Bollinger on Bollinger Bands

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Summary: If history has taught us anything...
Review: ...is that it continually keeps repeating itself. And Bollinger Bands are one of the tools helping you notice it and profit from it.

If you think you know everything about BB you'd better not say it too loud before you read this book. Being myself a mixture of day-swing trader I have to say it helps a lot, although I look at other tools before entering or exiting a trade. But if you are a position trader or a mid-long term investor, I think the BB are supposed to be a valuable tool at your disposal. You're not going to make a killing only by using this tool, but if you combine the BB with other tools such as simple or exponential moving averages, volume, RSI and/or momentum and accumulation/distribution, you have much better chances of being financially more independent.

The most part of day-swing-position trading and mid-long term investing book authors tend to make things seem much more complicated than they are (I suspect they do it on purpose-to make you feel foolish or to make you think they are geniuses?). Well, John Bollinger's book is very simple to understand, and it's exactly the simplicity in explaining somehow difficult tools and theories that I like the most.

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Summary: What The Doctor Ordered
Review: A quiet, well paced, unassuming power house of history, insight, and trading experience all rolled into an easy flowing, unpretentious read. Bollinger manages to teach us about his indicator, and about the market itself without shameless self promotion or hype. Bollinger on Bollinger bands is what this market needed, a clear, concise and useful tool for investors to use to provide balance in a chaotic time. As a financial writer, and money manager, who uses Bollinger Bands on every trade, I found that the book gave me new ways to not just trade, but analyze the market and decide when not to trade, which is where the difference between success and failure is often deciced. The book is written in a fluid, easy to digest manner, which gives the reader room to sit back and ponder between chapters. There are clear, one sentence summary statements after each section, which pull the material together quite well and reinforce the main points. Other useful aids include a pull out reference card with statistical formulas and reference charts. The best thing is that Bollinger, a bona fide market guru, doesn't take himself too seriously. He humbly admits that trading has a great deal of uncertainty, and does not tout his own fortunes as a result of his indicator. The book can also be read as a nice historical piece, which begins with the nostalgic foreword by CNBC's Ron Insana about the old FNN news room, including a classic anecdote about the late Ed Hart, who for all of us who knew FNN could only bring a smile. Thanks John.

Rating:
Summary: First Rate
Review: An excellent book on both trading in general and the construction, logic, and use of Bollinger Bands.

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Summary: Recommended reading!
Review: Beeing a Bollinger Band enthusiast for many years, I found it very helpful to read from the creator of the bands how to interpret and use them. There are many ways to use BBs, but the book has helped me to understand and confirm some thoughts of my own. Mr Bollinger describes about M and W formations and how BBs can help you understand and foresee them better. He introduce a new concept to me, normalized indicators and also new indicators derived from the bands themselves. All these indicators come with complete formulas for you to create yourself in your preferred technical analysis program if you want to. He also explains three different strategies were you can use BBs and decribed indicators as systems for your trade. This book is now definately one of my favorites and I will read parts of it over and over again.

Rating:
Summary: The meat is missing
Review: Bollinger gives a very nice historical perspective of the evolution to Bolly Bands but how he made the jump from incorpoating the internal daily range to externally applied stdevs isn't really discussed other than he 'felt so'. Well I think is an important part of the story and withtout that tidbit it looks like was just trying to find a shortcut for his spreadsheet & do something unique.

The ideas he has are valuable but throughout the book one wonders why Bolly Bands & not StdError or Projection Bands? Why Bolly Bands and not Channels with their implied daily range of volatility? Putting Bolly Bands with indicators is helpful in explaining this though I think it woulb be more valuable to see some of the applications.

In the end though, I felt that Bollinger was trying to sell me his website ...& not really give me all the information I needed to make my own decision. Bollinger did make a good case that some type of bands might be valuable but he did not make a strong case that it should be Bolly ones. The book is of limited use though it could expand your horizons on the whole Bands/Channel topic.

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Summary: I like the author not his book
Review: I know Mr Bollinger and he is likeable. However the content of his book is certainly light. It is not much different from what one reads in the 'help' pages of various data services such as e signal, tradestation, etc. In fact listening to a Bollinger speech and reading the help pages give me more insight into his one indicator of fame--a derivative of simple standard. I developed an indicator of my own that was identical to his many years earlier. It was flaterring seeing that he duplicated what I already developed. I am not even a full time investment guru although I have read everything in the public domain. I excel in real estate ivestments. As far as the markets are concerned, I like Schwager's, Prechter's, and Bernstein's books. Am I an authority on technical analysis? Most think I am not but I feel I am. I have a personal commitment to protect others and with my experience as a well known critic and contributor to web sites I am equipped to do so. BTW Bollinger's web site is okay.

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Summary: Excellent...on an Absolute and a Relative Basis
Review: I've been trading for a living for more than 5 years, and am now a frequent commentator on a major financial website. As a student of the market, I became familiar with Bollinger Bands very early in my career. I thought I knew how to use them, and ALWAYS looked at them as a reference before entering any trades. However, after reading this book, I realized that I was just barely skimming the surface of this important indicator. I've read it 3 times, and all the margins are now marked up with notes.
The most striking revelation to me was the difference between "absolute" and "relative" readings -- in other words, how a stock could make a new high on an absolute level, but actually be a failure in reference to the upper Bollinger Band. This simple, yet elegant, idea has had a profound effect on how I view price action, and I find that my other technical indicators are much more revealing when viewed in this context. The book is infinitely readable for both novice and seasoned investors, and there is also enough math and statistical data to satisfy most geeks. Mr. Bollinger also discusses various other indicators that can (and should) be used in conjunction with Bollinger Bands.
Remarkably, Mr. Bollinger also supports the content of his book with a free website .... You can use all the indicators he highlights inhis book, and customize them according to your own parameters. It's basicallyan "on-going continuing education" program. Nice to finally see somebody primarily concerned with teaching rather than self-promotion and profit.
The bottom line is this: If you want to learn how to increase your performance in both trending and non-trending markets, this book is a "must-read." It is NOT a trading system; rather, it is an excellent and insightful dissertation on the proper usage of Bollinger Bands. In the current sideways market environment, Bollinger Bands are more useful than ever. No serious trader/investor should be without this book.

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Summary: Best book ever on technical analysis...it really works
Review: I've been using this book's theory to trade options online and I am averaging 67% per month. A key component of his book is to use fractal market analysis ...different time frames.
Bollinger Bands work better than any other indicator around.

Rating:
Summary: Best book ever on technical analysis...it really works
Review: I've been using this book's theory to trade options online and I am averaging 67% per month. A key component of his book is to use fractal market analysis ...different time frames.
Bollinger Bands work better than any other indicator around.

Rating:
Summary: A Very Simple Introduction to Bollinger Bands
Review: If you have heard of Bollinger Bands, but don't know what they are, Bollinger on Bollinger Bands will be a good simple introduction.

On the other hand, you probably don't need to know what Bollinger Bands are unless you plan to trade stocks or commodities rather than holding cash, bonds, or indexed stock mutual funds. Even then, the subject is optional. The book references a Web site you can go to in order to get investment ideas based on this type of technical analysis.

Basically, there are three simultaneous Bollinger Bands. The middle one is usually a 20 period (hour, day, week, or month) moving average of the stock price (or other index or commodity you are tracking). The upper one is separated from the middle one by somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5 standard deviations. The lower one is separated by the equivalent amount. The relative difference is based on how many periods you are using. The key equations involved are printed on two sheets of card stock that you can pull out of the book to use separately from the book, or as book marks.

You use Bollinger Bands to create a relative measure of stock price. John Bollinger warns you that you have to use some art in constructing the bands to fit the data set you are using. Once in place, Bollinger Bands can be used to help spot switches in trends, identify trends that are likely to continue, and to generate ideas for possible investments.

You are encouraged to use Bollinger Bands in conjunction with a wide array of other technical data, and fundamental analysis. The discussion of which other technical data to use is quite good. The fundamental analysis discussion is mostly missing.

Those who are interested in a history of technical investment analysis will find this book a user friendly reference to the best work on "envelopes" around prices during the last three decades. The text is supplemented with large numbers of graphs to support the key points. There's an extensive glossary as well.

If you rapidly grasp technical analysis, you can skip to the sections near the end where three investing methods are proposed. If you do that, the book will seem like a long article to you.

After reading the book, I looked at all of the stocks in my portfolio using Bollinger Bands, and found that Bollinger Bands would not have been very helpful for spotting buying opportunities in the last two years. Bollinger Bands would have pointed out the risk of loss in three situations. Other technical tools would have turned up more buy/sell points on these stocks than Bollinger Bands. I'm not sure that I will use them after reading the book.

Realizing that you can beat over 90 percent of professional money managers in total return by simply holding indexed stock mutual funds over the next ten years, how much effort do you want to put into learning more technical tools?

Add knowledge that makes you wiser, rather than simply busier!