Best Swing Trading Books for Beginners
Best Swing Trading Books
1. How To Swing Trade by Brian Pezim and Andrew Aziz: Best Book on Swing Trading for Beginners
Pezim’s book, as the title “How to Swing Trade – A Beginner’s Guide to Trading Tools, Money Management, Rules, Routines and Strategies of a Swing Trader” suggests, covers pretty much everything there is to know about swing trading.
Therefore, it’s an excellent resource for novice traders. Pezim coaches readers along in the basics of charting stocks and provides a solid technical and fundamental analysis education. He also presents some foundational swing trading concepts and “trading rules to live by” and then delineates several specific swing trading strategies.
“How to Swing Trade” is essentially a short – but thorough – course in swing trading for beginners. However, even experienced traders can gain valuable lessons from the book. In addition to sharing some of his swing trading strategies and the guiding principles, he does an excellent job of including instruction on managing risk and capital preservation.
Brian even provides information on the “daily routine” of a swing trader and approaching swing trading as a home business.
2. The Psychology of Trading: Tools and Techniques for Minding the Markets by Brett Steenbarger: Best Psychology of Trading Book
Brett Steenbarger is both an active trader and an Associate Professor of Psychiatry. He’s been hired by investment banks and hedge funds to train traders. One of the principles he stresses is that the proper mindset for trading is counter-intuitive to the way that nearly all of us have been raised.
For example, we’re taught from our earliest ages to “be careful” – but to be successful traders, we have to practice the opposite of being careful: we have to embrace risk.
Each chapter of the book uses a psychiatric case study – such as “The Woman Who Couldn’t Love” and “A Session at Gunpoint” – to explain an element of the mindset essential for consistently winning trading and then provides practical instruction on developing that mindset.
3. Swing Trading for Dummies by Omar Bassal
Omar Bassal was formerly the head of the asset management division of one of the largest banks in the Middle East and currently operates his asset management firm. The company uses a stock screening formula that Bassal developed himself.
In short, Omar knows a thing or two about how to trade stocks profitably. This book is part of the well-known “Dummies” series of texts that provide education on financial topics in plain, easy-to-understand language.
“Swing Trading for Dummies” is primarily divided into three sections:
- Technical Analysis
- Fundamental Analysis, including how to screen for and evaluate the most promising stocks
- Money management, and portfolio construction and diversification
It is a great read, and the chances are that it will become one of your favorite swing trading books.
4. In-Depth Guide to Price Action Trading by Laurentiu Damir
Laurentiu Damir is a devout disciple of price action trading. In this book about Powerful Swing Trading Strategy for Consistent Profits, he aims to convert other traders to being believers in the wisdom of analyzing investments by using price action, rather than complicated technical indicators, to identify the best swing trade opportunities.
The book lays out specific swing trading strategies with good risk/reward ratios that can be applied in trading stocks or other financial securities.
Damir states that if you master the concepts presented in this book, then you’ll be able to consistently achieve above-average returns on investment and pocket trading profits month after month.
He emphasizes the importance of using price action patterns to identify support and resistance levels that offer the best trade entries. He also provides detailed guidance on the placement of stop-loss orders, pinpointing profit targets, and actively managing trades once they’re initiated.
5. The Master Swing Trader: Tools and Techniques to Profit from Outstanding Short-Term Trading Opportunities by Alan Farley
Alan Farley is a widely-recognized master trader and the author of “The Daily Swing Trade” newsletter. The book is essentially the book version of Farley’s popular online trading course, “Mastering the Trade.” It’s a comprehensive guide to identifying and profiting from short-term trading opportunities and includes information on charting, identifying support and resistance, price action patterns, and Fibonacci retracements.
A unique offering is Farley’s in-depth discussion of the time elements that impact trading opportunities – how trading varies from the first hour of trading, midday, and end of the day – to the timing importance of what day of the week it is, to trading seasonality patterns.
Half of the book presents detailed discussions of Farley’s “7-Bells” – essentially, seven swing trade setups that he considers to be the most reliable. He gives clear illustrations of each trade setup, details the relative risk/reward ratios, and explains exactly how to execute and manage the trades.
6. The Subtle Trap of Trading: Why So Many Smart People Don’t Make Money Trading, And How To Get On The Right Track In Less Than Two Hours by Brian McAboy
In this relatively short book with 160 pages, McAboy presents a wealth of helpful information for aspiring or experienced swing traders, including all the following:
- the 39 most common and most damaging trading mistakes – and how to avoid making them
- the 11 essential parts of a successful trading business
- the six steps to winning trading
And, true to form for McAboy – who’s known for giving away free trading advice – at the end of the book, there’s a link where readers can access lots of free trading resources.
7. Come Into My Trading Room, A Complete Guide to Trading by Alexander Elder: Best Book on Swing Trading Written by Alexander Elder
Alexander Elder is a legend among professional traders in every financial securities market – including stocks, commodities, and forex trading. We’re just not sure if we should have gone with this book or with his classic, “Trading for a Living,” an international bestseller for more than two decades.
If you want to be highly profitable swing trading stocks, then this book is virtually required reading. Elder goes into great detail about the links between swing trading strategies and the requisite trading mindset.
He also provides eye-opening advice on the critical importance of money management and market timing, along with pointing out how attention to detail can make an enormous difference in your trading profitability.
8. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre: Best Book on Trading Published in 2020
Ask the most successful traders to recommend just one book on trading – 99 times out of 100, this is the book they’ll recommend. This fictionalized account of the life of the most successful stock trader in history, Jesse Livermore, is filled with trading wisdom that’s still quoted today.
- “People who look for easy money invariably pay for the privilege of proving conclusively that it cannot be found on this sordid earth.”
- “If a man didn’t make mistakes in trading, he’d own the world in a month.”
- “The desire for constant action irrespective of underlying conditions is responsible for many losses in Wall Street even among the professionals, who feel that they must take home some money every day, as though they were working for regular wages.”
Besides being perhaps the most insightful book ever written on trading, it’s also probably the most entertaining.
9. Swing Trading: An Innovative Guide to Trading with Lower Risk by Warwick Khan: Best Book on Swing Trading Strategies with Studies
In his book, Warwick Khan shares a wealth of information about various swing trading strategies – including how to trade breakouts, how to trade retracements – and momentum, volume, earnings, and short squeeze trade setups.
Khan also devotes space to showing traders how to profit from short selling. He backs up his swing trading theories and strategies with plenty of studies and examples and stresses the importance of controlling your level of risk exposure.
10. Swing Trading Strategies: 3 Simple and Profitable Strategies for Beginners by Charles Reis
Charles Reis believes that swing trading offers the optimal mix of opportunity and risk – significantly greater profit opportunities than long-term investing and lower trading risk than what day traders are exposed to.
His book, just 66 pages long, gives you just what the title says, three simple strategies for swing trading profits. One is based on trading breakouts, another on swing trading with options, and a third relies on trading signals generated by candlestick formations.
Best Swing Trading Books: Summary
We hope you enjoyed reading the list of the best swing trading books. While there’s no one book or anything else that will guarantee your success as a trader by doing swing trades or any other kind of trades, books help you gain proper knowledge. Extensive knowledge about swing trading combined with the platform increases the chances of success.
We hope that you’ll find our selections here immensely helpful in advancing your profitability in swing trading. It’s a good idea to sample several different books until you find one or two that seem to perfectly fit with your investing style, risk tolerance, and general approach to investing.
Trading Guides
FAQ
Which analysis is best for swing trading?
There are two analysis methods considered as the best for swing trading. Fundamental analysis focuses on company financials and key figures for swing trades lasting a couple of months. Technical analysis utilizing trading indicators such as moving averages, volume and the stochastic oscillator is preferably used for shorter-term swing trades.
Do professional trades swing trade?
Yes. Professional traders and institutions behind the most popular exchange traded funds and mutual funds settle their investment style in between day trading and buy and hold investing. They swing trade stocks, commodities, futures and other assets by holding them for months or years.
