Copyright © 2016 by Michael Parness. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Names: Parness, Michael, author.
Title: The art of trend trading: animal spirits and your path to profits /
Michael Parness.
Description: Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., [2016] | Includes
index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015032740 (print) | LCCN 2015038538 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119028017 (cloth) | ISBN 9781119185215 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781119185321 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Investments. | Speculation. | Investment analysis.
Classification: LCC HG4521 .P353 2016 (print) | LCC HG4521 (ebook) | DDC
332.64 – dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015032740
Cover Design: Wiley
Cover Image: Dollar Bird © iStock.com / hdoggrafix
Michael Parness and I come from very different parts of the financial world, and though very different, we are complementary in many ways. I got started in trading in the late 1990s. I had just come back from a summer in Spain and a few different study-abroad programs. While studying (partying; – )) in Europe, I had started to trade and monitor my accounts online. When I got back to New York and started graduate school, I also started a job as a head hunter in New York City. In 1998, it did not take me long to figure out where the best-paying jobs were in NYC – Wall Street. As a head hunter, I knew that there was one company that was hiring more people than any other firm. It was an Internet online trading company. So I sent myself out for an interview there, and sure enough, I got a job offer.
So my trading experience started more from the direction of being a person on a professional trading desk. Mind you, when I got started at Precision Edge Securities (later, edgetrade.com) in 1999, I was not a licensed broker. I had to cram to pass my series 7 in January 2000. Professional trading at that time was mainly a scalping style, widely known as SOES trading, because we used systems like SOES, Select Net, and Instinet to route our orders. I traded and helped run a trading desk where there was a mix of retail brokers trading for their clients (we at the trading desk executed their orders), retail trader SOES scalping, and momentum trading. For the retail brokers, I was more like a foot soldier. I worked and executed orders, and that was my focus. It was very short term, and I had no idea why the clients or the brokers were buying or selling. My performance was measured entirely by my execution price versus VWAP (volume-weighted average price). As for the day traders, well, I was one of them when not trading a client order.
