Rating: 
Summary: Every trader will benefit
Review: The title of the book should be the subtitle: Building and evaluating effective trading systems rather than Trading systems that work. If you purchase the book thinking you have purchase a collection of trading systems that work you will be disapointed. However if you have an interest in evaluating trading systems than this is the book for you and should join similar books as the Encyclopedia of Trading Strategies by Katz. The great fun in reading this book is in the Author's opinions about everyone else. Here are a few choice comments,"There is no way you can use TradeStation as a standalone tool to build a complete straegy" p.339 "If all of these indicators do not work--"p.51 and my favorite "No wonder then that your software supplier,system vender, or market guru of choice says that your worst draw down is still to come-and they do not even know how to calculate it."p.38 This is not a man that is afraid to express his opinion. The especially good points of the book are the arguments for percentages rather than points in evaluation and the TradeStation easy language (who ever thought that up has an great imagination)code to add information to an excel sheet to get it right. If this is the subject you are interested in buy it. You will not be disapointed.
Rating: 
Summary: A Complete Insight Into Trading Systems That Work
Review: This book is for the TradeStation or MetaStock trader looking to build or enhance a system. Thomas Stridsman was a writer for the magazine Futures and is an experienced trader and trading system builder. With a healthy dose of statistics and mathematical theory, the chaos that appears to exist between your %'s and $'s can be found here with clarity. The goal of Stridsman in his book is to educate the reader, giving them a solid, working understanding of the market for the purpose of building an effective system. The idea is to keep things as simple as possible, which can often be no easy endeavor for an aspiring system programmer. Heavy on the academic side, the disciplined reader of this book will gain the basis of knowledge for creating something unique. The analogy of a car and its respective parts is used, with the engine being the actual system and money management as the transmission. Through this thinking process all of the components that act individually in the market coalesce into a device that operates in mechanical order for executing profitable trades. The book is loaded with programming language and statistical analysis. Ventures into Microsoft Excel and Lotus 1-2-3 are also incorporated for fine-tuning the system process to capture as much reality as possible. In- depth discussion over which TradeStation and MetaStock performance summaries are likely to work or not are key. There's no need for a higher understanding of mathematical theory; the book is written with practicality in mind for traders of all levels of experience. The applications are also grounded enough to be used in any trading market. If you're serious about putting together a trading system, or are looking for ideas to enhance your work, this book is for you. I've always had the understanding that no systems that really work are for sale, but this book is like having a key to the garage where you can put it all together.
Rating: 
Summary: A very good book..
Review: This is a very good book. I agree with the other comments that it is not an easy read. The first part of the book is ok. The writing style was a bit on the wordy descriptive side. However, once one gets into the 'Data Mining' chapter, then there are gems of ideas, comments, and discussion throughout. The work was done with Tradestation which I am not using currently. so in that sense I am a bit disappointed. However, the author does point the short comings of the software when warranted. May I suggest Van Tharpe's 'Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom' as a high level introduction to the topic. This is to get a high level view and to see if you really want to go into the process of building a trading system. If I compare this book to others, it is almost like a tutorial or step by step approach to constructing such a system. One would still need to study other authors to get other ideas and insights. 4 Stars.
Rating:
Summary: A great book with a mediocre title
Review: This is a wonderful book. But the title is IMO going to attract people that are looking for black box systems that will make them a mint. That isn't what this book is about. It should have been called something like, _Building and Evaluating Good Trading Systems_, or some such. I agree completely with the other reviewers and won't restate what they said. But as an owner of TradeStation I can tell you that there is a real need to have someone spell out--in CODE (both for TradeStation and for Excel)--how to *really* evaluate a trading system. Stridsman tells you point blank which of TS's performance eval stats you should look at, and which ones are worthless. Highly recommended.
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