ForexSpirit

Adventures of a Currency Trader is a different sort of trading book.

It doesn’t have the usual format where topics are discussed in discrete chapters.

The book’s subtitle gives a much better description of what is in store for the intrepid reader: A Fable about Trading, Courage and Doing the Right Thing.

I love fables, so I was looking forward to being taught some valuable lessons about trading, courage and doing the right thing.

Rob Booker has much to teach the neophyte trader and the format in which he has chosen to do so is rarely used in the realm of trading books. He uses characters and good old fashioned plot to get across the information which he feels is vital for success as a currency trader. The only other trading book which I know that uses a similar structure is the classic Reminiscences of a Stock Operator.

Harry Banes is stuck in a dead-end job. He’s married, has kids, and is drowning in debt. Seduced by a currency trading television infomercial he falls for the dream of easy money.

He makes every beginner’s mistake in the book and soon blows up his first trading account. His day job suffers too from his new found trading obsession and he finds himself redundant to boot.

All is not totally lost as Harry has had the good forture to make acquaintances with some real professional traders. He soon finds himself being mentored by an experienced, successful trader who sees enough in Harry to believe that he has the raw materials to make it as a trader.

Harry learns many valuable lessors along the way. He stops lying to himself and all those around him. He faces squarely up to reality and takes responsibility for all of his actions. He learns to work hard towards what he wants; that he is the only one who can get himself to where he wants to be.

He has to work with others in a mutually beneficial way. He works in partnership with his wife so that they can trust each other when it comes to money and the risk that Harry takes on his trades.

Seeing all these trading truths in a regular story format is nothing if not refreshing. I also think it has the added benefit of really bringing home the impact that trading can have on your life.

There are many ups and downs on the road to trading success. Your emotions will be all over the place at times. Seeing Harry experience these emotions and how it subsequently affects his actions and those around him is certainly a valuable way to teach this subject.

When we’re told how to trade in other trading books the knowledge and recommendations are generally abstract. It is hard to know for sure how well we will be able to assimilate that knowledge and how well we will act upon it. Seeing how Harry acts and the often disastrous consequences of his actions somehow provides a more real sense of the difficulties in learning to trade.

Trading advice is often given in the form of platitudes. With Harry Banes we can get to experience one fictional character’s emotions and actions. If nothing else this might help as a barometer against which we can judge how we ourselves might act in the future if we were to follow a similar, but almost certainly different, path to trading success.

As a trading coach, Rob Booker has trained a large number of aspiring traders. I’m sure many of the foibles and weaknesses that are all too common have been embodied in the Harry Banes that we find at the beginning of this fable. The Harry Banes at the end of the book is the sort of trader that Rob wants all of his students to become: hardworking, dedicated, honest, inquisitive and humble.

While Rob Booker paints Harry Banes as everyman, it is had not to see a bit of Rob in him too. Maybe it’s just a function of Rob writing about what he knows best, or maybe he was just tying to exorcise his lawyer background by having Harry escape from a similar fate.

The advice in the book will be invaluable to the newbie trader and a pertinent reminder to those traders who have come across it before. Hopefully the interesting way in which the information is delivered will mean that it will stick around in the reader’s mind and make a lasting impression on their future trading activities than if it had been delivered in the more traditional stoic prose of other investment advisory books.

I do have a few things to nit pick regarding the contents of the book. Annoyingly, there are a few grammatical errors in the text.

While there is plenty of good information in the book Rob doesn’t do a wholly accurate description of lots. A lot is just described as $100,000 worth pf currency rather than 100,000 units of the base currency in the pair being traded. Rob probably did this to keep things simple (due to the dollar denominated profits and losses discussed), as the main currencies that Harry Banes trades initially are the GBP-USD and EUR-USD. It irked me slightly.

Maybe the extra explanation and calculations would have been beneficial to the reader. Or maybe Rob tried it that way and decided it didn’t bring enough benefit to offset the extra difficulty in grasping the concept for an absolute beginner, who I am sure is the book’s real target audience.

The only real error that I spotted in the book (going along with it’s logic of $100,000 being a standard lot no matter the pair being traded) is on page 129 where $500,000 worth of currency is described as a half standard lot, when in fact it is five standard lots.

Rob has a nice flowing writing style, and he has done a remarkably good job in integrating a complex subject such as currency trading, with its high maths content and graphical charts, into a compelling, page turning narrative. The characters are interesting and engaging.

Here’s hoping that we all have the same good fortune to learn from the right people and have the success of Harry Banes in our own lives.