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Best Day Trading Books

Intraday trading is a process business: a playbook, a review routine, and price action skill. These books build those three things.

Mike Bellafiore · 2010 · Level: all levels

Inside SMB Capital, a real proprietary firm: how desk traders are trained, reviewed, and cut, and what separates the survivors.

For prop traders: Written from an actual prop desk. The review culture it describes is the culture an evaluation is silently grading.

Mike Bellafiore · 2013 · Level: intermediate

Build your own playbook: define each setup with its best conditions, size by setup quality, and archive trades so your best patterns get the capital.

For prop traders: Directly usable: a written playbook is what keeps size decisions from being made mid-drawdown.

Al Brooks · 2009 · Level: advanced

Brooks's dense, complete treatment of price action: every bar tells you who is in control and what is likely next.

For prop traders: Demanding, but the closest thing to a full price-action curriculum for intraday futures traders.

Adam Grimes · 2012 · Level: intermediate

A working trader's synthesis: market structure, trend and range regimes, and how to test ideas instead of collecting indicators.

For prop traders: The rare technical analysis book that insists on statistics and process. Fits an evaluation mindset.

Alexander Elder · 1993 · Level: beginner

Elder's classic trio: psychology, a trading system (Triple Screen), and money management, written for the independent trader.

For prop traders: The risk rules (the 2% and 6% rules) are a workable template for evaluation loss limits.

Anna Coulling · 2013 · Level: beginner

Reading volume against price to judge whether a move has commitment behind it, in plain language with many chart examples.

For prop traders: A fast, practical read for intraday traders who watch breakouts fail at the open.

Alexander Elder · 2002 · Level: intermediate

Elder's follow-up focused on the working process: records, journals, and the day-to-day organization of a serious trader.

For prop traders: The record-keeping system is the part to steal for a funded account review routine.