Rating: 
Summary: Winner take All
Review: An excellent book on Investments (commodity).
If rules of investment are followed rigoursly, one should make some money.
Rating:
Summary: The Truth
Review: Gallacher proves himself to be an excellent critic and skeptic in this book, pointing out faults and errors in others. I would say that's of the most valuable part of the book. You can find pimping of products, and authors' positive features of their work in any book. Gallacher finally takes a critical look at some of the common methods out there, and gives you the negative side as well, and errors in logic. That's what makes this book worth reading. A few examples of people being "found out" are Larry Williams, Bruce Babcock, and W.D. Gann, not to mention some flaws in common techniques, like trendlines. I don't think he handled Elliot wave as good as he could have, though. Elliot's health and mental capacity was dwindling due to a disease (I forgot the name of the disease), and ended up dying in a hospital, and was finishing work on the Wave Principle as fast as he could before the disease finally took over. To simply say Elliot died in an insane asylum broke does not tell the whole story. Elliot Wave has plenty of flaws in it and is quite ridiculous, in my opinion, and could have been busted open better than this. This book is probably required reading for those who are new to the business, and expect to make a killing by reading about some new indicator or following a black box system. The book is ground in reality. I can see how some can have isssue with his remarks toward technical analysis. First, he shows how it's flawed. Then, in the next chapter and then on, he's showing how he uses it to help him trade. It's not a contradiction, really, and he's not being hypocritical. He uses different methods of TA than what he rips apart at the beginning of the book. Shows errors in optimal f also, and Artificial Intelligence. Even if you use TA and are a TA zealot, the book can probably help you still. I use TA extensively, and found the book insightful.
Rating: 
Summary: Author, read this?
Review: I believe most of these reviews are in form of chat between the authors of same topic books. We, readers are sick and tired of reading you guys point other authors' lack of knowledge and wrong doings. Please act as a professional would and quit fighting over stup#d sh#t. Don't forget, if you think that you are good keep it to yourself and wait for readers to comment on your work. Thank You for reading this.
Rating: 
Summary: For thinker and veteran type of traders, not for novices
Review: I was really surprised by the hard core negative stance taken by the author, presumably a successful commodity trader who prescribed fundamental analysis as the only means to "not luck driven" survival in commodities trading. He had used 76 out of his 229 page book to elaborate the "real failure stories" of Gann, Larry Williams, Richard Dennis, and the absurdities of Elliot waves and Fibonacci numbers.
I am not going to judge this book by its controversial opinion which most TA traders would disagree (please refer to the spotlight review by trader75. It's excellent). I just want to warn all novice trader readers that in case you dont know well about your own trading style or trading edge, dont read this book. In my opinion, both TA and FA are simply tools for profit making, the choice of it depending much on the traders' own personalitites, strengths and weaknesses that nobody else can really tell. Unless you had been completely ripped off twice (the author's standard of a successful trader, if the trader can still persist), I am afraid that you might not truly understand what your true nature is and may get confused by the author's very sophisticated arguments. Afterall, reading is meant for profitable trading, isnt it?
To me, this book is quite a fun read with good coverage on money management and trading psychology (discipline/technical (not TA)/mechanical trading), a good reminder of the limit of TA and a mind cleansing tool for the unwanted residue of my unplesant trading life. If you enjoy reading something really skeptical, go for it. Otherwise, please give it a pass.
Rating: 
Summary: Not recommended.
Review: Previous reviewer Justice covers things pretty well except when he says, "Gallacher is neither totally wrong or totally right in his methodical destruction of TA." This is incorrect. Gallacher IS totally wrong in his critique of TA, and his is also totally, we might even say "brutally" DIShonest in presenting his case. Setting up a straw man and knocking him down is the method of someone who really does not know what he is talking about and refuses to learn. But Gallacher does worse than that--he prevaricates. To see this for yourself without buying the book you'll have to pay attention and do some work, including getting through this unfortunately but unavoidably long review. The cornerstone of Gallacher's case against TA is his treatment of trendlines using a chart of the June '85 Live Hogs contract, on which he draws the "true" trendline in contradistinction to the one Murphy drew on the same chart in his Technical Analysis of the Futures Market. Gallacher claims trading this "true" trendline would have had the technical trader long on the day the market went limit-down against him. This "true" down trendline connects the tops of 3 rallies between mid-Jun and early Aug '84. In mid-Aug price breaks above the DTL, dips back to the same DTL in early Sep, then bounces back up for 5 days. Gallacher rightly says that TA teaches buying this bounce because resistance, once penetrated, becomes support. So then the limit-down day comes and slams the hapless and naive technical trader with a huge loss. It does look bad. But it's not, and here's why. Go to futuresource.com, charts, and pull up LHM85, Density: High. This chart shows the situation Gallacher examines. But it also shows Gallacher's dishonesty. Note that the supposed long position was held in mid-Sep in the Jun '85 contract. I guarantee you, folks, there was not a single technical trader trading LHM85, either long or short, in Sep '84. Not one. The very first thing technical traders learn is to trade the most active contract. Hedgers are the only ones with positions in far-deferred contracts like the Jun85 was in Sep84. This is an egregious and inexcusable error. If Gallacher is simply ignorant of this elementary distinction between active and deferred contracts and who trades them, he is certainly not the one to write a vitriolic and condescending attack on TA and the people who use it. But that's not all. What about the technical traders who WERE trading the most active contract in Sep84 when the "massive gap down" occurred? They would have been trading the Oct84 contract. Go to futuresource charts and pull up LHV84, Density: Low. Draw a DTL connecting the highs in mid-Jul, mid-Aug, early Sep, and mid-Sep. This is one of the most perfect trendlines I have ever seen. There is NO DTL break to the upside here. In fact, following Murphy's elementary TA principle of selling on contact with a DTL would have had you SHORT, not long, when the gap-down came. Look it up! Do the charts yourself. The truth of the matter is EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what Gallacher says. Q.E.D. This is not an isolated error, but it is a glaring one, and it characterizes the poor quality of the thinking expressed throughout the book. If you want learn what TA is about, get Kaufman's Trading Systems and Methods, then go to futuresource or prophetfinance.com and study about 10,000 charts. That will be a good beginning and give you some idea. If you read Gallacher, you'll have no clue, except maybe that fundamentalists are irrational and disingenous in making such confident assertions about things they do not know.
Rating:
Summary: This is a clear winner
Review: This , undoubtedly , is one of the best books on trading . The author rips apart the "The technical analysis" school of thought , presenting his arguments in a clear manner . A must read for all those ppl looking for quick bucks . Buy this before u buy any drivel on Elliot wave.
Rating:
Summary: Short, easy to read but truly excellent
Review: This is one of the best of the hundreds of books I have read on investing. He systematically demolishes numerous myths about trading. For this reason some readers are likely to be upset by the book e.g. devotees of Elliot Waves, Gann's methods and other nonsense. The important topics are covered extremely well i.e. money management, what IS important, what is snake oil, some of the realities of trading such as slippage, why over 90% of traders lose all their money, etc. Most books on investing are thinly disguised marketing exercises. This one is different - the author is doing his best to share his hard earned learnings. An excellent investment.
Rating:
Summary: Helps you to look at yourself and others!
Review: This is one of those books that help you gain some balance if you plan to dance with the elephants on Wall Street and in the Futures Pits. Often books on trading deal with the buy this pattern, sell this pattern, go to the bank, repeat.. But let's face something, if it were that easy, no one would sell you a book. Gallacher paints a rather dim yet cogent argument against searching for a holy grail in someone's elses ideas. He also gives you some insight on how a (fund manager/trader) may put good trades into his account while putting bad trades into your account. All this said, if you enjoy trading books, or if you are pumped up because you just read Wade Cook, Robert Allen, or got a brochure from Larry Williams, then this could be a very wise choice.
Rating:
Summary: Helps you to look at yourself and others!
Review: This is one of those books that help you gain some balance if you plan to dance with the elephants on Wall Street and in the Futures Pits. Often books on trading deal with the buy this pattern, sell this pattern, go to the bank, repeat.. But let's face something, if it were that easy, no one would sell you a book. Gallacher paints a rather dim yet cogent argument against searching for a holy grail in someone's elses ideas. He also gives you some insight on how a (fund manager/trader) may put good trades into his account while putting bad trades into your account. All this said, if you enjoy trading books, or if you are pumped up because you just read Wade Cook, Robert Allen, or got a brochure from Larry Williams, then this could be a very wise choice.
Rating:
Summary: Must have for systems traders
Review: Two hundred pages into "Winner Take All", you'll find Gallacher dissecting Ralph Vince's optimal F strategy for position sizing, pointing out the obvious ways in which it can result in dangerous levels of overtrading that can put you out of business. At the end is an illustration of a trader aiming a gun at his own head and blowing his brains out, with the caption "optimally f'd". While it sounds kind of tasteless written down this way, when I came across it the first time I was laughing so hard I had to put the book down and catch my breath for a minute.
That's the sort of work you'll find throughout this very contrarian text whose nominal focus is on commodities trading. The scathing commentary wouldn't be so helpful were it just being sensationalist, but the analysis throughout this book is spot on in addition to being extremely funny at times.
While Gallacher's coverage of commodities is solid, albeit fairly pedestrian, his discussion of trading gurus is simultaneously informative, entertaining, and controversial. Ralph Vince gets off pretty easy compared with how other revered industry fellows are lampooned. You'll find plenty of dirt on popular trading role models like John Murphy, W. D. Gann, Elliot, Larry Williams, Richard Dennis (and the turtles), Bruce Babcock, and Welles Wilder (not to mention a thoroughly deserved bashing of Neural Networks). Anyone who is following techniques proposed by those gentleman should consider reading "Winner Take All" just to make sure you're seasoning their claims with a healthy enough skepticism. As other reviews here claim, Gallacher may be doing his own manipulation on the data in order to prove his own points in this area, and you'd be wise to apply the same level of skepticism he brings to other figures to his own claims. Very interesting reading, and written in a thoroughly enjoyable style.
The centerpiece of the book is one of the most real-world discussions of an working trading system I've found. A standard trend-following breakout system is presented and shown to make 385% annually; pretty good, right? It's then shown rather realistically how commissions, slippage, and stop order issues will eat into that. Then, he analyzes the real capital required to actually run that system through its expected drawdowns. When
it's all done, that magic winning system is lucky to hit 17% across the amount of capital actually required to run it. Having built multiple trading systems myself with multi-hundred percent per year predicted results that actually lost money once the entirety of actual trading and money management was factored in, I'm shocked that more books on trading systems don't cover this topic. Note that some of the things that really bash the profits in the examples down are specific to commodities (like the limit down/up problem), but stocks have their own issues that are of equal magnitude (in my own systems, I've noted that the bid/ask difference on stocks going through a breakout on volume are dramatically higher than any model I've ever seen suggests).
In short, those looking for a healthy dose of anti-holy grail trading advice might do well to read "Winner Take All", and those building any sort of trading system should consider it essential. You won't get much advise on what to do unless you're specifically looking for information on trading commodities on fundamentals, but there's a lot of solid material on what to make sure you don't do.
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