Tides of the Stock Market: A Life in Candlesticks

This is a remarkably distinctive work, written with tremendous sincerity. Unlike traditional financial novels, which focus on the schemes and power struggles of financial tycoons, or popular stock-trading guides that teach people how to make money, it tells the everyday story of an ordinary retail investor: a single father who quits his job to trade stocks and struggles to get by amid market fluctuations and life’s daily burdens.

The novel’s greatest strength is its authenticity. In a straightforward, almost documentary style, the author records the daily routine of a full-time retail trader: watching the market, reviewing trades, making transactions, taking losses, and reflecting on them, alongside family chores, father-son interactions, caring for aging parents, and romantic entanglements. This documentary approach lets readers truly feel an ordinary investor’s helplessness, anxiety, and loneliness in the market, as well as the small comfort of the occasional gain.