What editor let this book get published?? Imagine getting a job on the engineering team for a new silicon chip, or a suspension bridge, only to discover you had no engineering skill. Then, write a moralizing book about why they didn't offer you better training! There was no way I could finish reading this young man's precious (nay, clinical) account of how he landed a job for which he was manifestly incompetent, and handled it really badly. For starters, there are (and were when he was floundering) many good books on the subjects he was having trouble with, which he never bothered to read, even when they were handed to him. If this book has any message, it's that Merrill should have fired Stiles much earlier. The reason they didn't is that it's difficult to predict trading skill, and hence easier to just throw people in the water and see whether they can swim. It turns out many of them can't, but so what?