Commitments of Traders : Strategies for Tracking the Market and Trading Profitably [Hardcover]

Floyd Upperman (Author)

Book Description

Series: Wiley Trading | Publication Date: December 30, 2005

"Floyd has answered for many in this book a way to both understand and use the Commitment of Traders reports. In my thirty-five years as a registered broker and author of my own book, I find that at times someone takes a complex subject and makes it easier to understand. Floyd has done this with his book. Not only does he make understanding the COT easy, but he ties it to some technical trading ideas that readers can try out, using historical data on their own. Truly another good technical book for those looking to understand this often overlooked subject."
-- Ira Epstein, PresidentIra Epstein & Company Futures

"For many years, I've had requests from customers seeking information on the Commitment of Traders report but had few resources to which I could refer them. This superb treatment of the subject by Floyd Upperman, full of detailed information and innovative ideas on how to use them [COT] effectively in trading, is the definitive treatment of the subject in my book. I highly recommend it."
-- Edward D. Dobson, PresidentTraders Press, Inc.

"The Commitment of Traders (COT) can be a very powerful trading tool to help anticipate market direction. But all too often it is misunderstood and/or misinterpreted . . . Floyd's unique analytical interpretations, combined with his trading tools and indicators, will open a door to greater profitability for all traders."
-- Walter Bressert, President Walter Bressert, Inc.

"If you are interested in capturing major market moves, this is a must-read book."
-- Larry Williams, Commodity TraderIreallytrade.com

By understanding commercial activity and monitoring its behavior, a trader can potentially forecast significant changes in price direction. Author Floyd Upperman shows you how to use the Commitment of Traders (COT) reports to accomplish this goal. He skillfully explains how to break down the COT data into producers, consumers, and funds so you understand the positions and activities of these key market participants. In addition, he demonstrates how to monitor the COT activity so you can detect position imbalances that could be harbingers of major trend changes and illustrates his techniques for combining traditional technical analysis of price with the COT data.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Schooled in mathematics, statistics, and computer programming, Floyd Upperman entered the semiconductor industry out of college in 1987. His computer programming talent quickly earned him the nickname "Whiz Kid." After receiving some shares of company stock, he became interested in the market, and his interest quickly bloomed into a consuming passion. During this time, he learned two things: working for someone else would never earn him the financial independence he craved; and none of the available charting software and pricing systems were sophisticated enough to give him an edge as a trader.

Applying his statistical and programming talents to the task of analyzing mountains of market data, Upperman discovered something remarkable: there is an underlying order in the commodity markets not?found in the historic price movements of individual stocks. Further, he found that specific patterns in?commodity prices are highly correlated to the positions?held by participants in the commodity markets. These realizations led to his developing a unique trading and tracking system that exploits an obscure source of readily available but widely neglected data: the weekly U.S. government Commitment of Traders (COT) report.

Now a full-time trader, a registered commodity trading advisor, and the acknowledged leading analyst of COT data, Floyd Upperman makes available—for the first time in book form—his exclusive, phenomenally successful trading system based on a proprietary forward-looking indicator, Individual Market Participant Analysis (IMPA).

In Commitments of Traders, he will show you:

• Why merely "following the money" can lead you astray
• How to identify the turning points
• Common—and costly—misconceptions about the COT
• The seven steps of an IMPA setup trade
• How to achieve an optimum stop
• "Plunger patterns" and how to use them
• How to apply the "fading system"

Commitments of Traders will teach you why the trading activity of commercial institutions—as evidenced in the COT report—is so valuable in analyzing particular markets. And you will learn how to leverage the COT with technical and fundamental analysis. A priceless moneymaking tool, Commitments of Traders is essential reading for anyone trading in the lucrative futures market.

From the Back Cover

Praise for Commitments of Traders

"Floyd has answered for many in this book a way to both understand and use the Commitment of Traders reports. In my thirty-five years as a registered broker and author of my own book, I find that at times someone takes a complex subject and makes it easier to understand. Floyd has done this with his book. Not only does he make understanding the COT easy, but he ties it to some technical trading ideas that readers can try out, using historical data on their own. Truly another good technical book for those looking to understand this often overlooked subject."
—Ira Epstein, President, Ira Epstein & Company Futures

"For many years, I've had requests from customers seeking information on the Commitment of Traders report but had few resources to which I could refer them. This superb treatment of the subject by Floyd Upperman, full of detailed information and innovative ideas on how to use them [COT] effectively in trading, is the definitive treatment of the subject in my book. I highly recommend it."
—Edward D. Dobson, President, Traders Press, Inc.

"The Commitment of Traders (COT) can be a very powerful trading tool to help anticipate market direction. But all too often it is misunderstood and/or misinterpreted . . . Floyd's unique analytical interpretations, combined with his trading tools and indicators, will open a door to greater profitability for all traders."
—Walter Bressert, President, Walter Bressert, Inc.

"If you are interested in capturing major market moves, this is a must-read book."
—Larry Williams, Commodity Trader, Ireallytrade.com

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (December 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 047171965X
• ISBN-13: 978-0471719656
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 0.9 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,102,972 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Lots of "proprietary" this and "proprietary" that...., January 5, 2006

By 

Stephen W. Hoedt (Cleveland, OH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Commitments of Traders : Strategies for Tracking the Market and Trading Profitably (Hardcover)

First, my bottom line conclusion - If you're looking for a COT book, "Trading Stocks & Commodities With the Insiders" by Larry Williams will offer you much more in the way of implementable trading strategies/set ups than this Upperman book.

While this author goes to great lengths to descibe the underlying theories to his COT-based trading strategies (which he calls IMPA), there is precious little actual detail about his methods. Everything seems to be "my proprietary" this and "my proprietary" that. The author does not seem to understand that once his ideas are in the marketplace, others will not be able to implement them in the exact same way he did. For example, Tom Demark published TD Sequential years ago and it still works highly effectively. Why not let people into your Black Box, Floyd?

That being said, by looking at the charts and probability distributions, it may be possible to reverse engineer something similar to what the author does, but you will find yourself committing much time and effort to the project.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not value for money, January 8, 2006

By 

Limitdown - See all my reviews

This review is from: Commitments of Traders : Strategies for Tracking the Market and Trading Profitably (Hardcover)

This author has copied Larry Williams approach to the Market ( he does give credit to Williams for introducing him to the COT ) all he has done is introduced fancy terminology and statistics to separate himself from Williams methods, even his entries and exit are very similar to Williams did many years ago.
The graphs in the book are extremely hard to read and are nearly impossible to relate to what he is trying to explain and what is the purpose of introducing proprietary methods if you can not do it yourself-the basic message then is join my site to get the full benefit of this book otherwise you will come away with a whole lot of fancy terminology and nothing else.
The terminology he uses is unbelievable- as one previous reviewer has already noted - eg Individual market participant analysis- why not just "COT report" everyone knows the who the players are- I could go on but wont waste time
The money management system is one of the worst around - I say this having read all Ralph Vince and Ryan Jones books and running the numbers myself personally.
I also find that the 4 and 5 star critiques comments seemed to be based on either a friendship with the author or belong to his web site - there is no critical analysis of the book showing why it deserves that rating eg Ed W comments that about the unique characteristics of each market- where does this system solve the problem and why must someone be rewarded by having the public pay money for a book (an expensive one) that contains secret formulas not available to them -very illogical.
Finally there are a lot of sites with simple and good analysis of the COT reports and Williams's book is better value for money.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars "The Proprietary trading method" should be the title, January 7, 2006

By 

Trader Joe - See all my reviews

This review is from: Commitments of Traders : Strategies for Tracking the Market and Trading Profitably (Hardcover)

This book was definitely written to punt his web site which I was a member until recently. He has taken the COT data - basically quite simple as shown in Larry Williams's book and tried to obscure this simplicity with his own terminology and fancy abbreviations such as IMPA.
On his web site everything is "proprietary" and his members worship him with praise and thank you's for every post he makes as if he has the holy grail of trading. He had 2 members who were very knowledgeable about the markets one from South America and the other from Africa (I think) but they are either gone or are just not posting anymore.
Back to the book- I have to make comparisons to his web site unfortunately as he writes the same in the book as does in his reports and his discussion site i.e. there is very little intellectual depth or rigorous analysis and discussion of the markets
And he tries to put everything in a language that say this is far too complicated for us mere mortals and that only he has the data that confirms his hypothesis-anything else that is offered is put down as "not according to his data".
His web site once had a notice that it was soon going to stop accepting new members due to the fact that only members would be able to use his "proprietary system" and that to larger a membership would make the system ineffective the same reason was given by him a couple of years ago on his discussion board on why he would not write a book- membership is still open, the book has been written and I do not think you will gain anything new that is not already known about the COT reports and trading.