My 15 Favorite Trading & Market Analysis Books
These 15 books offer a comprehensive education in trading and technical analysis, with lessons that apply to all assets, including precious metals, mining stocks, and commodities.
Regular readers of The Bubble Bubble Report know that, alongside my analysis of precious metals and the financial markets, I regularly include educational insights and practical tips. I also publish dedicated tutorials on trading strategies and market analysis techniques to help my loyal subscribers become more confident and effective traders and investors, no matter which markets they choose to focus on.
I also frequently recommend my favorite books when they’re relevant to the topic at hand. For that reason, today I’d like to share a list of my 15 favorite trading and market analysis-related books. I truly believe that by reading them, you will experience a quantum leap in your understanding of the financial markets. As a result, you will see the markets with much wiser, different eyes. Over the long run, this will help you become significantly more profitable in your investing and trading, while also helping you minimize losses.
Before we begin, I just want to mention that every book on this list is one I have personally read and owned for a long time, with many going back to when I first started learning about financial markets in high school and college. I’m sure there are many excellent trading books out there that I haven’t read yet, but I won’t recommend those until I’ve had the chance to go through them myself. As a voracious reader and bibliophile (i.e., a book lover and collector), I expect this list of favorites will continue to grow over time, and I hope it does. I also own quite a few promising books that I haven’t gotten around to reading yet.
Also, I want to mention that this particular list of books is focused on technical analysis rather than economic, fundamental, or political analysis. I do have other favorite books in those categories as well, and I hope to publish separate lists for them in the future. For today, I’m focusing on technical analysis (i.e., chart and price analysis) so that you can hit the ground running with actionable knowledge that can start producing results quickly.
Next, I also want to preface this by saying that I understand many people in the precious metals community, including many of my subscribers, approach precious metals investing with a long-term, buy-and-hold mindset, as well as a philosophically pro–sound money perspective. I’m aware that teaching trading techniques can sometimes be misunderstood as promoting a “fast money,” rapid-fire trading approach to precious metals. However, I want to assure you that this is not my intention, either with this list of books or with my ongoing tutorials and market analyses.
I too am a long-term precious metals investor and sound money advocate, but I strongly believe that people in our community can seriously benefit from understanding how markets work and what makes them move, even if they choose not to use that knowledge to trade in and out rapidly.
For example, it’s very helpful to know why gold, silver, and mining stocks are rallying or falling, and what they are likely to do in the future, in order to feel more calm and confident in your approach and plan. It is also useful for being able to analyze and interpret the actions of other financial markets that affect precious metals, such as the U.S. dollar, the stock market, interest rates, and the broader commodities market.
I believe the best approach to analyzing markets is a “technamental” one (technical + fundamental), to use the term coined by the first author on this list, John Murphy. However, I actually trust and rely much more on technical or chart analysis than on fundamental analysis, because of my firm belief that fundamentals, news, rumors, analyst expectations, and similar factors are already reflected and discounted in the price and charts. One of my favorite trading adages, “If it’s in the press, it’s in the price,” captures this principle perfectly.
News and fundamental data, when reported, are typically stale and often reflect conditions from months earlier, while price action captures all known and even unreported information in real time, down to the second. I view fundamental analysis as similar to looking in the rearview mirror while driving, whereas technical analysis is like keeping your eyes on the road ahead. There is no way I would have been able to foresee the many twists and turns in precious metals over the past several years using fundamental analysis alone (check out my track record).
That said, I still believe it is important to stay aware of the fundamentals in the interest of being thorough, particularly valuation metrics that indicate whether an asset is undervalued or overvalued, as this helps assess its potential to rise or fall.
So without further ado, here are my favorite books on trading and financial market analysis, listed in the order I recommend reading them. The titles link to each book’s page on Amazon.
This book is often referred to as “the bible of technical analysis.” While several other books share that label, I find this one to be the most readable and user-friendly, yet still extremely comprehensive. It is the first book I recommend to anyone beginning to learn about technical analysis or looking to deepen their understanding.
I first read Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets in high school decades ago (I just turned 40), and I continue to reference and re-read it every few years. Each time, I glean something new. I love it so much that I actually own two copies: one in New York and one in Texas, since I go back and forth between the two states.
This book begins by clearly explaining the core principles of technical analysis, including support, resistance, trendlines, and chart patterns, which I find to be its most valuable section. From there, it moves into a review of the most commonly used technical indicators. While it’s worth being familiar with these indicators, I don’t recommend relying on them too heavily, as they are simply lagging derivatives of price. In my view, it’s far more effective to focus on analyzing price and volume directly.
It’s a common beginner mistake to get caught up in using too many indicators, which often leads to confusion and conflicting signals, resulting in “paralysis by analysis.” In contrast, I recommend a minimalist approach that focuses on support and resistance, trendlines, common chart patterns, and volume. This approach is clearly reflected in the content I produce for The Bubble Bubble Report.
I highly recommend John Murphy’s Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets and believe no trading library should be without it.
After you’ve read Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets, I then recommend Steve Nison’s Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques, which complements the Western style of technical analysis presented by John Murphy. Candlestick analysis has a long history, dating back to its use by Japanese rice traders in the 18th century, and was first introduced to the Western world by Steve Nison through this best-selling book in 1991.
While Western technical analysis generally focuses more on chart patterns that form over periods of weeks and months as well as technical indicators, Japanese candlestick analysis is much more granular, focusing on information and signals given by individual price bars or clusters of price bars that occur closely together, making it more responsive, precise, and useful for providing short-term signals.
In this book, you’ll discover a range of fascinating and powerful candlestick patterns, many with vivid and memorable names, such as dojis, haramis, tasukis, engulfing patterns, piercing patterns, hammers, hanging men, morning stars, evening stars, shooting stars, dark cloud cover, tweezer tops and bottoms, three black crows, three white soldiers, dumpling tops, and frypan bottoms, to name just a few.
Japanese candlestick analysis also pairs well with Western-style technical analysis to provide the best of both worlds, and Nison is very clear about this in all of his books and other content, showing how to meld the two effectively to create a valuable synergy that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Get this book. Every investor or trader should have this knowledge, and you will never look at the markets the same way again.