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The Professional Commodity Trader

Description:

Reprint of 1973 classic in which legendary futures trader Stanley Kroll describes his trading adventures and discusses his trading philosophy.

Commodity trading has recently received considerable attention from investors and observers alike. Small wonder, then, that more and more people would like to delve into the mind of the successful professional trader, to discover what makes him tick...What are the secrets of his success?

Stanley Kroll qualifies as one of the most successful professionals around-a fourteen-year veteran of the commodity markets who turned $650,000 of clients' and personal capital into 3 million in a period of two and half years.

Here is an intimate, guided tour inside the exciting, fast- moving world of the professional trader. Look over his shoulder as he operates in a frenzied market where fortunes can be made or lost overnight-where on can buy or sell $140,000 worth of a commodity future for only $4,000 margin, or 2.9 percent of the total market value.

Mistakes, miscalculations, errors of judgment-and there are plenty of them-are candidly analyzed. The successful professional is more concerned with scrutinizing his bad trades than with crowing about his good ones. What guidelines does he use? What about automatic trading systems and market advisory letters? Learn how to let your profits run but cut your losses short-how to do it, not just to talk about it. Learn how to avoid overtrading, yet still be there with a substantial position when the profits are divided up at the end of a major price move.

Contents:

Introduction  by Edward D. Dobson

• Preface xi
• 1 What Do You Do for an Encore? 1
• 2 An Objective Critique 3
• 3 It's a Living 17
• 4 The Most Important Chapter in the Book 25
• 5 The Copper Caper - How We're Going to Make a Million 34
• 6 And Here's to You, Jesse Livermore 41
• 7 Update on the Copper Caper - It Worked! 44
• 8 If You Think Cocoa Is Treacherous, Try Platinum 50
• 9 Buy High, Sell Low. "How Come We Always Lose?" 55
• 10 So the Speculators Sold Silver; Who Bought It and Why? 60
• 11 "Let's Just Do One Contract-How Much Can We Lose?" 65
• 12 What's More Important Than Knowing When to Trade? 68
• 13 A Modest Proposal "Buy Us Two Thousand Platinums" 75
• 14 The Platinum Kid Scores (???) 80
• 15 The Broker "Tells" You-but Who "Tells" the Broker? 86
• 16 Tiptoe into My Office and Be a Fly on the Wall 95
• 17 Victory at Sea, or, "Trading" from a Sailboat in the Virgin
  Islands 116
• 18 They Slide Faster Than They Glide, or, How We Dropped a
  Quick Million Dollars in Silver and Then Made It Back, with
  Interest 134
• Epilogue 151
• Appendix 157
• Index 175