Customer Reviews

High Impact Day Trading: Powerful Techniques for Exploiting Short-Term Market Trends

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Robert Barnes is regarded as one of the most prolific creators and testors of trading systems in the future markets. He has written several books on technical analysis, including the recent TRADING IN CHOPPY MARKETS, a thorough and detailed text. Although his own record as a trader is not common knowledge, the man seems to know his stuff. His HIGH-IMPACT DAY TRADING, accordingly, is a decent book that nevertheless cannot be considered among his best works. Barnes's theory in this book is that the effective day trader needs to find large trends in order to maximize capital while keeping transaction costs to a minimum. After reviewing the possibility, albeit limited, of using indicators such as moving averages and oscillators in day trading, Barnes offers an approach which he calls the "Mountain/Valley Trend Theory." This theory can be classified as trend-following. As usual in his books, Barnes provides illustrations and charts to clarify his techniques; he also shows how the Mountain/Valley Trend approach can be applied to individual futures markets. This book, in short, is centered on the description and defense of a particular trading technique; it is not, as some might suspect, a comprehensive guide to short-term trading. Readers should be aware that Barnes's writing style is sometimes plodding; it does not match up with that of Jack Schwager and other writers on futures trading. Moreover, it might be difficult to set up Barnes's Mountain/Valley Trend on some artifical intelligence system such as Trade Station. Readers nevertheless should be impressed at the thoroughness of his documentation: although past results are not necessarily predictive, the author does present a good case for the viability of his trading system. Even readers who are not planning to employ Barnes's techniques should read this book, for there are enough ideas in this book to inspire those interested in designing their own technical trading systems.

Robert Barnes examines various trend detection systems in addition to counter trend oscillators. After discussing their positive and negative virtues, he introduces his "mountain/valley trend theory" as the best of both worlds. The system is very similar to Jim Sibbet's NYFE system where entry occurs after a qualified peak or valley. Barnes tests various markets to find optimized qualifiers. His comments on the markets are very interesting and worth the price of the book alone.

When closing price goes up N times, buy. When it goes down N times, sell. Exit when profitable enough. If exited too early, re-enter. Use stops. Different markets are profitable in different time frames, from one-minute to hourly bars. This strategy is very profitable and has been tested on one month of data. If this sounds interesting - buy this book.

Alternatively, read this review again and implement it in your trading.

a good book offering a new insight into day trading all commodities. i have successfully input his strategy into a tradestation 2000i program. if interested email me at wynvern@usa.net for details.

I used the system outlined in the book to develop a highly successful longer term system that makes very good returns with low drawdowns. It also recovers very quickly from losses. Enough said!

Basicly, this is a trend following system. It's designed to hang on to winning trades as long as possible and to dump losing trades quickly. It's similar to a trend breakout system, execept that you control, with two input values, when a valid breakout and a trend begins. It has money management logic built into it. I have created a Tradestation program based on this system which I use to automatically execute trades in Diamonds, Spiders, and E-minis. It's a robust system, works with any security, and is very profitable when the market are trending.

I was terribly disappointed by the lack of any real content in this book. Barnes apparently glossed over everything in order to make a book which he could sell.

I am an S&P day trader and the coverage of the S&P's in this book is petiful.

There was nothing that I would reccomend in this book that you can't find in other better written offerings which you can find here (Abell for example).

If you want to buy this book, you can have mine

This book was written in '96 and as such, Easy Language could have been included since it was available then. The system requires high maintenance observation (in 1 minute, 5 minute, 15 minute and 60 minute charts in each future discussed) that would require programming assistance in the background. NB Another reviewer states he has programmed this in ELA & offers his email address.

There are many charts which take up half of the book, but since most of the time the chart being referenced in the text is on another page, it's a hassle to jump back and forth. The writing style could cure insomnia.

As in Larry Williams' daytrading book, this book would have benefitted greatly by inclusion of Performance Reports with Profit Factors, ROI, consecutive losers and the like. In fairness to the author, he provides the results of all trades in a month period for the different time periods (1-minute through 60-minutes) for various futures including the DM. These could have been enhanced with profit targets, it was surprising to see better than potential $1000+ trades allowed to turn into losers.

Once the single system was explained, the various futures could have been presented with 1 time frame Performance Report and the best value, on successive pages.

Unfortunately since Barnes limited himself to 1 month of trades, there is insufficient information on those time frames greater than 1 or 5 minute charts, to determine the validity of the system. One needs a minimum of 30 samples and in many instances there are only 3 trades for the time period presented.

Better editing would have enhanced the value of this book in making it more comprehensible and capable of the system being confirmed as being viable.

VERY HELPFULL BOOK FOR THE NOVICE. QUICK DELIVERY