The Encyclopedia of Trading Strategies [Hardcover]

Jeffrey Owen Katz Ph.D. (Author), Donna L. McCormick (Author)

Book Description

Series: McGraw-Hill Trader's Edge Series | Publication Date: February 29, 2000

The Encyclopedia of Trading Strategies is for traders who want to take the next step to consistently profitable trading. The authors--themselves seasoned veterans of the futures trading arena--pinpoint the trading methods and strategies that have been shown to produce market-beating returns. Their rigorous and systematic backtesting of each method, using the same sets of markets and analytic techniques, provides a scientific, system-based approach to system development...to help you assemble the trading system that will put you on the road to becoming a more consistently profitable trader. (20000601)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This book gives futures and options traders hundreds of innovative ways to take profits out of the market and gain an edge on every trade." (Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities Magazine )

From the Back Cover

"The authors extract some sobering trading edicts the good old-fashioned way--analysis by the scientific method. Here we see the fruits of detailed and methodical research, both the long and short of it.... These results will certainly affect my own trading designs!" --Mark Jurik Editor, Computerized Trading "If you're the type of trader who wants to build his or her own systems, this book is for you!" --Murray Ruggiero, Jr. Contribuitng Editor, Futures magazine "I have known Jeff Katz for years. He has worked on a number of my projects, always exhibiting a high degree of professionalism, attention to detail, and thoroughness. The same craftsmanship is apparent throughout this book." --Robert Pardo President, Pardo Capital Limited

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 376 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (February 29, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0070580995
• ISBN-13: 978-0070580992
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #215,293 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #27 in Books > Education & Reference > Encyclopedias > Business
  • #34 in Books > Business & Investing > Industries & Professions > Insurance > Business

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

107 of 111 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good principles, good start for programming systems, November 11, 2000

By 

Ronald Davis (portland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Encyclopedia of Trading Strategies (Hardcover)

The authors cover the ground of "Build a Trading Program" quite effectively. They have presented results using systems built around traditional technical indicators and their own "standard exit" method. These they use to show how to evaluate systems. This brief summary understates considerably the material presented on entries.

Differing entry techniques (limit, stop & market)are examined in the context of each "system." The reader is thus exposed to both the methodology of statistical evaluation and to "how it feels" to use this technique or that.

The authors actually start the book with an introduction to data types, availability and time frame; the bare-bones of needed statistical material; simulators (programs to simulate trading); and, optimizers and optimizing. I scanned the material, due to my own familiarity with it. It seems like good background. One point I've not seen elsewhere is the suggestion to optimize for high Student-t scores, an excellent idea.

Exits and exit techniques are dealt with, although less voluminously than entry techniques. One reason for that is the difference in amount written on the two. Everyone who wants to sell you a system, be it a book or a seminar, will emphasize entry technique. Very little has been written on exits, which are a more difficult sell. Katz & McCormick have presented the basic categories of exits. While "basic categories" doesn't sound like much, it is more than I can recall appearing elsewhere in print. These categories are the building blocks for the second most important part of a system: exits. (More important is money management.) Here, as throughout the book, C+ code is included, allowing one to implement one's own approaches.

Another section, also with code, is use of genetic algorithms in system design. This is one of the best sections on GA's in trading that I've seen. It is not exhaustive (thank heavens) but will get you started without forcing a reading of Goldberg's text on GA's. Another departure from the norm is a short presentation of using GA's to optimize for the elements of the system, not for the actual output, a superior idea.

As the authors point out, exits are far more important than entry. A test system I wrote recently entered almost randomly after it had determined volatility was sufficiently high. Although not sophisticated, the exits were other than random. Although less than 20% accurate, it produced very substantial profits. Actual implementation is a bit trickier; real markets don't always provide the smooth entry and exit of systems testing. Be that as it may, the essential point remains: exit and money management are where the profits are. Entries are for seminar junkies and would be traders.

If trading is what you want to do, and computer-driven systems are what you will use, this is a book that you should read. It is the best I've seen (and I've seen a few). The other pieces to the trading puzzle are psychology (Ruth Roosevelt) and money management (Ralph Vince - not perfect, but a necessary read).

62 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Indispensable for automated trading system builders!, April 5, 2001

By 

Dr. Gavin R. Ferris (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Encyclopedia of Trading Strategies (Hardcover)

Most books on trading assume either that the reader never got to college, or else that they never left. This one, however, is different, rapidly bringing the technical but non-specialist reader up to speed in the principled construction of automated trading engines.

If you have a reasonably numerate background, perhaps with some software development experience, and have found yourself drawn to the concept of constructing your own mechanical trading system, you owe it to yourself to read this text. Quite simply, it is superb. The authors begin by describing the core components of a sound system, including the application of statistical inference and the selection of appropriate sample sets for back-testing. They then go on to provide a set of normalised comparisons of various trading 'rules' for entry and exit (e.g., breakouts, MAVs, oscillators, neural net predictors, etc.) together with discussion of optimisation systems (such as simulated annealing and genetic refinement). The actual results of some 'respectable' rulesets you may find rather shocking! And if you are only dimly aware of what genetic algorithms can offer the modern trader, you should buy this book for that reason alone.

The style of the text is clear and unstuffy, with chapters of readable length and well-structured content. The reader who wants to learn more will find this book an ideal jumping off point, since many references to the literature are provided, but an excessive technical background is not assumed, and the work is for the most part self-contained.

The only minor issues are 1) the title is a somewhat misleading; you will not find an A-Z list of trading strategies here, but rather a more select discussion of the techniques (and the validity of certain *classes* of strategy) involved in building viable automated trading systems; and 2) there is some ugleeee typesetting of mathematical formulae in Fortran (!). However, neither points really count for more than nitpicking in contrast to the value of the text overall.

In summary, there is real content here - described and justified, if you are an engineer like me, through the sort of scientific analysis and rigour that creates more excitement than a million words of hype. Fed up with TradeStation? Writing your own system in C++? In need of a bit of inspiration and guidance? If this sounds familiar, you want this book, believe me.

IMHO, it's a classic. Buy it.

80 of 84 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Complete Insight Into Encyclopedia of Trading Strategies, April 23, 2003

By 

Tradingmarkets.com (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Encyclopedia of Trading Strategies (Hardcover)

The Encyclopedia Of Trading Strategies provides a solid foundation for developing the skills and knowledge base to develop one's own set of quantifiable trading rules and for developing a reliable trading "system."

The book begins laying the foundation with a description of the tools necessary to construct a system. Data -- the cleaner, naturally, the better -- is the point of departure. A discussion of simulators -- software that allows you to simulate trading -- ensues and walks you through the mechanics of interpreting output and determining their reliability and power.

A discussion of optimizers, or tools that find the best possible solutions to a problem follows, critically describing the major types of optimization and products available and how to achieve success, or failure, in their implementation.

Statistics for systems analysis are the next tool detailed. Without statistics, there is no way of knowing whether the profits (or losses) resulting from a tested system are real, an artifact of sampling or chance.

With the tools required for systems testing in place, the book launches into the discussion of its primary focus, the study of entries and exits. Ultimately, and deceptively simply, a trading system is nothing more than a system of entries and exits (at a profit or at a loss).

The Encyclopedia of Trading Strategies is something of a misnomer in that the title leaves the impression that one will find a catalogue of trading strategies and methods that the reader can scrutinize to extract specific techniques and use as a reference guide. In fact, the book provides the framework and background-knowledge necessary to design, test and analyze one's own trading system and could have as easily been dubbed A Primer On Developing Trading Systems.