Customer Reviews

Advanced Swing Trading: Strategies to Predict, Identify, and Trade Future Market Swings (Wiley Trading)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This book takes two classic techniques -Roger Babson's action/reaction theory and Alan Andrew's median line - aka pitchfork - and combines them in a very unique and effective way. Then the author inserts his own proprietary timing method to project future support and resistance and turning points. Being a technical trader myself, I found the book to be interesting and contained a few new twists I've never seen before. I have read some reviews that think this method is too simplistic. I disagree. From trading for over the past ten years, I have always thought a simple, but effective strategy is much better than a complicated trading approach. Complicated doesn't mean better, its just complicated. If I find a trading method to be too complicated I will usually abandon the approach and look for something else. And besides, this could be a compliment to the author for taking something that can be complicated and explaining it in a way that makes it seem simple.

I think where some readers may become disappointed, is if they are looking for this book to give them a trading system. If that is the case, this is not the book for them. Even the author states this in the beginning of the book. Advanced Swing Trading is more about understanding market behavior along same lines of Elliott wave or W.D. Gann. However, it is written in a matter that makes it seem much simpler than Elliott wave and not as subjective as W.D. Gann - to me that is a real plus, not a negative. The author explains that knowing how to identify where you are in , what he calls a Reaction cycle, a trader can easily see if the market is reacting correctly - if it is, you know what should follow. If not, you can react accordingly.

I have read many books on trading and I believe every author uses carefully selected examples to illustrate their ideas, and this author is no exception. But, on the other hand, he did a couple of things in this book that I have never seen before. First, in chapter three, he shows how to use his Reaction swing for short-term swing trading. After a few examples explaining the process, he takes six months of the S&P and goes step-by-step through every swing pattern. He describes the entry and exit of each trade - both winners and losers - showing the end results. I must say this was impressive! (This chapter alone was worth the cost of the book ten times over.) Secondly, he takes three unrelated commodity markets and goes through the entire Reaction cycle - from the beginning of a major trend all the way through to the end of the trend - showing how the previous swing pattern was used to project the future pattern.

To be realistic, the only way a trader can know for sure if the techniques described in this book will work for them, is to get out your own charts and test it. The methods described in Advanced Swing Trading can easily be tested just on any chart. I know this because I tested it myself. After stumbling around for a little while it all came together and - for me at least - it was impressive. Not exact every time, but the best I've seen.

To be fair to the author, this was not meant to be a trading system, but offers a valuable tools that can enhance your own trading style. I believe a trader cannot be successful without understanding market behavior and this book does a good job of explaining this. It is well written and very well illustrated with plenty of charts. I recommend it as an addition to any trading library.

This book takes two classic techniques -Roger Babson's action/reaction theory and Alan Andrew's median line - aka pitchfork - and combines them in a very unique and effective way. Then the author inserts his own proprietary timing method to project future support and resistance and turning points. Being a technical trader myself, I found the book to be interesting and contained a few new twists I've never seen before. I have read some reviews that think this method is too simplistic. I disagree. From trading for over the past ten years, I have always thought a simple, but effective strategy is much better than a complicated trading approach. Complicated doesn't mean better, its just complicated. If I find a trading method to be too complicated I will usually abandon the approach and look for something else. And besides, this could be a compliment to the author for taking something that can be complicated and explaining it in a way that makes it seem simple.

I think where some readers may become disappointed, is if they are looking for this book to give them a trading system. If that is the case, this is not the book for them. Even the author states this in the beginning of the book. Advanced Swing Trading is more about understanding market behavior along same lines of Elliott wave or W.D. Gann. However, it is written in a matter that makes it seem much simpler than Elliott wave and not as subjective as W.D. Gann - to me that is a real plus, not a negative. The author explains that knowing how to identify where you are in , what he calls a Reaction cycle, a trader can easily see if the market is reacting correctly - if it is, you know what should follow. If not, you can react accordingly.

I have read many books on trading and I believe every author uses carefully selected examples to illustrate their ideas, and this author is no exception. But, on the other hand, he did a couple of things in this book that I have never seen before. First, in chapter three, he shows how to use his Reaction swing for short-term swing trading. After a few examples explaining the process, he takes six months of the S&P and goes step-by-step through every swing pattern. He describes the entry and exit of each trade - both winners and losers - showing the end results. I must say this was impressive! (This chapter alone was worth the cost of the book ten times over.) Secondly, he takes three unrelated commodity markets and goes through the entire Reaction cycle - from the beginning of a major trend all the way through to the end of the trend - showing how the previous swing pattern was used to project the future pattern.

To be realistic, the only way a trader can know for sure if the techniques described in this book will work for them, is to get out your own charts and test it. The methods described in Advanced Swing Trading can easily be tested just on any chart. I know this because I tested it myself. After stumbling around for a little while it all came together and - for me at least - it was impressive. Not exact every time, but the best I've seen.

To be fair to the author, this was not meant to be a trading system, but offers a valuable tools that can enhance your own trading style. I believe a trader cannot be successful without understanding market behavior and this book does a good job of explaining this. It is well written and very well illustrated with plenty of charts. I recommend it as an addition to any trading library.

I became interested in short-term swing trading a couple of years ago. Since then I have studied several techniques and read books by Farley, Markman, Nassar, Angell, Landry and Williams. All these books offered good information and techniques for short-term trading, but none offered the insight into market behavior like "Advanced Swing Trading." After reading John Crane's book I attended a presentation he made at the Traders Option Forum in Chicago. I was amazed at the information he presented about using market action to predict futures highs and lows. That was the first time I realized the market moved in predictable patterns and they could be used to trade the market successfully. By combining aspects of the Andrews Pitchfork and Babson Action/Reaction lines in a unique fashion, Mr. Crane offers a whole new way to predict and trade future market swings. This valuable book offers clear, step-by-step guidance that will allow you to apply this swing trading methodology to any trading account and improve your bottom line.

Mr. Crane was not only very gratious in answering my questions at the forum, but also made himself available when I called his office a few weeks later. I was impressed with is professionalism and willingness to help. I have recommended this book to other traders and I would recommend it to anyone looking to improve their trading and understanding of market behavior.

I really wanted to like this book. I've read it twice and spent some considerable time in revisiting the examples trying to become familiar with the author's methodology. However, there seems to be an operative disconnect between the espoused theory and the demonstrated practice.

First - the negatives. The author's thesis is that it is possible to predict market turning points in advance by identifying a reaction swing, counting backwards to a prior turning point, and then projecting that periodicity forward to derive a reflective, future turning point. But the author does not precisely define how a reaction swing is identified, or how one reaction swing is to be considered while another is to be ignored. The examples in the book do not address the reasoning involved for practical application of this method. This theoretical shortfall diminishes the utility of the reaction swing concept.

Second - the positives. Although this method was suggested before in Roger Babson's action-reaction theory (1910s), the Wetzel Market Bureau's "Course in Trading" (1930s), and Alan Andrews' course (1960s), it was not so thoroughly developed as it is in this presentation. Also, there are a number of interesting trading systems (set-ups) offered which might prove to be useful.

All in all, this book is akin to the photograph of a holy grail as compared to THE HOLY GRAIL. It is an interesting book that presents some time-honored concepts - with a few unresolved issues. More interesting (and usefully profitable) are the Wetzel and Andrews courses.

This book really explains the 1-2-3 price swing better than any others I have read. There are a lot of books that tell you to buy on a pullback, and then fall down because they can't tell you what a pullback is. This book does. It's a simple matter of counting backward to be able to count forward.

I've read many books on the markets and most of them are filled with general guidelines that are difficult to put into practice. This book starts with practical trading methods in Chapter One and goes on from there.

The only drawback is that the author seems to be partial to a few markets. I would have liked to have seen him cover more on stocks and stock options.

Mr Crane's book is well written and practical. If you enjoy charting you'll like just practicing with the Andrew's pitchfork and reaction lines. However, the main faults with the methods he mentioned are that the rules are too rigid to be accurate the majority of times, and the prospective use of the methods is quite a bit harder than the retrospective use.

The author mentions in his intro that he stumbled on a "repetitive, predictable pattern" that was the basis for his method. I believe that this was basically the "measured move," or the 100% extension of A-B-C swings. His charting technique with Andrew's pitchfork tries to predict this, but it is excessively complicated and only accounts for 100% measured moves. In my opinion, a fibo extension tool is far easier to use and allows traders to see the 61% and the 161% extensions as well as the 100%, which are just as useful. The time element of counting days, I think, is even more unreliable in practice. But, then again some measured moves are symmetric in time and price, so occasionally they work.

Bottom line, an interesting book, but not one that will likely have a very high predictive value.

I must say that the book is interesting and well written. Even better, it is not very long. My major problem with it, however, is that it is overly simplistic. In many ways it is similar to Elliot Wave Theory, for whatever value that may still have.

The author takes a basic truism and extends it to illogical conclusions. As anyone who has ever looked at a chart will know, market trends are always marked by countertrend moves. For example, a stock may go up for two weeks, then suddenly go down for 3 days then go back up again. The auther calls this three day swing a reaction swing. So far so good.

He then espouses that, if you count back from the start of the reaction swing to the beginning of the trend, you will learn the exact number of days that the trend will continue after the swing ends, the "reversal date." Further, you can also learn the price where the trend will end or the next reaction swing will occur by subtracting the price at the start of the trend from the price at the start of the reaction swing. Adding that number to the price at the end of the swing will tell you the price where the trend will end or the next reaction swing will begin, and you already know the day on which it will occur.

Sorry, life is just not that simple. The diffieulty is demonstrated by the fact that even in the author's carefully selected examples, his "reverse count," the count back from the beginning of the reaction swing, often goes back to a differing places. Sometimes it goes back to the beginning of the previous reaction swing, other times to the beginning of the trend and still others to the beginning of a reaction swing in a previous trend.

As I read this book, I was often asking myself, without any apparant answers, "Why is he counting back to there?"

I've got to say that if this really works, I am extremely jealous because everyone except me is getting outrageously rich without doing any work. One can easily spot a "reaction swing" or countertrend movement. Image how great it would really be if all one had to do was wait a day or two into the main trend's resumption, and know with confidence that the new trend will last 11 days and will rise or fall respectively, esactly 10 points.

Anyway, if it works for you "Congratulations."

The concepts and timing techniques described and illustrated in this book blew me away! This is easliy one of the best books I have read about understanding market behavior and how take advantage of it's predictability. I recommend this book to any type of trader. The timing and price projection techniques will help anyone, no matter what trading style you prefer. It is well written and easy understand.

Something I read, in the first part of this boo, really made me think. Mr. Crane said "If 80% of traders lose money, I don't want to look at the markets in the same way they do." All these years I have been studying and using the same indicators as everyone else, but I never really understood the market behavior...until I read Advanced Swing Trading. I found Elliott Wave to be confusing and Gann too subjective. While techincal indicators served me well, I was always entering the market late and exiting early. "Advanced Swing Trading" opened my eyes to a whole new understanding of how to trade the market. John Crane's method of projecting Time and Price, is precise and very easy to understand. And then he adds the confirming patterns to tie it all together. While I am primarly a short-term trader, I was amazed by the accuracy of the long-term projections as well. I have been trying to master the art of swing trading for the past two years and have had marginal success...until now. Since I learned to use John Crane's Reaction swing technique, the results have been stunning. I highly recommend this book to any trader, whether you look for long-term moves or short-term swing trades, this book has it all!

I would like compliment Mr. Crane on the clarity with which he explains the "Action/Reactiion" phenomena in commodities and stocks. I have found this book to be most illuminating and it has greatly improved my understanding of the manner in which one should identify segments of a market move. I have studied the Delta system and learned from Joe DiNapoli and both are extremely good, but I can honestly say neither gives me the confidence and or the trigger points as well as this method. I find his unique method of combining Time, Price and Pattern can strengthen the predictability of future market moves. In my opinion this is probably the single best trading book I have ever read on technical analysis. It's a real "where the rubber meets the road" type book that I think most traders will find credible.