One Good Trade: Inside the Highly Competitive World of Proprietary Trading

One good trade. How to plan, execute, review, repeat one good trade, then one good trade, then one good trade.

I don't often write reviews, but I really liked this book. I read this book in two days. I first heard about Mike Bellafiore through Dr Brett Steenbarger's blog, "Traderfeed".The title, "One Good Trade" refers to a process as taught by SMB Capital, a proprietary trading firm which Mr Bellafiore owns with a partner. The process entails following the seven fundamentals taught by SMB through the entry and exit of a trade and then going on to the next trade and following those fundamentals again and repeating this process for the rest of your trading life. The seven fundamentals are detailed in the book. Mr Bellafiore's emphasis is on this process. He states that making and losing money on any specific trade is not the focus, but following this process IS the focus and making one good trade after another by following these fundamentals is the essence of good trading. You can lose money on a trade, but if you follow these fundamentals and this process, your profit and loss statement will ultimately take care of itself. He compares this to sports teams and the way they practice the fundamentals over and over and then execute those fundamentals in the game. There are plenty of sports analogies here with the implication that an elite trader must go through the same kind of rigorous and disciplined training that successful athletes go through. Having played sports in high school and college and now trading full-time, I have to agree. The book begins with the explanation of this process and the principles of this process are felt throughout the book. Mr Bellafiore is not here to teach some new technical analysis technique, thank God. He basically states that his firm already knows those techniques. That's the easy part, the difficult part is training traders to FOLLOW and trade the patterns that he already knows are successful. This reminds me of the statement made by Paul Tudor Jones that you can give most people tomorrow's Wall Street Journal and they will STILL lose money. It's the difference between hitting perfect shots on the driving range and then executing those same shots in a competitive round of golf. The emphasis here is on the psychological side of trading which, for me, is really all there is. It doesn't really matter how well you can call markets if you are exiting trades with a .20 cent profit, because you are so exited about being right and making a little bit of money, when the target on the trade was a dollar, The emphasis is NOT on being right in your market forecasting skills, but on building the skills to execute each trade correctly. So Mr Bellafiore is stating that being right in and of itself is NOT enough, the trading process is MUCH more than calling markets correctly. Being right has much more to do with ego and pride than making money. So paying attention to the fundamentals and their execution rather than bragging rights about market direction is, for Mr Bellafiore, the STARTING point. And executing these fundamentals is MUCH more difficult than one anticipates and requires YEARS of dedication, sweat and hard work. No wonder there are so few elite traders or, for that matter, elite anything. It's not that correctly calling markets is not important, it is, it's just that forecasting becomes secondary to skill building and discipline.The book is sprinkled throughout with stories of traders, both successful and unsuccessful. I found these stories very interesting and I recognize one of the successful traders from Mr Bellafiore's blog. (A blog that, in my opinion, is worth your time). In one chapter, Mike Bellafiore describes the hiring process at SMB and how difficult it is to choose a person that will succeed as a trader. A Prop firm funds traders that they train and the firm makes money based upon the success or failure of these traders.Later on the author details some of the strategies commonly used by SMB traders. On the surface, these are similar to patterns which I think most traders are familiar with. The difference is in the application of these strategies and for that I think one may need to go through the SMB Training. I started trading before Prop firms became as popular as they are today. If I was just starting out today, I believe this is the route I would take if I was fortunate enough to be chosen. The hiring process is VERY selective. Mike Bellafiore is big on traders getting out there and sharing and exchanging ideas. As most independent traders know, this is a lonely profession. It doesn't have to be, but most traders are in a room full of screens with only their own minds and a few internet feeds. For me, I am happy Mike Bellafiore took the time to exchange his ideas with us. I am currently reading the book for the second time. This is definitely a book worth adding to your trading library.

My first read through of One Good Trade helped give me the confidence to start intraday trading full time in April 2011. Today, August 11th 2011, I just finished my 11th profitable day in a row during one of the most volitile market periods ever. For about a six months before reading One Good Trade I had intensely searched for an investing style that I could pour myself into full-time having handled my own investments very much part time over the last 18 years using more medium timeframe William O'Neil style of investing mixed with some options trading as well when I had the spare time. Over my 18 years of investing I have reads dozens if not hundreds books on everything ranging from Graham and Dodd value investing to Trend Following, commodities, options, futures and about anything else you can think of.For me One Good Trade is the book I wish I could have had 18 years ago and pretty much skip most of the rest. It is not because this book hands you a clean 10 point check list of what you need to do in a step by step fashion to execute profitable trades as an intraday trader. While there are many great strategies and some ground breaking concepts such as stocks-in-play covered within, cookie cutter strategies are not what this book is all about. For me One Good Trade is about learning how to think for yourself as a trader. If you read a book that does nothing but show you 10 different chart setups and then think you are going to go conquer the market, well, good luck because you will get crushed. Many of the reviews that feel this book falls short seem to think intraday trading should have a simple recipe, or that there is some universal magic key to the trading kingdom. Having a diverse playbook is important, and there are some universal concepts everyone should study, but if you do not learn to think for yourself and adapt to the ever changing markets you will be one of those who hands over your hard earned dollars to mother market.I have now read One Good Trade cover to cover 3 times and key sections 10 times or more. As I have been developing my trading skills and gained more experience tangling with the market on an intraday basis new concepts come alive in re-reads that did not stand out before I took a few lumps from the markets. There is no substitute for having money at risk with every tick of the market to create focus on what is important to learn, and make reading key sections of a trading book 10 times anything but mundane.Intraday trading is definitely not for everyone but for those looking to give it a shot I recommend first reading this book and then once you start trading, review every trade you make after the market close every day. The areas you need to work on will become glaringly obvious. Once you fix an issue, the next greatest weakness in your trading will be revealed and must be conquered and so on in a perpetual growth process. Each new trader will have a unique maze of issues to navigate on the path to consistantly profitable trading even though we all work in the same market. One Good Trade gave me the framework and tools to successfully tackle this journey on my own sitting at my work station in Florida. For those that are ready to give it a shot this book is priceless. One bad trade in the market can cost you more than the price of this book, and this book can shorten your learning curve enough to save you from hundreds of bad trades on your path to consistent profitability.

This book is based on a prop trading firm, it describes their inner working and based many of the chapters in their traders and partners. There is no concrete trading system or detailed system but a long compilation of stories to illustrate a point. If you are looking to enter the prop trading world, it is an excellent way to go