Rating: 
Summary: You must Verify and Validate each of the Author ideas
Review: Pattern cycles show swing traders where to find consistent profitsFuture 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
Rating: 
Summary: Getting The Facts Straight
Review: Wow, this is a very good book. I don't understand why anyone would attack the language or the approach. If you want to read a comic book, head over to the grocery store. They have quite a lot of them. The language and terminology used by the author adds greatly to the comprehension of the material. And there is an EXCELLENT glossary in the back of the book. I've also noticed that his terms are not grabbed out of "thin air". Most of these concepts originated in excellent studies on the futures markets done over the past 20 years. For example, "negative vs positive feedback" comes from research done by Raschke and others in the early 1990s. Farley just does a much better job explaining the complex ideas to the average trader, and telling them how to take swing trading positions based on their power. This book is very original and not part of the cookie cutter garbage that passed for a "trading book" before the bear market started. It's SO appropriate that MST showed up just as tougher days hit the stock market. Farley's book offers a very effective way to deal with these choppy markets. And he does a fabulous job getting the message across. Reading the book does not take an advanced college degree. But it does require a commitment by the reader and a willingness to learn something new. Highly recommended!
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: An Outstanding Work
Review: This is a must read and very dense compilation of discretionary trading techniques. It's definitely written for those (like me) who have taken their trading to a certain level, and then stalled out in performance. I can't enough good things about what Farley's ideas have added to my trading. I didn't find the material too subjective or "arcane". Not at all! The concepts bridge the gap between our trading instincts and the cold, hard numbers. This conceptual view of price patterns and trade execution is exactly what's missing in the trading books I've read over the past few years. This is certainly no simple "how-to" book. Perhaps that's where some readers get frustrated. Every chapter forces you to think about what you know about the stock chart, and what you don't know. Clearly, Farley is able to push the buttons of his readers. That may be frustrating for some, but most will walk away from the experience realizing its importance and impact. The work required to get through the dense text is well worth the effort. I believe this book will eventually be recognized for what it is...a market classic.
Rating: 
Summary: It sounds so logical it must be true . . . right?
Review: All of us who have attacked the markets using technical analysis do so because we believe in the fundamental tenets of TA: 1) everything is discounted and reflected in market prices, 2) prices move in trends and trends persist, and 3) market action is repetitive. If only it were that easy. This book by Alan Farley, and his website www.hardrightedge.com, are dedicated to disabusing amateurs of the notion that making money in the markets is easy. In fact, most practitioners don't make money following TA. That said, if you are still intent on pitting yourself against the pros, then by all means read, study, and reread this book. Farley's concept of the pattern cycle, his demand that every signal be cross verified, and his emphasis on time and preparation should be part of the arsenal of any serious practitioner. Perhaps the most valuable contribution of this book, however, is as a challenge to the trader. Unless you are able to read it, reread it, and comprehend all of it, you have no business risking capital in swing trading.
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: Trader
Review: Mr. Farley is obviously an experienced and probably successful trader. He is one of the more knowledgable writers I have read on trading. His book is through and detailed. I have only one criticism. Mr. Farley has a talent for taking a fairly simple function and making it sound complicated. This book would make an excellent college text.
Rating: 
Summary: Better swing trading books...
Review: I have to agree with many other reviewers that the writing style of this book is so poor that I think I was missing some important and worthwhile information. Dave Landry wrote two books on swing traders that are far easier to understand and implement. I think someone who has never invested before -- much less traded -- wouldn't have problems reading "Dave Landry on Swing Trading." As someone with experience with the markets, I found myself rereading "Master Swing Trader" passages 2 and 3 times.
Rating: 
Summary: Opprobium for this Abundant Obfuscation
Review: A very badly written book, filled with conjecture, backed up by no research whatsover. The author blathers on about patterns retracing back to Fib numbers, yet offers no proof other than the occasional "well chosen example." In fact, the month I was reading this book, there was an article in Active Trader magazine which went through thousands of charts and showed that retracements do not magically fall to magic numbers. This book reads like an astrological textbook. Reader after reader talks about how they have had to go through it again and again. That's because it's a.) poorly written, b.) illogically ordered and c.) the damn charts are often on the wrong page. And the way this guy draws trendlines -- jeez, they could be anywhere! Color me not impressed.
Rating:
Summary: A Struggle to Read
Review: While this book seems to contain some helpful information, the author wrote it so poorly that it becomes very difficult to follow. Mr. Farley seems to make point after point without trying to make connections between them and in an extremely laborious style. Of the books I have read on this subject, this one is clearly the most difficult to read, and I doubt that the information it provides is worth the effort. I would focus my efforts elsewhere. I was surprised to see that it was published by a well-recognized firm. I can't imagine what their editors were doing.
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