The Laws Of Trading: A Trader'S Guide To Better Decision-Making For Everyone

Trading books generally break down into two categories: the ones which purport to teach how to make money trading, and the memoir-style books recounting scandals and similar bad behavior. Purveyors of the former don't have profitable trades to teach; if they did they'd keep those trades to themselves. The latter, though frequently entertaining, don't leave the reader with much that's tangibly applicable to their own lives. The Laws of Trading is different. It's a book about decision-making through the lens of a prop trading. It addresses the common flaws and biases in the way we think that behavioral and cognitive science academics have pinpointed but humanizes them for day-to-day decisions who must react real-time. While interesting and revealing, behavioral economists generally provide little in the way of concrete recommendations which people can use to improve their own thinking. The world needs a book by a prop trading who has lived and breathed trading for a living, drawing upon years of insights on the trading floor in real markets, good and bad, going sideways, crashing, or bubbling over. Trading becomes the instructional lens to learn about great decision-making in all walks of life. Trading is distilled rational decision-making, a skill which is in high demand and whose qualified instructors are in short supply. The trading-based model is taking over whole industries. Online advertising, the gig economy, electrical power generation, cryptocurrencies, etc. People need concrete actionable knowledge to navigate this world.

* The book introduces, develops, and applies one law per chapter. This makes it easy not only to remember useful concepts, but also to have them readily accessible in any situation.

* The core content of the book has been used to training successful prop traders and, in that since, has been extended to create a must-read on powerful, profitable, decision-making in which you gain an edge. For the first time, core concepts and ideas which are used in the world's most successful trading firms have been developed, organized, and made available to the broader public. You will learn how to think about the "special edge" of your organization, or yourself. What are you good at exactly? How do we leverage this? As large online companies take over more of the economy this becomes a more pressing question.

* You will learn how to handle the interaction of people with machines that make decisions. This an important aspect of the current global "AI moment" that is impacting anyone and everyone who participates in buying and selling a daily basis in the global economy.

* The author will share a "bonus" digital ancillary, an Excel spreadsheet with various worked examples would be a useful tool for readers. These examples expand on the scenarios described in the book, allowing to reader to explore more interesting and complex decision-making situations.

Agustin Lebron started out as an electrical engineer, then became a trader and researcher at Jane Street Capital, arguably the most successful prop trading firm in the world. There, he developed training materials for new traders and trading interns. The Financial Crisis of 2008 was an interesting time to undertake a career in finance, and those formative experiences have stayed with him throughout his career. Over the years he has traded many kinds of securities: equities, futures, commodities, options, and an assortment of other derivatives. He has created, developed and implemented several successful trading strategies, and has evaluated and advised on the development of dozens of others. He currently lives in Carlsbad CA and runs Essilen Research, a consulting firm dedicated to applying insights from the world of finance more broadly. His expertise is teaching individuals and organizations how to think rationally in competitive uncertain environments.