Book Review & Summary: Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas
Trading in the Zone feels like one of the longest 240-page book I’ve ever read. Don’t get me wrong, I think the book has some useful points with regards to the psychology of successful traders. But to find these useful points, one has to look really hard and sift through mountains of useless paragraphs piled on top of mountains of useless paragraphs of bad pseudo-scientific explanations.
The book is annoying, even infuriating at times exactly because of this. Typically, for spending time reading pages after pages of something, we’re expecting a reasonable payback in the end. But Mr. Douglas spends pages after pages just to explain the simplest point–something that could’ve been said in one sentence.
For instance, in chapter 5, Mr. Douglas says:
“To illustrate this concept and make it even clearer, I am going to give you another example, one that demonstrates how mental energy can affect how we perceive and experience the environment in a way that it actually reverses the cause-and-effect relationship. Let’s look at a very young child’s first encounter with a dog. Because it’s a first-time experience, the child’s mental environment is a clean slate, so to speak, with respect to dogs. He won’t have any memories and certainly no distinctions about a dog’s nature. Therefore, up to the moment of his first encounter, from the child’s perspective, dogs don’t exist. Of course, from the environment’s perspective, dogs do exist and they have the potential to act as a force on the child’s senses to create an experience. In other words, dogs expressing their nature can act as a cause to produce an effect inside the child’s mental environment. What kind of effect are dogs capable of producing? Well, dogs have a range of expression. By range of expression I mean dogs can behave in a number of ways toward humans…”
I can’t type anymore. It goes on for more than 700+ words longer. All that basically just to say that our first experience will form an impression that we’ll use to evaluate subsequent similar experiences. If a boy gets attacked in his first experience with a dog, next time he sees a dog he’ll probably get scared. But Mr. Douglas has to make this so very much more obvious than Captain Obvious could ever hope to. With all those pseudo-scientific language to boot.
Throughout the book I kept asking myself, “ARE ALL THESE PARAGRAPHS REALLY NECESSARY? ARE ALL THESE WORDS REALLY NECESSARY? WHEN IS HE GOING TO GET TO THE FREAKIN POINT?”
For another example, let’s take this gem here, also from Chapter 5. Mr. Douglas is trying to say that “we have unlimited capacity for learning“. Watch this 1000 plus-word “expansion” of that simple sentence below:
“To illustrate why I do that, let’s look at something as simple as a rock. It’s an inanimate object, composed of unique atoms and molecules expressing themselves as a rock. I can use the active verb “expressing” because the atoms and molecules that make up the rock are in constant motion. So, even though the rock doesn’t appear active except in the most abstract sense…
blah blah blah…
First of all, there’s a cause-and-effect relationship that exists between ourselves and everything else that exists in the external environment. As a result, our encounters with external forces create what I am going to call “energy structures” inside our minds.
blah blah blah…
The scientific community has dissected brain tissue (both living and dead) examined it at the level of the individual atom, mapped various regions of the brain in terms of their functions, but nobody, as yet, has observed a memory, distinction, or belief in its natural form. By “in its natural form” I mean that although a scientist can observe the individual brain cells that contain certain memories, he can’t experience those memories first hand.
blah blah blah…
Thoughts are energy. Because you think in a language, your thoughts are structured by the limitations and rules that govern the particular language in which you think. When you express those thoughts aloud, you create sound waves, which are a form of energy.
blah blah blah…
I am not asking you what dreams mean or what you think their purpose is, but rather, what are they? What are their properties? If we assume that dreams take place within the confines of our skulls, then they can’t be composed of atoms and molecules, because there wouldn’t be enough space for all of the things that exist and take place in our dreams.
blah blah blah… (omigod did he just say that we can assume that dreams can fill up our skulls?! What millennium are we in again?)
Now, if it hasn’t already occurred to you, there’s something here that’s really profound. If the memories, distinctions, and beliefs we’ve acquired as a result of our encounters with the external environment represent what we’ve learned about that environment and how it works; and if these memories, distinctions, and beliefs exist in our mental environment as energy; and if energy doesn’t take up any space; then it also could be said that we have an unlimited capacity for learning. Well, not only do I think it could be said, I’m saying it.”
Phew. Thank you for at LAST saying it, Mr. Douglas. I want to learn proper trading mindset, not bad explanations about anchoring and neural pathways!
The rest of the book is also jam-packed with all these analyses that I think were meant to sound profound, but end up embarrassingly useless, time-wasting, and even downright silly at times. That dog and boy example keeps popping up again and again and again and again throughout the book.
This book can probably be summarized with no loss of information whatsoever in a 3000-4000 word article. What a waste of money. Luckily I borrowed this book.
Summary
Like I mentioned above, despite the unbelievable amount of crap that the author used to expand this book to 240 pages, this book does have some good points. It’s just that I had to work really hard to extract those points. Do yourself a favor, don’t buy this book. Just read this post 
The points are:
- The market is unpredictable. Every trade has some risk built in. Learn to accept that and prepare for that.
- Accept responsibilities for your actions. The market doesn’t owe you anything.
- You must have a trading system that gives you an edge. Not unlike the way casinos operate. In the long run, if you execute this system flawlessly, you’ll come ahead.
- Most trading errors are due to lack of consistency. Don’t let your emotions get to you. Stick to your system.
What a painful book to read.
(Image courtesy of quatre mains @ flickr)