[This is one of the finalists in the 2023 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. I’ll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you’ve read them all, I’ll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked]

A book about trading isn’t ever actually about trading.

It is either:

• A former trader sharing stories from their glory days, e.g. Liar’s Poker, the exposé that morphed into a how-to guide, or

• Tales of Icarus flying too close to the sun, where readers revel in schadenfreude, e.g., When Genius Failed.

With The Laws of Trading, Agustin Lebron has written something different: part love letter to trading, part philosophical treatise on epistemology and modeling the world around us, and part guide to applied decision-making. Lebron’s Laws are Laws of the Jungle, not Laws of Nature. He views financial markets as the most competitive Darwinian environment on Earth, where participants must adapt or die.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-the-laws-of-trading