Rating: Summary: Excellent but very technical Review: For all traders and investors. Swing trading teaches great entry points and profit management. I've been a swing and trend trader for years now with a vast library of TA books. This book is the best I've ever read. Not the type of book for a beginner, I suggest ligher reading until you get to know the basics of oscillators, trend lines, volume characteristics etc... If you know the basics, this will propel you to 3 levels above. Carefull reading will reap profits. It did for me. Take time reading this book, use a hylighter, bookmark pages, go back to them from time to time. CAUTION! This book is written in a college textbook fashion with higher mathematical terminology. It wouldn't hurt to read the book with an engineering dictionary or a good math site. Although some techniques did not fit the present day environment, I know they will fit future environments. I found the advice very sound and profitable. This is a TA encyclopedia! Awesome book.
Rating: Summary: Excellent teacher for profitable short term trades Review: Bought the book. Had to read it several times to get all the intricate information. I still have to reference back to it. Have been profitable since coming to an understanding of its information. Highly recommended for anyone but a extreme novice. A novice should read something more basic before going to this book.
Rating: Summary: Great way to start 2004 Review: Pick up this book and read it as your first in 2004. It will do a lot more good than anything else I can think of. It does start slow, but after awhile it was obvious the author was building a base to present ideas I could use every day in the markets. Its not an easy read but worth every minute you spend on it. This is easily my favorte trading book since I first read it in late 2001. Don't be put off. This one is absolutely worth your time.
Rating: Summary: Top book in my library Review: I've read this book three times now, and have only good things to say about it. It is layered with valuable information that hits below the radar at first read. It's done more to improve my trading than anything else on my shelf. Farley can be repetitive but I cant say the prose bothered me at all. I was drawn in and found it hard to put down, even with its length. This book will be a classic, regardless of what its detractors may think. Superb in all aspects.
Rating: Summary: Very wordy and poorly written Review: As a professional trader I am always looking to improve my skills. This book is useless: painfully poorly written and extremely wordy for a tiny bit of information provided. I could not finish reading it after many attempts. Don't waste your time. If you insist, buy it used from someone like me. Better yet, read something else!
Rating: Summary: Great information - horribly written Review: With 200+ reviews you'll probably get sick of reading about the book's details, so I'll just stick to generalities. The advantage of Farley's book is that it is one of the few that contains in-depth coverage of a large swath of swing trading techniques. When this book was written you'd probably need 3 or 4 other books to cover this same ground. If this were the only good book on swing trading I'd say give it a read. But since there are other superior choices like David Nassar's awesome Market Evaluation and Analysis for Swing Trading, I'd substitute that one in place of Farley's book.The apologists for Farley's poor writing style are right that the information is useful and very comprehensive, but they don't seem to understand that an author's job is to communicate his ideas as efficiently as possible. And Farley utterly fails in this regard. The book reads like 400 pages of bullet points with the bullets taken out and the resulting sentences jammed together into incoherent paragraphs. It is a very disjointed, staccato-like read. I read books to extract information. Anything that makes extracting that information harder than it should be is an error by the author, regardless of whether some people get an ego boost from conquering overly complex reads. I usually don't sell my investment books because I like to keep them around for future reference. But this book is just too disjointed and scattered to serve as a quick reference, especially when I have other reference books around. And there's really nothing here that I haven't read in other books. This one is going on the used book market. The Nassar book takes the top spot in the swing trading section of my library.
Rating: Summary: So profound.... Review: Alexander Elder has warned in his "Come into my trading room" to avoid trading books written in poor English, as person's writing reflects his thinking. Farley's book is a perfect example of the above. The book is full of "profound" wisdom like: "Compare price placement within that axis against volume's central tendency deviation to identify impending feedback shifts" Meaningless truisms also contribute to the 400+ pages solidness of the volume: "Profits depend on relationship between price and time" "Good results make money, while bad results lose it" While the book may still offer some insights and useful techniques, one would need a fine sieve to locate them. Both main Elder's books are by far superior to this.
Rating: Summary: get a job. Review: i love the reviews from folks who whine that this book is "too hard"... if you think this book is too hard, good luck finding an "easy" road to profitability in trading...but please, keep on trading...i need a steady influx of "get me rich quick and easy" suckers to continue lining my pocket with trading profits. if you can't find the value in this book, GET A JOB. cuz you aint' makin' it in this business, not long-term.
Rating: Summary: Attack of the Newbies Review: Its pretty clear a lot of the wrong people tried and failed to read this book. Its definitely not for beginners. And although everyone likes to present themselves as a heavy hitter, its obvious many reviewers are just starting out and finding themselves totally lost with this book. Thats good news for those of us who have been around the block a few times. This is one of the few original trading books on the market. Farley gets attacked because the newbies can't understand what he's trying to say. If they did, they might actually survive and prosper in the market, rather than crash and burn with everyone else. Buy this book. Its one if the few that's an absolute necessity to read. It's that good and important. End of Rant.
Rating: Summary: good info but TOUGH read Review: I read the reviews where people had to read this book several times to get the info, and now that I own it I see what they mean. The author writes in a very complex manner. He uses insider terminology & phraseology without fully defining it, or defines it later in the text, much after he has used the word in the ordinary flow of a chapter. He often uses terms interchangeably, without explaining that they are near-synonyms. The reader must flip to the index to understand the meaning of a sentence (inadequate glossary). Structurally, as well, the author hops all around. The layout for the book does not build consecutively. The book presents some excellent market ideas, however I found myself lost in the writing style, reading and rereading till hypnotized. I have since discovered other books that explain the same ideas in a manner that is much clearer and more accessible.
|