Diary of an Internet Trader: Practical Insights in Investment Wisdom

257 Pages·2002·1.39 MB·English

by  Alpesh B. Patel

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Diary of an Internet Trader
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Diary of an Internet Trader
Practical insights
in investment wisdom
A l p e s h B . P a t e l
London New York Toronto Sydney Tokyo Singapore Hong Kong
Cape Town New Delhi Madrid Paris Amsterdam Munich Milan Stockholm
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First published in Great Britain in 2002
© Tradermind Ltd 2002
The right of Alpesh B. Patel to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted
by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN: 0 273 65632 5
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the service of a competent professional person should be sought.
The publisher and contributors make no representation, express or implied, with
regard to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and cannot
accept any responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that it may contain.
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To my forefathers
for a proud heritage
(cid:2)
When I read the Bhagavad Gita and reflect about how
God created this universe everything else seems so
superfluous. Albert Einstein
I am convinced that everything has come down to us
from the banks of the Ganges – astronomy, astrology,
metempsychosis. Voltaire
India was China’s teacher in religion and imaginative
literature, and the world’s teacher in trigonometry,
quadratic equations, grammar, phonetics, Arabian
Nights, animal fables, chess, as well as in philosophy, and
that she inspired Boccaccio, Goethe, Herder,
Schopenhauer, Emerson, and probably also old Aesop.
Lin Yutang, Chinese scholar and author of the book,
The Wisdom of China and India
Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century
may claim over all previous centuries.The general
notions about human understanding … which are
illustrated by discoveries in atomic physics are not in the
nature of things wholly unfamiliar, wholly unheard of or
new. Even in our own culture they have a history, and in
Buddhist and Hindu thought a more considerable and
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central place. What we shall find [in modern physics] is
an exemplification, an encouragement, and a refinement
of old wisdom.J. Robert Oppenheimer, (1904–1967),
theoretical physicist and the Supervising Scientist for the
Manhattan Project, the developer of the atomic bomb
The land where books were first written and from
where wisdom and knowledge sprang is India.
The Fourth Caliph, Ali bin Abi Talib (656–661 AD)
The Hindus are indisputably entitled to rank among the
most ancient of existing nations, as well as among those
most early and most rapidly civilized ... where yet the
Pyramids looked down upon the Valley of the Nile…
when Greece and Italy, those cradles of modern
civilization, housed only the tenants of the wilderness,
India was the seat of wealth and grandeur.
Thorton,History of British India
The genius of Hinduism, and the very reason of its
survival for so long, was that it does not stand up
andfight. Mark Tully, former BBC correspondent in India
It is already becoming clear that a chapter which had a
Western beginning will have to have an Indian ending if
it is not to end in self-destruction of the human race. At
this supremely dangerous moment in human history , the
only way of salvation is the ancient Hindu way. Here we
have the attitude and spirit that can make it possible for
the human race to grow together in to a single family.
Dr Arnold Joseph Toynbee(1889–1975),British historian
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About the author
Alpesh B. Patel
LLB; MA (Oxon); AKC;
Visiting Fellow Corpus Christi
College, Oxford (2001–2),
Barrister-at-Law
Trading
Described by Channel 4 as the UK’s best known internet
trader, Alpesh started programming computers in BASIC
at the age of 10 and buying stocks 18 years ago at the
age of 12 (although he seems normal nowadays), moving
on from privatization stocks to penny shares. He left a
legal career to trade full time.
Today he concentrates on US and UK stocks as well as
futures and options trading, making extensive use of the
internet for research since he was a Congressional Intern
in 1994 and combining this with his own technical analy-
sis systems. On Channel 4’s latest Show Me The Money
series he was number 1 of 45 expert stock pickers.
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R
O
H TV, radio and print
T
U
A

HE Alpesh writes the Diary of an Internet Traderfor the week-
T
end Financial Times and for Bloomberg TV he appears
T
U weekly in Bloomberg Money on the Net.
O
B
A
Books
Alpesh is the author of Internet Trading Course, Pocket
Guide to Trading Online, Net Trading, Trading Onlineand
The Mind of a Trader(all published by Pearson Education).
His books have been translated into Spanish, German,
French, Chinese and Polish. Trading Online was the num-
ber one best-selling investment book on Amazon UK, and
reached number two on the overall bestseller list.
Lectures
Alpesh regularly speaks on trading psychology, online
trading and technical analysis around the world from
Guatemala to Spain to Beijing.
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Contents
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction xiii
Picking stocks 1
1 What are the different trading styles and which is
best for me? 3
2 How do I use online trading stock news to my
advantage? 11
3 Is long-term trading really ‘all that and a bag
of cash’? 41
4 What’s all this technical analysis and charting about
then? 47
5 Is it easier to trade a sector than a stock or a whole
index? 61
6 Inspire me that an online trader really can beat the
professionals 65
7 Where does past performance fit into stock
picking? 69