Rating: 
Summary: Not For The Faint of Heart
Review: Be well versed in solid technical analysis prior to reading this excellent book. It was difficult for me as I am more prone to being intuitive than analytical. Yet it has turned out to be one of the best reference books I have in a library of 150 books on trading.
Rating: 
Summary: The One
Review: Don't get me wrong, the author doesn't seem stupid - he developed his own adaptive trend following method. But he has completely no idea how the market works and what can possibly work in the market. This book is a compilation of many technical trading methods, but most of them are stale and some ridiculously insane. Page 376-377 he has a chart and program to compute the moon's phase, because we should buy at full moon and sell at new moon? The selling point of the book is it contains some source code, but most of them are naive. Page 640 betrayed that the author only wrote the programs over twenty years ago when there was no graphics output. In regression he had to use many "*"s to draw the line. And why would any reader need the Fortran source code in the appendix to do regression? Remind you that those ten pages would cost you a buck. In short, the book has no value for professionals. For individual investors, be aware - the book could actually be harmful because it gives you false confidence. In the investment world half bottle may be worse than you know you have nothing in the bottle.
Rating:
Summary: Important book for intermediate level traders
Review: First let me disclose that I have not read this book front-to-back, but I have gone through most of it from time to time over the past 3 years. I believe this book is an excellent reference for anyone who is serious about building a robust systematic strategy for trading. Mr. Kaufman starts by going over the basics of statistics, supply and demand, trends, etc...and later gets into the particular trading strategies. The final section of the book deals with system testing and risk control, and this is the part that I found most valueable. The book doesn't cover any subjects in enough detail to give you a complete understanding of the subject, but I don't believe that this was the intent anyway. It's a starting point to give you high-level ideas about trading systems, testing strategies, and risk control, and it is an excellent book in this respect. For beginning traders, I would recommend the standard books (Market Wizards, Remeniscence of a Stock Operator, Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom, etc.) over this one because those ones cover the psych aspect of trading better, and this is probably the most important foundation for success. For those who are serious, and realistic about trading, 'Trading Systems and Methods' is an important reference book...but by no means the last book you'll ever need.
Rating:
Summary: Mine is filled with bookmarks
Review: Going more for breadth than depth, "Trading Systems and Methods" hits an enormous number of approaches for building a mechanical trading system. Many (some would say all) of these technical analysis approaches are obviously utter rubbish (anyone who has seen "Pi" can chuckle along with me at the section about Fibonacci Ratios), but the shear volume of techniques outlined make this a particularly good title for people new to trading systems development. The included computer code isn't particularly useful because of both its simplicity and its reliance on TradeStation features.
If you're looking for a survey of mechanical, technical trading techniques with enough detail for a jumping off point to inspire further research, this provides that on a large scale and with commendably wide coverage. I found it most helpful to identify which wheels I was busy reinventing when doing my own system development, outside of that context it doesn't have quite as much utility.
Rating:
Summary: A great book, especially for Tradestation users.
Review: My bookshelf now has about 50 books on options, daytrading, TA, bonds, futures, fundamental analysis, and the psychology of trading. This book is one of the best on TA. Though I do not have Tradestation this book should come with the program. Many of the trading systems that it talks about are laid out in easy language (the way to input into Tradestation). Since I use WOW it would be nice if it laid out the programming for WOW so that I did not have to translate it. But now Omega owns WOW so let's hope the best of each come out of the merger and not the worst (like easy language). For TA it is up there with Murphy's and Schwager's and perhaps goes a bit beyond in how to take the indicators and put them together into a system. Also it explains many of the systems that various market Gurus expound. Where most of the books on the market try to explain it all like beginning addition and subtraction this book is many steps beyond the first grade and does take some serious study, which I appreciate. In short, if you are interested in TA and how it combines to form a system of trading this book will be worth you money.
Rating:
Summary: Important book for intermediate level traders
Review: Perry Kaufman offers a thorough and informative encyclopedia of trading systems and insights in a comprehensive guide of nearly 700 pages. The book is geared for a more advanced level of trader, as well as for someone interested in focusing on the mathematical foundations of building and testing trading systems. If you are looking for a detailed and mathematically-oriented approach to futures trading systems, then this highly quantitative book is for you. The goal of Kaufman's book is "to give a you a complete understanding of the tools and techniques needed to develop or choose a trading program that has a good chance of being successful." He excludes commentary on market psychology and execution or trading skills in favor of focusing primarily on the development of a well-thought-out and tested system. Kaufman has worked extensively in price forecasting, and he is a well-known technical expert in futures markets. He is a principal of an international investment firm and has written extensively on trading systems. Since he has an extensive background in futures trading and research, the futures markets remain the primary focus of the book. Any trader interested primarily in equity trading might find this book more advanced than necessary. For anyone even remotely interested in learning about the complexities of trading systems, then this book does offer some interesting insights into how in depth some trading systems can become. For instance, the book explains techniques like trend and countertrend analysis, indicators, and various testing methods. Also covered are choice of data, diversification, time frames, trade selection, choosing a method of analysis, and testing. As for the ongoing learning process that trading demands, I particularly liked the quote Kaufman uses at the beginning of the book. He quotes JRL as saying that "If you have a minute, I'll tell you how to make money in stocks. Buy low and sell high--Now if you have five or ten years, I'll tell you how to tell when stocks are low and high." Learning takes a lot of time, and if you have the time Kaufman's book is worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Exceptional beyond a doubt, but....
Review: The books by Perry Kaufman stand apart in the field of technical analysis, and this book should be the heart of any library covering the subject. I was left in a state of awe at the genius of the many contributors to the field of technical analysis, and with the scope of Mr. Kaufman's knowledge and efforts in this endeavor. The explanations are clear and concise and I spent many, many weeks reading and studying the book both as a source of knowledge and later as a reference book. One could explore any of these methods, or all of them as a life's work - to the exclusion of truly learning to trade. Success in trading comes at a price and it isn't generally for want of ideas or systems that people have failed to succeed. The book through its comprehensiveness demonstrates the many methods that others have undertaken through many years past, which, to my mind, only underscores the idea that successful trading will most likely result through adapting one or two simple methods or rules and faithfully adhering to them. There are no panaceas.
Rating: 
Summary: Good for reference, but read wtih skepticism
Review: There was plenty to learn in this book and overall it offers much reasonable advice. However, it also packs a large portion of bizarre and obviously silly content, such as the phase-of-the-moon and the "Jupiter-Saturn cycle" trading systems mentioned in other reviews. Still, I find even this bit useful as a reminder of the danger of being lured in by a trading system based on numerology instead of relevant data. It's nice to remember that the reason analysts compute the 14-day and 28-day moving averages are because these are half and a full moon's cycle, respectively. Of course, these became popular even though they refer to trading days instead of Earth days (what? doesn't the moon phase stop progressing over the weekend too??) My other complaint is the use of proprietary "Easy Language" code samples; this would be fine if it included an appendix on Easy Language syntax, but this is conspicuously missing... and would have been more useful than the secion of the book titled "Financial Astrology" or the appendix on constructing a pentagon with straightedge and compass (I'm not kidding). Suprisingly, I did find the discussion of solar eclipses informative from an astronomy viewpoint. Overall, even with the negatives, I enjoyed the other reference material.... just figure out which chapters to tear out of the book before reading.
Rating:
Summary: A complete guide
Review: This book is a complete and comprehensive guide to methods of technical analysis. These methods are covered in a concise and sinthetic way (perhaps very sinthetic), so you can't loose any word in the method of your interest. But I love this way. This contrasts with Kaufman's "Smarter Trading", a very wordy book that dissapoints me. This is the other side of the coin. Besides this, is the most comprehensive book you can find; if you are looking for a particular method possibly you will found in this book many sound variants of the original you've looking for. The best technical reference I've found, but don't spect too much than a reference.
Rating: 
Summary: Useless
Review: This is a bizzar of prorietary code (TradeStation Language), and 20 yrs old fortran code at the Appendix. I am wondering who will be using this code? Lot of spaghetti Mathematics which is neither simple focussing on concepts , nor deep enough to understant the mathematical details that's very poorly presented. In chapter 8 about uncovering cycles, after all the poorly written mathematical stuff, there is no mention on how to use the uncovered cycles in trading which is much more important than running after sines and cosines ...although I am a Computer Engineer with mathematical background , I got lost...
I am forced to read this book as a reading material for CMT2 certificate , however I consider it a very badly written book with no real focus neither elegant mathematical details nor usable code nor Trading concepts
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