The Electronic Day Trader: Successful Strategies for On-line Trading

In The Electronic Day Trader, authors Marc Friedfertig and George West explain the rationale behind day trading and offer strategies that can help you become successful at this fast game of speculation and timing. The authors write, "Day trading appears so deceptively easy, yet in reality it is a never-ending challenge. It is a game, an opportunity to match wits against the majority and thereby prosper. Day trading the stock market is the ultimate opportunity to speculate and the ultimate game."

The book goes into great detail about how the various stock exchanges work and shows how to get direct access to the NASDAQ through various electronic trading systems. If you're looking for an investment book that will help you build a retirement portfolio, look elsewhere. But if the daily fluctuations in the price of a stock make your heart beat faster and if you're seriously interested in honing your skill as day trader or want to become one, The Electronic Day Trader is definitely worth a look. --Harry C. Edwards

Product Description
In 1998, McGraw-Hill's The Electronic Day Trader became a worldwide phenomenon--and spent months on the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, and New York Times bestseller lists. Now, this new paperback edition revisits the hardcover edition's electronic day trading techniques and mechanics, and adds a new introduction discussing today's evolving electronic day trading environment.

The Electronic Day Trader continues to give the reader a firsthand, no-holds-barred introduction to the world of electronic trading. The authors--accomplished veterans in this hot field--share trading philosophies and strategies that include:
Workings of the various electronic order entry systems
Effective trading techniques based on technical analysis
All-important psychological aspects of day trading

Marc Friedfertig and George West (New York, NY) wrote Electronic Day Traders' Secrets, and offer seminars on electronic day trading. Friedfertig is a registered principal for Broadway Trading. He formerly traded index futures with the New York Futures Exchange. West is the president of Broadway Consulting Group.

Also do you think our authors would be able to spot "managerial talent" over a few aspiring proprietory traders? No they hire guys who have previously filed bankruptcy in their past and pipe up their accomplishments, which are a joke when you realized they bailed on creditors!!

Save yourself a dime and avoid it-if someone gives it to you, and you can't return it, use to start the BBQ grill. I could go on and on about SEC/NASD violation, getting short on a downtick, etc but I wont!


Obsolete   June 27, 2003
 9 out of 13 found this review helpful

This book completely fails to realistically convey the relative risks and profit potential for the average wannabe day trader. Im talking about someone with less than a few thousand to play the market. Unless you have big bucks and Level II quotes forget day trading unless you are very lucky. In the trading parlance, I wish I had a short position on this book at its current price, and could cover my short at the current used price! Save your money.


good   July 11, 2001
 3 out of 38 found this review helpful

good book , nice condition


essentially obsolete   May 7, 2001
 90 out of 92 found this review helpful

This book is essentially obsolete just three years after its publication. Stocks are now traded in decimals, and the spreads on heavily traded stocks are now almost nonexistent, sometimes being less than one cent a share. Consequently, you can forget about any of the strategies or information regarding "pocketing the spread", "getting between the spread", etc. With the proliferation of ECN trading, the influence of the market makers in a stock has been markedly reduced. In a stock that trades 80 million shares per day, a market maker with a 100,000 share block is not going to be able to move the stock significantly, and ECN trading can overwhelm his influence. Likewise, information gleaned from the Level II screen, while still useful if one knows what to look for, is no longer the Holy Grail. Also, day trading firms, like the authors' "Broadway Trading" are on the way to extinction, now that some big online brokers offer direct-access trades for less than a quarter of what day trading firms charge, as well as offering free Level II quotes and other information not available to the day trading firms.

While the book contains a few nuggets of trading info, it was not written in a logical, easy to follow manner. As has always been the case, aspiring traders need to study the markets intensely and develop their own trading techniques; they cannot expect that any book will teach them how to be successful in a field where very few people ever succeed.