What do professional traders do day-in and day-out to beat the markets? What separates the amateur from the professional? Why is it that some traders make millions while others can’t even get their account into the green?

Those are the questions I set out to answer when I decided to get in touch with several of the top financial traders in the industry today. Through one-on-one interviews I picked the brains of successful traders in order to improve my trading game as the end goal in mind. What resulted is The Trading Elite: Discussions With Top Financial Traders.

This book isn’t about handing you a trading system on a silver platter. It’s about learning how do develop your own trading framework based on the principles of successful speculation.

Successful traders like Larry Williams, Michael Bigger, Mike Bellafiore, Ray Barros and more share exactly how they rose to the top and how you can too by radically transforming your trading habits to those of professionals.

Excerpts from the book:

“It’s about being an elite performer. We break things down into skills because trading is a skill. You’ll get better at it the more work you put into it. We break it down to purposeful practice. We use the science, the modern science of elite performance, and translate that into trading.” — Mike Bellafiore

“First most important thing is risk management. That’s before and beyond everything. Without it your going to blow up. Period.” — Larry Williams

“The point is not technical analysis or day trading or things of that nature, it’s about creating your own trading recipes. Think about it from a recipe standpoint with your own formulas and you can then include technical analysis.” — Michael Bigger

“You have to evolve and to adapt to the market. There are always great opportunities in the markets. But it’s not that any one sector is always going to be good, you just have to know which sector to get involved with.” — Peter Leeds

“Trading psychology is probably the biggest part of success and a lot of it’s the preparation. If you prepare for scenarios before they occur, then when they occur, they’re not as frightening.” — Ray Barros

“If I feel I have an edge, I get into a position. If that edge is no longer there, I get out.” —  Rob Hanna

Jared Mast is a professional currency trader and avid blogger at www.speculatethemarkets.com. His fascination for the financial markets began at a young age and by the time he was in college he was trading currencies from his dorm room at the University of Oregon.