47 books like Technical Analysis of Stock Trends

Of all the books about trading written over the decades, perhaps none is still so beloved, revered, and followed as this 1923 classic by journalist Edwin Lefèvre. Although technically a work of fiction, the book really is about the life and trading style of one of the greatest speculators of all time, Jesse Livermore (told under the guise of “Larry Livingston”).

What makes this book such a treasure is not just its fun prose, and interesting glimpse into what the process of investing in old exchanges and “bucket shops” was over a century ago, when ticker-tape and board boys with chalk and ladders were one’s only information about market prices, but also how the mind of one of the world’s greatest traders worked.

This book offers many gems of knowledge about trading—based upon the general principle that, although methods and technologies change, human nature does not and therefore “there is… show more.

Robert and I were friends and co-members of the Market Technician's Assn back in the late 1980s and I was honored that chose my Volume Reversal Indicator to be mentioned in the book.

I was a friend of Robert Colby and co-members of the Market Technicians Association and was personally honored he incorporated my VR (Volume Reversal) in his book. I also felt he was way ahead of the crowd in putting together such a comprehensive book and I wanted to honor him with a mention.

Harry and I are personal friends and I am an occasional contributor on his daily live website.  Regardless, I follow his work everyday which is broadcast during market hours.  He and I  are both in our mid-70s and have been trading and writing about the stock market for 40-plus years.

Harry Boxer's proven techniques for short-term traders. He is the best I know for showing and using short-term technical stock market indicators.

Greg Morris created one of the first (if not the first) candlestick charting educational books a few decades ago and set the standard for learning about this technical analysis technique.

We had worked together on my newsletter for a period of time as he helped create some of the charts (non-candlestick) that I used. We became personal friends. One of the greatest honors for me is that he wrote the intro to my book. How can I not like him?

Greg Morris and I have been friends for decades. He wrote the introduction to my book but regardless I admired him as a great market technician and contributor to technical analysis. He also helped me personally creating charts for my VR newsletter and went out of his way doing so.

I find the 20th-century legendary trader Jesse Livermore to be very relatable. Livermore made and lost great fortunes during his time as a Wall Street trader in the 1920s. And after reading about the ups and downs of his life, I am inspired by his resilience and ingenuity.

This book drew me in with its great writing style and Livermore’s trading advice. While Livermore was a short-term stock market trader, his insight into managing emotions is important for a good long-term investor. 

Another trader who writes about the reality of trading for a living, Dr. Elder has really laid out many of the critical fundamentals of a successful trading operation in this book.  

Engaging and easy to read, this book will likely shock you with its simplicity, focus on planning, and conservative “grinding” for cash-flowing the markets.

Trading has this sexy image of well-dressed men screaming into phones, before they head out to their yachts. In reality it is supremely boring and the best traders I know live lives of complete freedom… Often totally unrecognized by their neighbors. 

This book gives you a real insight into the day-to-day operations of a career trader and it’s an important perspective shift for anybody wanting to make trading a significant aspect of their life.

I also first met Andrew when I was a PhD student in the first course he taught at Wharton. I was fortunate to be his co-author decades later.

I can’t think of anyone else who is both so incredibly bright but also articulate and an engaging storyteller in so many areas. Lo’s book challenges the fundamental theory of market efficiency which suggests that security prices reflect all relevant information—in other words, that securities are always fairly priced.

Drawing on psychology, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence, he comes up with a convincing a new model, that he calls the Adaptive Markets Hypothesis.

This book by "Adam Smith" (a tongue-in-cheek pseudonym) is a witty, irreverent dive into Wall Street's chaotic world. I was continuously laughing and learning both times I read this book.

It exposes the madness and irrationality of the financial decision-making of many market participants while debunking common myths and "get rich quick" schemes. I was left with a much deeper understanding of the actual game that is being played below the surface.

It was one of the first books that explained to me how "winning" doesn't always mean making the most money. It made me a much more aware investor. This unconventional book was decades ahead of its time, and it’s a fun, short, and highly worthwhile read.

This book traverses the world to find asset allocation best practices, from master investors to lesser-known but equally helpful ones. The main takeaway is confirmation that basic asset classes are all you need, nothing exotic. All of the best systematic portfolios simply rearrange the basic asset classes in slightly different ways. The upshot for you? As long as you confine your portfolio management to these core building blocks, you probably won’t go wrong. It sure beats buying a penny stock everybody’s talking about.

Chicago’s famous ‘open-outcry’ trading pits were packed with hundreds of traders making deals with each other using eye contact and hand signals, or simply shouting out their bids and offers. Anthropologist Caitlin Zaloom did something quite extraordinary. She studied these pits ‘from the inside’ (as a trader’s clerk) and then went on to examine the electronic trading that was starting to replace them – herself becoming a trader. Her book represents anthropology at its most skilled and offers a fascinating glimpse of the lost world of face-to-face trading (nearly all of Chicago’s pits are now closed). 

I researched Chicago’s pits myself in the years in which they still flourished, but not in the depth that Zaloom achieved. I’m in awe of her fabulous fieldwork.