Rating: 
Summary: excellent, practical advice for the mature system developer
Review: First, what this book is not: it is NOT one of those "buy my book and make a million in three weeks" books. He is selling no particular system of trading any market. In fact, this book is targetted at people who have TRIED to trade using one or another simple system and have failed to see those astronomical profits materialize. So he teaches an approach to building simple, robust, thoughtful systems which can be used on many markets. This is like having a really good coach walk you through the elements of any complex task, explaining each element, why it is important, and how it fits in with the others. If you like the approach that Elder and Murphy use in developing trading systems and want to learn more about the nuts and bolts of putting such a system together, this is the book you want. Do not buy this book as your FIRST book--read Elder's book and Murphy's books first, think about them, then get this one. You won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: excellent, practical advice for the mature system developer
Review: First, what this book is not: it is NOT one of those "buy my book and make a million in three weeks" books. He is selling no particular system of trading any market. In fact, this book is targetted at people who have TRIED to trade using one or another simple system and have failed to see those astronomical profits materialize. So he teaches an approach to building simple, robust, thoughtful systems which can be used on many markets. This is like having a really good coach walk you through the elements of any complex task, explaining each element, why it is important, and how it fits in with the others. If you like the approach that Elder and Murphy use in developing trading systems and want to learn more about the nuts and bolts of putting such a system together, this is the book you want. Do not buy this book as your FIRST book--read Elder's book and Murphy's books first, think about them, then get this one. You won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Best Book on Evaluating a Trading System
Review: I have to laugh at the "Doubt" review below because anyone who thinks that you can make more money as an author than as a decent trader is misguided (unless your name is S. King or D. Steele). By the time the publisher and distributor extract their pound of flesh, the author is left with a meager cut. When an author writes a book, several other factors must be considered: ego, sharing knowledge, recognition, leaving a legacy, etc. Did the reviewer actually read the book or just paint a broad stroke?A mechanical or system trader has plenty of time to focus on other tasks throughout the day in between executing orders. In fact, the reason why many system traders fail is because they spend their time babysitting positions and get sucked into making emotional decisions, i.e., taking the quick profit or ignoring the stop loss. It is so easy to sabotage a system, especially if you feel the need to exercise control over the trading decisions (that's 99% of us). Stridsman's book is important because it provides the framework surrounding a trading system. You can plug any trading system into his evaluation model and generate all of the required performance metrics. Further, a trader who understands the details of the system and understands its behavior gains more confidence in trading the system. I recommend this book and Ralph Vince's "Mathematics of Money Management" for further understanding.
Rating: 
Summary: Mediocre
Review: I was excited about this book BUT on buying it I was disappointed. Here are the reasons. The author is a competant prgrammer using Tradestation but I did not learn any new concepts that could be used in my trading. I felt it was a mixture of disconnected ideas, some good and some not so good but he really did not take these ideas and run with it. He also did not acknowledeg the help he received from Futures truth in some of his models etc I applaud giving money to charity but where's the beef
Rating: 
Summary: Doubt
Review: I'm asking why the authors of this kind of book (Trading systems that work, The ultimate trading system, Winning Trading Systems, How to make 1.000.000$ in one year with Futures and so on.)they are not living in some beautiful islands of the Pacific with the broker who sends them checks every day. Why they need to write books? for their "infinite goodness"? , I don't think.
The sad truth is they do BIG BIG money selling the books and not following their system trading. Bye. P.S. If you think that you need to buy 100 T.A. books , just stay out from this business.
Rating: 
Summary: Trading systems that confuse
Review: If you're building a computer based trading system, this title offers some interesting insight. There are several example trading systems that implement commonly used system features, and these systems are analyzed and commented on. But this is far from a blueprint--the methods used are too rough to actually use as defined, and the descriptions are very confusing in many places. Included TradeStation code is a bit easier than most to understand, but that's not saying much. Every time I read this book, I feel like my time would be better spent reviewing Conway & Behle's "Professional Stock Trading: System Design and Automation", which covers much of the same material but with considerably more coherance.
Rating:
Summary: Complicated, poor stuff
Review: it is full of mathmatical programing with no use. he makes you go in circles without giving you a real stuff.
Rating: 
Summary: vERY GOOD BUT A DIFFICULT READ
Review: Recommended but wuth some caution. The pluses include author is candid about his thoughts, raises some excllent points about using percent rather than dollar amounts. When testing use either market adaptive stops or percents to normalize. It is however a diifcult read....never managed to finish reading it cover to cover. I have large amounts of it on many occassions and do feel qualified to comment. I really liked his comments on TRADESTATION the so called industry standard...an overpriced and [very] ugly way of inflicting testing your methodology to come by ! Now system writer that was one that really made a gargantuan difference to actual traders
Rating:
Summary: excellent, practical advice for the mature system developer
Review: Stridsman's work reads like a lab book recollection of his experimentations rather than a systematic study of creating profitable trading systems. The text is repetitive, and filled with illogical analogies and examples. His conclusions are based on some dubious suppositions -- he seems to lack a strong grasp of the statistical analysis he employs. Among the benefits of the book are Stridsman's adherence to standard deviation in assessing system risk and his use of percentage measurements rather than absolute dollar values. This book could be 75% shorter and still contain all the worthwhile information. I would recommend Conway and Behle's "Professional Stock Trading" as a much clearer approach to creating trading systems.
Rating:
Summary: Limited value
Review: Stridsman's work reads like a lab book recollection of his experimentations rather than a systematic study of creating profitable trading systems. The text is repetitive, and filled with illogical analogies and examples. His conclusions are based on some dubious suppositions -- he seems to lack a strong grasp of the statistical analysis he employs. Among the benefits of the book are Stridsman's adherence to standard deviation in assessing system risk and his use of percentage measurements rather than absolute dollar values. This book could be 75% shorter and still contain all the worthwhile information. I would recommend Conway and Behle's "Professional Stock Trading" as a much clearer approach to creating trading systems.
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