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• I found your replies quite useful and you seem to be good at your stuff. Without giving away too much about yourself, can you tell me what your educational background is? Does one need a Ph.D. in economics to understand at your level, or is that possible by self-education, or at least a Master's degree, too?
  
  If you are being serious and not trolling, I will help.
  
  I don't want to give any personal information away, but education is important, but life experience and studying on my own (trading and studying economics 12+ hours a day) is what helped me.
  
  Education helps build the groundwork for understanding theory, but I would say on 50%.
  
  The most important thing, in my opinion, is to understand theories that are in all aspects of life. For example, everything we do (food, sex, etc) is in self-interest.
  
  Another theory, in engineering (electrical) is path-of-least-resistance.
  
  Just any life theory you can apply to economics ... economics is simply, in my opinion, how the world works and how people interact with each other. If this was the year 1000 B.C., I would be studying why you trade 10 pounds of rock for 10 pounds of wood. I would be studying why that is the current trade, and I would be studying what motivates you to do that.
  
  
• Can you please recommend some good books to read to understand the basics? This one seems good : http://www.amazon.com/Profiting-Bull-Markets-George-Dagnino/dp/0071367063. What do you think of it?
  
  Let me be very clear, DO NOT read any books that give you advice on how to make money, anything with 'bull', 'bear', 'buy', 'sell' in the title .. DO NOT BUY ... they are taking basic theory and selling it. Trading, economics is full time because the world is constantly changing, if they were good, they wouldn't have time to write a book AND the time to write a book should be less valuable than time invested into the markets.
  
  As far as books, read anything on Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, Computer Science, Basic Engineering, electronic principles, at least one book on human sociology, governments, physiology, war (hint - war is economic gain), etc.
  
  STAY AWAY FROM THE WORLD IS GOING TO END BOOKS. If something bad is going to happen, it will happen, if you are not good enough now or you aren't on the 'in-crowd', than let it happen and profit from it. don't stress about what *might happen, stress about today!
  
  Specific books,
  
  A couple classic books...
  
• Reminiscences of a stock operator
  
  
• Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets: A Comprehensive Guide to Trading Methods and Applications this book is sometimes considered a bible in the investment world.
  
  
• the whole 'market wizards' series is very very good.
  
  This takes years and years to get the hang of, and it is very stressful and competitive (the world is constantly moving and changing and you are competing to understand it better than anyone).
  
  Remember, if anyone is just 'talking' about it on TV freely or whatever, 99% of the time they are trying to sell bullshit book or something.
  
  Don't listen to what people say is going on, listen to the people who already made something happen. If the markets crash today, than tomorrow ... look for who knew about it and study what they were doing.
  
  
• I'm a Masters in Computer Science and do some trading, mostly successful (Options spreads), but am quite conscious that I'm missing the big picture (macro, fundamental).
  
  Didn't read this, I was replying one-by-one, if you are there .. just apply all the computer science theories that you have learned into the real world. Plan and simple, go with your gut.
  
  I assume you took a computer science/ethics class where you debated and talked about legislation, morals, ethics in the internet/digital age? apply those to economics.
  
  All you are studying is why people, businesses, and governments do what they do. In the end, it is all about self-interest.
  
  Hope this helps.
  
  Oh and if you aren't reading at least 5-10 articles a day on current events (literally pick out random articles, Rueters, bloomberg, WSJ, Scienctific America, Economist) to include foreign (german, chinese, etc) sources, than you won't get ahead.
  
  A lot of analysts, all they actually do is wake up and 4 in the morning, spead 3-4 hours reading what happened over night, and then trade based on that.