Customer Reviews

Getting Started in Technical Analysis

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

 

 

It was a little difficult to read and took a couple of months to finish. It's not what I expected from a "Getting Started In...." book. I have read other books in this series like "Getting Started In Options Trading" and that book was utterly great. (Highly recommended by the way.) But "Getting Started In Technical Analysis" was a disappointment. For one thing, some of the concepts weren't thoroughly explained. In other aspects, he talks about a figure of a chart that most of the time is at least 2 pages away. You catch yourself flipping around the pages like crazy, and he doesn't do a very good job explaning the charts either. He does do a good job of laying out all the different aspects of technical analysis but I am not sure how helpful they were in actually getting a feel for them. If you decide to buy this book, don't hesitate to return it. I kind of wish I did.

This book is dense with information and cannot be approached lightly. I read "New Market Wizards" in one week but this book took two months. As usual, the effort expended is proportional to the benefit received. In particular, the chapter on "Real Life Chart Analysis" is worth the price, and should be three times longer. There, Mr. Schwager shares two dozen of his own real-life trades, accompanied by the charts and technical analysis he used at the time. The reader is given the opportunity to personally apply the techniques learned from the book to second-guess the author. Only on flip pages are the actual trade results shown, annotated with ruminations on what, if anything, should have been done differently. Examples of both successful and unsuccessful trades are given. Approximately half of the book explains technical analysis, and the other half explains basic trading techniques such as money management, system testing, and the psychological (emotional) pitfalls to avoid. In my humble opinion, no one should trade until understanding the principles presented here. My one criticism is that the book would be easier to follow if the charts were on the same page as their related commentary, but it is only fair to mention that most technical analysis books suffer the same shortcoming. Overall it does a decent job presenting crucially important information for beginners.

I found this book very hard to read. It actually took me several months to finish it, after several tries. I've read a lot of TA books and most I finish in a few days. His explanations are not very good and combined with poor graphics/charts mades them very hard to follow. A more simple, clear and concise writing style is needed for an introductory book. It's wording it's too technical for the beginner and too shallow for the experienced. I don't think this is a good book for a beginner trader. Volume is one of the 'KEY' elements in TA, but this author ignores volume. Was this Schwager guy really a trader? how can he trade without taking volume into account? If you are starting in TA, I suggest you better start with "The Technical Analysis Course"

Quite possibly one of the worst books I've read on TA in some time. As an active trader for the past 15 years who utilizes technical analysis, the entries and descriptions are almost encyclopedic in nature as opposed to explanatory & pragmatic.

Sure, the Author describes what an ascending bull flag is; but then promptly moves on and doesn't explain methods for trading it. This situation repeats itself time & time again; while the author shows retroactive trades based on various patterns, he fails to discuss valid entry points based on probability of success. In addition, -MANY- things are excluded entirely from valid TA (umm... discussions of Volume, momentum, etc... where are they?).

Furthermore, at -every- point in the book, the author is conciliatory in regards to technical analysis; always offering reluctant support for TA while suggesting that quite a lot of people believe it's hokum. While it's great to offer a contrary viewpoint in establishing a kind of rhetorical dialectic, if you're buying the book, you want to know how to successfully trade -utilizing- technical analysis - otherwise, you'd be buying 'Getting Started in Fundamental Analysis'.

Towards the end of the book, the Author insultingly offers the tidbit that he won't be 'revealing' his successful strategies - because they're far too valuable to provide in a paperback book. It was at that moment that I had to stifle the urge to throw the book across the room. You see, there -are- no 'tried and true' 100% salient trading strategies - profitable trading utilizing TA is a combination of talent, experience, judgement, and minimizing losses.

Essentially, this book is an obnoxious, pedantic, and degrading advertisement for his investment fund; which concludes with the Author essentially suggesting that after wasting your time reading it, your money is still best placed in his hands.

Experts can make the mistake of forgetting how little people know when they first get started. That is clearly the case with this book by Mr. Schwager. If you really want to get started with technical analysis for trading, you will need to find something simpler! Then you can graduate to this overview.

I have had the benefit of reading many books on technical analysis and having discussed it with many technicians. From that perspective, I found the book to be a delightful, down-to-earth, nondoctrinaire explanation. But I wouldn't have made it past the first five chapters when I was just getting started with technical analysis.

I graded the book as a one star for beginners and as a five star for intermediates, and that averaged to three stars. Judge accordingly!

Most investors argue strongly in favor of or against price-based analysis. Those who trade a lot usually swear by charts, and those who are long-term investors usually ignore charts. The classic debate is between the "random walkers" who say there ae no patterns in the markets and the chartists. No one has ever proven definitively that charting does or doesn't work for investing. The key problem is nicely stated by the author, " . . . [C]hart analysis is based on general principles, its application depends on individual interpretation."

The book operates on the principle that "[c]hart analysis provides a means of acquiring common sense in trading." The book articulates a variety of reasons why charting can be helpful. I think the best reasons are for helping you explicitly manage the risk you want to take on. This book has a very helpful discussion on that subject.

Before you are done, you will know about different types of charts, trends, trading ranges and their support and resistance levels, chart patterns, oscillators, and how people apply these analytical tools now. The book goes on to show how to apply these tools to trading issues, including what software to use.

My favorite part of the book contained a set of problems to work through using the book. In that section, you can get a feel for charting and your comfort level with it.

The author also explains how trend-following systems can be developed (a fairly conservative use of charting), and provides some useful trading guidelines. These last could have saved many on-line traders a fortune.

So who should learn this material? I would argue that almost no one should. Long-term investors would rarely use it, and can probably rely on fundamental analysis adequately for making entry point decisions. Those who have limited skill in investing should probably be in stock index funds, and do not need this knowledge. Perhaps the best reason to be interested is simply to have a better understanding of the thinking processes that traders use. But that's a human interest application, rather than a financial one.

Some people have compared technical analysis to astrology. After reading the book, you might want to think about that comparison to come to your own conclusions. Certainly, there is no proof offered in this book that these patterns do foretell the future. At least in that element, technical analysis and astrology are similar.

May you always buy low and sell high!

Jack Schwager's book has good content. He knows what he is talking about. This book has a terrible physical layout and printing format. It is noticeably a bad layout. I've read dozens of investing and trading books found on Amazon, but this one stands out as a really bad printing job.

The book is a paperback book, which is just fine. The text of the book is printed in a screened-back light blue text. It takes very bright light to be able to see the text on the page. Forget about reading the book unless you are in bright sunlight or have a very bright light.

Throughout the book, the illustrations are one or more pages ahead of the text. It is good to have illustrations and charts, but they should be closer to the text.

Again, the content is good, but the layout and format are terrible.

If you want to trade commodity futures (and who doesn't?), there's no better place to start than with the "Getting Started..." series, and this volume in particular. There are books with more detail and broader coverage, but you have no business looking at them until you master the stuff Schwager presents here. And there's a gracious plenty here (339 pages). He covers, among other things, the validity of technical analysis, chart principles and patterns, trendline construction, trade management, and failed signals ("the most important rule in chart analysis"), with enough humor to pleasantly surprise you from time to time. I've been studying commodities for about a year and trading a little, and I keep coming back to Schwager to clear my head.

The prevailing guidance of the book is that traders "need to experiment to see what works" (this phrase is found numerous times in the book). Then why read the book? The author doesn't really offer anything useful to the reader that isn't found in works by other authors. In the first paragraph of Chapter 14 I discovered why: "For obvious reasons, this book will not offer detailed descriptions of the best trading systems I have designed". So, everything the author includes in the book is just second best! Don't waste time studying this book; the author is not interested in helping you!

I'm familiar with Schwager from his two Market Wizards books, in which he interviewed and profiled many of the great traders of our times, such as Paul Tudor Jones, the great futures and swing trader. So when I saw this I decided to check it out.

I would recommend this as a good beginner's book. Read this before you undertake Martin Pring's book on technical analysis, for example, as his exhaustive analysis of chart patterns will be too dense and forbidding if you're just starting out. Schwager strikes a good balance between getting the concept across and inundating the beginner with too many details. Most technical analysis methods aren't that hard to understand, even the ones based on more sophisticated math; it's the application to the real-world charts that takes some skill and experience.

For me the best chapter was the 82 Rules of Trading, which contains 82 short statements about trading principles, including such classics as never selling a stock that is making new highs (probably as close to an "absolute" principle as there is in the markets). This chapter may be most useful to someone with more trading experience in the market who's experienced what happens when you violate these principles, but they're there anyway, and it won't hurt you to get exposed to them right off. Overall, a well written, clear, and concise introduction on this aspect of trading.

getting started is very good introduction to technical analysis, or those interested in this topic. However for a more extensive review of the subject, one might consider some of john murphy's books.