out in the end, the latter taking several other day traders with him.

But those who aspire to the calling will find much useful information and advice here, including a checklist to consider before starting, and an overview of a month-long "boot-camp" course on markets, trading technology, and extreme investing. Everyone else will find a vastly entertaining and informative read about an important but somewhat bizarre aspect of our market system and how it works. --Scott Harrison

About the Author:

Gregory J. Millman has written for many publications, including Fortune, Forbes, Worth, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washing-ton Post. His previous book, The Vandal's Crown: How Rebel Currency Traders Overthrew the World's Cen-tral Banks, was a Business Week bestseller and has been translated into nine languages.

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