This title presents the bestselling holy grail of trading information - now brought completely up to date to give traders an edge in the marketplace.

"Sound trading advice and lots of ideas you can use to develop your own trading methodology." - Jack Schwager, author of "Market Wizards" and "The New Market Wizards".

This trading masterpiece has been fully updated to address all the concerns of today's market environment. With substantial new material, this second edition features Tharp's new 17-step trading model. "Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom" also addresses reward to risk multiples, as well as insightful new interviews with top traders, and features updated examples and charts.

Numerous people have told Van Tharp that it totally changed their thinking about trading, investing, and how they approached markets.

Van Tharp's understanding has always been that you cannot trade the markets. Instead, you only trade your beliefs about the market. For example, if you believe that the market is going to go up (or generally goes up in the long run), and you believe that trend following works, then you might adopt a trend following approach to buy stocks that are going up. However, if you believe that the market is overvalued and likely to go down, then you might have trouble buying stocks that are going up because it conflicts with your beliefs.

"Van Tharp is a living legend. He is opening the doors to what really matters in trading and investing. He goes beyond suggesting ways to find potentially good stocks. He helps the reader understand the importance of how much to buy, how to get out when you are wrong, how to get out when you are right, how to assess your winning percentage, how to assess your returns from your system and most important of all- he explains the importance of investor psychology. A must read for any trader or investor." — Review from Amazon.com, January 2007

Everything that he said in the first edition of this book (published 1999) reflected his beliefs about the markets and what was necessary for trading success at the time that he wrote the book. However, beliefs are not reality. Instead, they are your filters to reality. Van Tharp has acknowledged that for a long time, and he's continually said that what he teaches reflects the most useful beliefs that he now has about the market and trading success.

"Over the years, I occasionally run across beliefs that seem to help people even more than those reflected in the first edition of this book. And after seven years, I’ve adopted many new, more useful beliefs. As a result, even though most of the core concepts have NOT changed, I still believe that enough things have changed that I can help people even further with a new edition of this book. "

"Here are a few of the major changes that reflect my current beliefs:

• I believe that all trading systems should reflect the big picture. In 1999, we were nearing the end of a great secular bull market that had begun in 1982. In 1999, you could buy any high tech stock and hang on to it for six months and perhaps double your money. However, secular bull markets are followed by secular bear markets such as the one that began in 2000. These tend to last for as long as twenty years, so people need strategies that take advantage of such macro tendencies to make good profits. The bear market isn’t bad news. It just requires a different focus to make money.

• My concept of expectancy in the first edition of this book was slightly misleading and definitely confusing. I changed it in my other books, but it is also important to make sure it is crystal clear in this book as well.

• I now strongly believe that systems can be thought of as distributions of R-multiples, which you’ll understand better as you read the book. When you understand this, your perspective on trading systems will totally change.

• Because systems can be thought of as distributions of R-multiples, it’s also possible to use those distributions to simulate what your future results might be like. And even more importantly, such simulations will tell you how to position size your system to meet your objectives. I’ve placed a strong emphasis on this topic in the new edition of this book. "

The two brand new features in this book include a study of seven traders whom Van Tharp follows through five trades. Each one has the same opportunities, but based on their individual beliefs and strategies, what they do with those opportunities is very different from one another.

Also, he has analysed the performance of nine prominent newsletters using R-multiple distributions, and share the varying results with you.

"In addition, there are many small, but significant changes to this book that will help you become a much better trader or investor. I hope you benefit as much from the second edition as many people have claimed to benefit from the first."

Author Biography

Van K. Tharp, Ph.D., is an internationally known consultant and coach to traders and investors, as well as the founder and president of the Van Tharp Institute. He is the author of multiple bestselling books on trading and investing, including Safe Strategies for Financial Freedom and Financial Freedom Through Electronic Day Trading. Tharp is a highly sought-after speaker who develops courses and seminars for large banks and trading firms around the world. He has published numerous articles and has been featured in publications such as Forbes, Barron's Market Week, and Investors Business Daily.