Customer Reviews

Futures for Small Speculators

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I purchased this book based on the author's notes. Upon receipt, I was very disappointed. For the most part, the information provided can be gotten from free publications available from any commodities exchange for the asking. The text is double spaced and chapters are one or two pages long. Considering the asking price, this is not a good investment.

As a novice investor, I found this book to be a valuable learning tool. The fundamentals are simply explained in a step-by-step approach. One source of an investor's fear is ignorance of the subject matter, and this book successfully enlightens the beginning futures speculator.
In particular, I found the author's honesty regarding the subject to be refreshing. Most publications in this genre present "can't miss schemes" or "can't miss systems". The author here gives equal weight to the rewards, as well as the risks, which is rarely found.

Mr. DraKoln should be applauded for bringing sanity to the futures market. He has stripped away the high pressure, grandiosity of a very powerful financial tool and in the process brought sanity to trading.

The author acknowledges that there are risks and the opportunity for huge rewards in trading futures. Most of us know that, although he doesn't presume anything and makes his book understandable by the novice and new investor. But by bringing higher standards to trading, Mr. DraKoln, in my opinion, is set to revolutionize the way futures are traded.

He advises the would-be speculator to take a measured, sane approach by using such techniques as creating a Futures Trading Plan and keeping a Futures Trading Journal. In a nutshell, the Plan is the road map to where you want to go and the Journal is your experience having taken the journey. The benefits of trading in this fashion are too numerous to list, but the greatest I suspect, as the author admonishes, is to keep the "demons" of fear and greed at bay.

And isn't having a positive trading experience; one that is sane the least we should aspire toward?

Someone here called this book a joke, and I couldn't agree more. If you find this book useful, do not even think of trading futures, as you would be too naive to do so.
This should not be even called a book, it's rather a booklet. The information presented on a level of a seventh grader. I bought this, browsed it for 30 minutes, and returned it the same day. Then (for $0.75!) I bought a used book by Todd Lofton "Getting started in Futures" here on Amazon.
It has 50 times more information, and would be really useful for beginners in futures.

I bought this book along with the companion guide and it was great. This book was small and I would have been disappointed had I not bought the companion guide too. The author was here in San Francisco doing a seminar and one of the things that he focused on was that trading was simple.

The hardest part is managing a trade and that no matter how many people say his original book is too short...everyone still keeps making the same core ten mistakes.

But I will say the companion guide to the book more than made up for it. Its almost 300 pages long and filled with the practical side of the information provided in the first book.

I am going to buy the third book in the series.

Up until now many of the books I have read about futures and options investing have glossed over what it takes to succeed at futures.

So many of them waste your time talking about the history of futures. They also get bogged down with the mechanics. For someone who has traded before it can be frustrating to go through 100 pages of fluff just to get to the author's point.

Not so with this book. From the introduction on he keeps it brief and to the point. He also spells out his mission of wanting to see the small speculator succeed by giving you concrete tools. He talks of three a "Futures Trading Plan" a "Futures Trading Worksheet" and finally a "Futures Trading Journal".

He gives you ideas on how to modify these three tools to fit your trading style. He also points out that not every futures broker should be a futures broker. I can attest to that.

Even though it's a small book I found it big on information. So I bought "Futures For Small Speculators: Workbook" and I was even further impressed. This book is based on a 8.5" x 11" format and has the three tools mentioned above layed out bare. There is a Futures Trading Plan questionnaire to photocopy and fill out, there is an actual Trading Worksheet to use, and built into the guide is a Futures Trading Journal.

Great stuff here. It will definitely add to how you discipline yourself to trade the markets.

As other reviewers have said, the information is extremely basic, and available for free from many websites.

Notice that all the reviews are either 1 or 5, nothing in between? In April 2009 DraKoln was advertising on the freelance contractor website, elance(DOT)com to PAY people to review his books as shown below:

===========================================================
Need reviews of my books on Amazon.com:

Need several reviews of my books on Amazon.com will provide a pdf copy of the book for review. Need multiple reviews so I will be selecting multiple winners or if you are a group let me know the number of reviews that can be posted. Looking to increase exposure and sales.
===========================================================

Now, I don't know if that advertisement applied to this book or some of his others, but since he has displayed willingness to pay for good reviews, I suspect that some or all the reviews which gave him a "5" here and elsewhere may be "selected", purchased reviews - if not from elance, then from some other source.

It's mildly entertaining to scroll through the 109 jobs Drakoln has posted on elance to find out that he's also writing non-finance books such as one about "the lives of ties" and a young adult fantasy book about genies. Also selling barbecue sauce.

I believe elance allows it's members to remove job postings, so don't be surprised if you go there and find that the job offering for paid Amazon reviewers has be removed. I saved a screen shot in case anybody comes back to dispute me.

Is it a legitimate practice to pay for Amazon reviews? I don't think it's legitimate, but I suspect it's more widespread than you might think.

One of the thinnest publications I've ever seen. Completely useless. You could get more information from a brief web search or from the CME and CBOT. Pathetic.

Futures, options, derivatives have all been subjects I was afraid of learning about. I thought they were complex and impossible to get a handle on. When I decided that this might be an investment for me- I researched and stumbled across this book.

It was clear and concise. The author emphasized in the intro that this book was supposed to be a supplement to any system I may already be trading and that it was his practical wisdom from being in the business for 10 years, both as a traded and broker.

I took his statements at face value and was not disappointed! I was delighted at the simplicity of the ideas he presented and the concept of trading with a plan really changed my thinking. I liked the book and will be checking out his other books.

I almost listened to the one negative review of this book. Mr. Clifton is sorely mistaken that the information in this book can be found at the exchanges. His intentions seem honorable, but maybe his level of trading experience is so great that he has forgotten what its like for someone new starting out.

My experience with trading has been limited to paper trading and the one time some boiler room broker convinced me that "this was going to be coldest winter ever" and loaded me up on heating oil options.

Both times I received tons of information from the exchanges and most of it was simply confusing.

Although this book was short it was chocked full of information that I could use today. I was able to weed out the boiler room brokers from the good brokers. Like the author emphasizes, I was given the use of three tools right away- a trading plan, a trade worksheet, and a trading journal.

I have spent $200 on Ken Roberts course, then another $200 on Larry Williams course, and the information that I got ... by buying this book seems to be the last puzzle piece that was missing from both of these expensive courses.

This book was well worth the costs and to be truthful I would have paid three times as much for this information. Like I said I am a novice-to advanced beginner and I loved the book. I am glad I ignored the one negative review and bought this book. I can't wait to get the other books in this series!