Rating: 
Summary: An easy read for anyone that understands swing trading
Review: Alan Farley wrote one of the best swing-day trading books around. His 7 bells are very useful, to complement your own trading ideas. Every chapter has useful information that you can use, as well as information that you may aleady understand.
One book will not make you a master swing trader but this one can get you started in the right direction. He understands how
easy it is to lose money trading and drives home the importance of entering the market at the correct target and cover losses quickly if it does not work out. Thanks Allen, this book is well worth the cost of admission.
Rating: 
Summary: Like milking an ancient cow...
Review: By way of analogy, a trader reading this book is a bit like a starving man sitting down to milk an ancient cow. The drops of wisdom did yield themselves, but not without prodigious effort. A starving man will still take on the job however and future second edition would benefit from a copious edit.
Before going long on this book, investigate his website http://www.hardrightedge.com to learn more about "the seven bells" which is the focus of this book.
Rating: 
Summary: The worst I have read, and I've read plenty.
Review: First read Mr. DiBona's review of 3/21/2002 below, with which I entirely agree. I've traded professionally on the PHLX, been trading full-time from home for over 3 years, and read close to 20 related books. If you are new to trading, I recommend Alexander Elder and/or Van Tharpe. Beyond that, read Larry Williams, Linda Rashke, Larry Connors, John R. Hill (publisher of Futures Truth magazine), and John Murphy. For fun, read any of Jack Schwager's "Market Wizard" books (the first is the best). Complete your library with classics from Edwards & Magee and Welles Wilder. Then, and only then, begin to trade with your hard-earned money. Good luck!
Rating:
Summary: Well worth your time
Review: I found the text to be powerful, informative, and very helpful. Its not for everyone. It does requires the reader's attention but overall its an outstanding work. 5 Stars. This has become one of my favorite TA books without question. At the time I read it, it seemed to incorporate everything together. I have kept it close by my computer and have referred to it many times. Farley is not for beginners by any means. And he has to be read carefully to be understood. But this is a a very, very good book - probably one of the best. There are many pages of in-depth strategies. Yes, the book should be written more clearly but reading it is absolutely worth your time. I heard Farley in an interview state he purposely challenged traders by starting the book with topics that confused and frustrated them the most. He also said he left the noise level "high" in the charts because that was the real world that traders had to trade. As for the one star ratings - I cannot understand how much they missed the brilliant content. Definitely not for everyone.
Rating:
Summary: Much better than most
Review: I have made money using some of his ideas.
He is worth the time and effort.
Organization and illustration placement could be better.
But he has good present day profitable ideas.
Nothing phoney.
Jack Stern
Rating: 
Summary: Great Book - But Not for Beginners
Review: I read several of the the reviews posted here before purchasing this book. Their appears to be an extreme divergence about the book's quality because of the writing style. A lot of people say it's "dry" or "pompous" and that they have difficulty getting through it. A lot of other people say it is an overall excellent text. I have a strong background in finance and capital markets. However, I would not rate myself an expert or even having a solid grounding in stock market technical analysis. Well, technical analysis and market pattern recognition is what swing trading - and hence this book - are all about. Farley does an excellent job laying out complicated principles into clearly stated, well-organized, non-mathematical passages. These passages are nicely complemented by graphic illustrations. While I largely read the book in order (start-to-finish), I did jump around a bit and read sections out of order. I also re-read sections several times over across different days because the book deals with conceptually difficult issues (using technical tools and market patterns as indicators to understand basic market sentiment and behavior). I think people who didn't like the book for it's style probably fall into a few categories. First, I think there are a number of people who bought the book with little or no knowledge of markets or trading and thought this would lay out a road map for how to get rich quick. Well, this book doesn't do that. To be successful as a trader takes a LOT of time, effort, study, and interpretation). Second, I think there are a lot of people out there whose most complex daily readings are on the order of People Magazine. Well, learning about complex issues, sentiment, and technical mathematically based tools is on a different order altogether than reading at Brittany Spears. If you fall into either of these categories, you probably want to reconsider trading for a vocation or avocation. Individuals with a committed interest and at least intermediate knowledge of equity markets will find this a good book. Be advised - it is to be treated more like a text book than casual reading.
Rating:
Summary: Read it and Loved it
Review: I would like to strongly recommend this book to everyone. I have been trading stocks for about 4 years and read almost every book written on trading. This book covers so many important elements of short-term trading, including patterns, indicators, psychology, cycles and execution. It doesn't only touch upon these issues but explains them thoroughly with excellent illustrations, I counted over 180 of them. If you're anything like me, you will appreciate all of the charts as visual aids for the teachings in the book. I also found it to be very well organized. The early chapters required a lot of attention. But everything really starts to click as each new chapter builds on previous information. By the time I got to the excellent "7-Bells" sections, I could almost anticipate how the author was going to treat his detailed examples. I learned a tremendous amount reading this book. My overall rating is 5 stars. It is well worth its price tag and you will get what you pay for.
Rating:
Summary: This book should be clasified as FICTION
Review: Is any truth in this book? I don't think so! My only advice is: DON'T WASTE ANY TIME OR MONEY ON THIS BOOK, UNLESS IF YOU WISH TO KNOW HOW TO WRITE FICTIONS IN THIS FIELD.
Added: After submitting this review, I noticed another hyping review just posted. I add the following comments: ANY CLAIM MUST BE BASED ON FACTS. That so called 'very useful 7 bells' are never properly specified, in the traditional spirit of Edwards & Magee, as well as required for any responsible writers. In today's computer age, a reasonable question should also be asked: What is the percentage rates of success for any patterns, indicators, or any other means. Of course, if the writer could not define his/her 'useful pattern' in specific terms, then you have to use your full imagination learned from the Emporer's New Clothes to 'GUESS' what the writer is talking about.
Rating:
Summary: Ever wonder why TA got a bad name?
Review: Look no further, and just read this book...
The only thing that I wish to stress here is that if you wish to believe any positive reviews on this book, either on this amazon website or anywhere else, you ought to find at least ONE SINGLE theory from this book which the reviewer(s) dare to make any claim that he/she had benefitted so far, and then try to reproduce yourself. If you cannot, you might as well just forget all about this book and be very confident that you would not MISS ANYTHING important, except hypings.
Rating:
Summary: You must Verify and Validate each of the Author ideas
Review: Pattern cycles show swing traders where to find consistent profits Future trading is where you hold a position for 1-3 days and capitalize on cyclical swings in buying and selling behavior. Master Morning gaps Use multi-time frame Fibonacci retracements to locate turning points Watch the market clock New high generate greed carrying prices higher Use math-based indicators to verify the price pattern Buy at support and sell at resistence Strong price movement pairs disciplined momentum strategy with preferred swing trading. The swing trader checks the 60-minute chart for support-resistance but uses the 1-minute chart to time execution of the short-term flow of the market Market insiders use the volatility of first-hour executions to fade clean trends and empty pockets Time should activate exits on nonperforming trades Decide how many bars must pass before a trade will be abandoned, regardless of gain or loss Volume leader predicts price change. Volume reflects latent energy that releases itself through trend Expect to stand aside, wait, and watch when the markets offer nothing to do Constricting price bars, lowering volatility and range placement signal the end of one swing and the beginning of a new impulse
Oscillators measure this important guage through overbought-oversold polarity Price acts differently at tops and bottoms Breakouts and breakdowns attract many participants but require precise timeing to turn a profit The highest profitability will come when entering a position at the end of a low-volatility period (contracting bar) and exiting on a volatility peak (expanding bar) just as the trend pulls back
Technical Analysis teaches traders to execute positions based on numbers, time and volume As volume cranks up at 3:00pm don't expect anyone to change the channel Big volume kills moves The Commodity Channel Index (CCI) is a timing tool that works best with seasonal or cyclical contracts RSI indicator is supposed to track price momentum Sixty percent or more of total daily participation occurs during the first and last hours Spend more time controlling losses than seeking gains Every good analysis should validate current conditions through both forward (strength) oscillators and backward (momentum) indicators Popular oscillating tools, such as RSI and Stochastics, identify overbought-oversold markets. Moving averages and MACD look back and measure momentum change. Or swing traders can just draw simple trendlines and channels in all time frames and use those instead as primary momentum tools The lack of a simple linear relationship between volume and price change frustrates attempts to make accurate predictions Don't fall into the complexity trap
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