Rating: 
Summary: Great book, but not for traders.
Review: I was really looking forward to reading this book after such reviews. I found the book to be nothing but a manual for those who want to manage money. This book is especially against all rules of daytrading and can slash your confidance about trading.
I strongly recommend this book to fund managers and others who want to invest. And I strongly suggest all the daytraders not to only waste your money but the most important factor, that it will bash your confidance and make you think if you have a chance in making it. Which in it self is a pschylogical fear creator. Once I have $2,000,000 or so then I will be using this book to do an average of 25% anually. Van Tharp theory is just a down to earth theory mostly for investors, but daytraders don't share that same theory. Average consistant pro trader does about 5% weekly on his account. I doubt Mr. Tharp would find that realistic. So once again , do not waste your time if your a daytrader, but I strongly recommend this book to investors and fund managers.
Rating:
Summary: A serious book with a less serious title...
Review: ...and yet I think this is one of the best trading books around. Not that it brings many new trading ideas, but it makes you see somewhat familiar things from a different perspective, which, I think, is rather good. One of the best topics is certainly the psychological side, the one about trying to master the market and trim the psychological bias, but there are other sections that I read more carefully and more times than the others, like money and risk management, the risk-expectancy "R-multiple" theory being very interesting indeed. Van Tharp's book is surely not recommended for the novice traders, but if you think you need to read at least a dozen of trading books in order to enhance your chances of being successful, this book is certainly one of them.
Rating: 
Summary: New light on familiar topics
Review: Like many others reading trading related materials, I was dubious when I first picked up the book; since then I've read it twice and found helpful new information each time. The book does not offer you the "magic bullet" but instead provides a logical means of analyzing yourself and your systems. Using information I learned from Dr. Tharp's book, I was able to refine my trading systems and make them more profitable. I am looking forward to a sequel! I recommend this book to experienced traders who are looking to improve their results and to beginning traders seeking an understanding of how trading systems can be quantified and similarly compared.
Rating: 
Summary: dont waste your precious time and money...
Review: Let me get straight to the point. I do not undertand how this book got such rave reviews...Reading the book is a complete waste of time and I want my money back...It is the most boring book I've ever read regarding trading and investing...
I can honestly say that the whole book contains only about 20 pages of useful material. Even the topics such as "expectancy" and "position sizing" which the author claims only few traders understand and use are really just fancy names for terms that most of us already know...This is the first time I gave only one star for review and for good reason. Save your time and hard earned money...and keep away from this worthless book.Take my advice..You'll appreciate it!
Rating:
Summary: A Good Place to Develop Technical Trading Skills
Review: Recommending trading books seems like a fool's errand. In order to evaluate a book on trading, one has to know the experience of the potential reader. This is a book that will be most useful to someone with some background in trading, but not beyond intermediate experience. In addition the title and book jacket may promise the reader more than the book delivers, a common failing in this genre of literature. These caveats aside, this is a solid development of trading techniques. Recognize that Tharp does not solve your trading problems for you, he simply gives you some tools with which to develop your own trading style. All in all, a pretty wise approach.
Rating:
Summary: BUY IT BUY IT BUY IT
Review: Of any of the traders I know who actually make money this is what they always talk about. I never fully understood what they meant but this book opened my eyes to the keys of their trading sucess.
Of all those people who obviously are looking for people to say that by reading this book I made a million I didnt. I stopped trading. I am now using the principles to develop a system for myself and one of which I know that I have won the game before I have even started.
Basically Stop Trading until you have read it.
Rating:
Summary: This book is stronger than the workshop
Review: Execellent coverage of the 10 parts of trading system design: 1) Market Selection, 2) Market Direction, 3) Setups, 4) Market entry, 5) Protective stops, 6) Market re-entry, 7) Taking profits, 8) Position sizing, 9) Portfolio selection, 10) Multiple systems.
I was so impressed with the book that I attended Tharp's $2,000 Advanced System Development Workshop. This book covers 90% of what was in that workshop. The other 10% is in Tharp's other book, Financial Freedom through Electronic Day Trading. The 10 parts of trading system design were not covered at any additional depth or clarity in the workshop. In fact, the books cover a lot more material. Just buy the books and read them several times.
Rating:
Summary: This book showed me the critical stuff I didn't know
Review: I have been investing money in stocks since 1997. Since that time, I tried to learn as much about it as I could . I thought I had come a long way, but this book showed me how little I really know, and more importantly, why I haven't made as much money as I was hoping. I am not all the way through it yet, but I've already learnt a ton of stuff I never knew about, or didn't pay much attention to. If you're not very successful in your investing or trading, or you are, but you know you can do better, then buy this book. It teaches about psychological factors that can ruin your trading if you don't learn to control them, about the optimum amount of money to trade on each idea, about analyzing your system to see if you're even likely to make any money off it, about exit strategies etc. No book will teach you every detail of everything you need to know about trading/investing, but this one will give you a rock-solid base on which you can build.
Rating:
Summary: Another vote for 5 stars.
Review: Readers get what they want out of this book. If you want to understand how to trade successfully and what all of the top Market Wizards have in common than read this book. It has some of the most detailed money mangement plans, ideas written in a book. Risk management is covered extensively. After reading this book quite a few times the reader will know terms such as R multiples, position sizing, and expectancy quite well. The trader who learns to use this terms in his trading consistently will eventually become consistenly profitable if they use and follow the terms above. This book MUST be read.
Rating:
Summary: Hype vs Reality
Review: If you are a wishful thinker searching for the holy grail to riches in the financial markets and enjoy falling prey to con people after con people who out of sheer altruism want to share their great secrets with you, and who promise you that if you buy their invariably expensive systems/books all you have to do is work half an hour in the evening to gain incredible wealth, then do not buy this book. If however you are willing to accept that there is no holy grail waiting to be discovered, are serious about wanting to earn more than you lose in the financial markets over a relevant frame of time, then you will absolutely have to buy this book. Van Tharp tells it the way it is.
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