The Stock Trader: How I Make a Living Trading Stocks

Author: Tony Oz Categories: Day Trading, Technical Analysis

Quick Summary

A day trader's personal account of how he makes a living trading stocks, structured as a real-time trading diary. Oz covers his trading station setup, broker selection, chart reading (bar and candlestick), support and resistance identification, supply and demand dynamics, overnight scan methodology, risk/reward evaluation, and provides day-by-day accounts of actual trades with detailed explanations of his decision-making process.

Detailed Summary

Tony Oz's "The Stock Trader: How I Make a Living Trading Stocks" is a pioneering work in trading literature that documents, in real-time diary format, a professional day trader's actual trading activity over a multi-week period. Published in 2000 as a follow-up to his "Stock Trading Wizard," the book was born from a challenge issued by Tim Bourquin and Jim Sugarman, founders of the International Online Trading Expo, for Oz to demonstrate how he actually implements his trading strategies in live market conditions -- with complete transparency about winners, losers, profits, and losses.

The book documents 116 round-trip trades executed during the challenge period, including detailed charts, illustrations, entry and exit rationale, and profit/loss calculations for each trade. What makes this work historically significant is that the trading diary coincided with the Great Crash of April 2000 -- providing an unscripted account of how a professional trader navigated one of the most volatile market episodes of the era.

The opening chapters establish Oz's trading infrastructure and methodology. His trading station setup reflects the professional requirements of active day trading: multiple monitors, direct-access routing, real-time level II quotes, and time-and-sales data. Broker selection criteria emphasize execution speed and reliability over commission cost -- a prioritization that distinguishes professional day traders from casual retail investors.

Oz's analytical framework integrates bar charts and candlestick charts for identifying price patterns, with particular emphasis on support and resistance levels as the primary decision-making inputs. His analysis of changes in supply and demand -- visible through volume, price action at key levels, and level II order flow -- forms the foundation for trade entry and exit decisions. The overnight scan methodology, which Oz considers essential to his edge, involves systematic screening for stocks meeting specific technical criteria that create high-probability setups for the following trading day.

The risk/reward evaluation framework is central to Oz's approach. Before entering any trade, he assesses the potential reward relative to the risk (distance to stop-loss), requiring a minimum ratio before committing capital. This disciplined approach to trade selection -- where the mathematics of expectancy, not emotional conviction, drives decision-making -- is presented as the critical differentiator between profitable and unprofitable traders.

The day-by-day diary entries form the heart of the book, covering 20+ trading days with titles reflecting the narrative quality of each session: "The Early Warning," "FOMC Meeting," "Working on My Golf Swing," "The Running of the Bulls," "Learning from Beginner Traders," "When the Guru Speaks, We Should All Listen," "The Market is Always Right," and "Cash is a Position." Each entry includes pre-market preparation, real-time decision-making, end-of-day analysis, and lessons learned.

Oz's personal journey adds motivational depth: beginning as a teenager who won a $15,000 lottery jackpot and invested the proceeds, surviving early losses, studying at the Investor's Business Daily printing facility near his home, keeping meticulous trade records to identify patterns of mistakes, and gradually developing the skill and discipline required for full-time trading. His emphasis on detailed record-keeping as "the single greatest educational tool" available to traders reflects a process-oriented approach to skill development.

The appendices provide practical tools including trading plans, record-keeping templates, watch list creation methodology, basket trading techniques, real-time and overnight scan parameters, Level II quote interpretation basics, direct-access order routing configuration, and resources for continuing education.