Customer Reviews

Long/Short Market Dynamics: Trading Strategies for Today's Markets (Wiley Trading)

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

 

 

Most financial market books, especially those on TA, seem as though addressed to prospective targets: "Suckers, use my superdooper-specialized proprietary method, trade a lot, get my newsletter, and open an account at my very own, highly recommended XYZ brokerage firm." They are, generally, composed of descriptions of too-well known indicators, replete with glowing, yet unsubstantiated, accounts of the profits the author has obtained by using them. Even the more serious attempts, like those of John Murphy, are merely encyclopedic gatherings of indicators, with little effort made to determine their objective utility or profitability; or, like Kaufman's, while addressing a more intelligent, educated technician, too compendious. Sadly, the better books present the reader with barely more than introductions to approaches that are mathematically and computationally more rigorous; and, while they may also indicate further directions of study, do little in the way of providing it.

This book, I am happy to say, avoids all of these objections.

The author discusses and describes a number of statistical methods, and develops them into tools with which to measure and identify market development and direction. And though his instruction is often brief, it is to the point. This adds a certain density to the presentation, but it IS presented. As an example, he uses a quantile segregation of price-data to reduce the adverse effects of noise in a moving average. He indicates in two sentences the formula to use in EXCEL to obtain it. Testing of these tools is, of course, the responsibility of the reader, but there is no arguing the fresh, original character of these methods, and the patience with which the author explains them. If nothing else, it stimulates the imagination. Wait, that is everything, isn't it?

Very highly recommended.

I'm not very sure I agree with the other reviewer's assessment of the book. Luckily for me, I read the book before coming across the review and corresponding rating on Amazon.
This book provides a very decent overview of the latest thinking about market dynamics. Trading systems being what they are, mechanical representations of underlying market mechanisms, it really helps if the (would-be) trader were to understand the reasoning behind system internals. This can further lead to a proper grasp of "how, when and which": how to tweak a system, when to tweak it, and which system to modify.
I heartily recommend this book to all those who are interested in exploring the fascinating world of markets that lie underneath our trading systems. Just don't expect to get rich quickly by reading this.

This is a piece of original work that you rarely see in financial books. I find the author's web site a great pratical complement to the book. The combination gives you the theory and pratice to profit in the market. I have to respectfully disagree with the bad review given before. You simply have to be the right target for the book; more on the advanced side. Please preview the book for yourself but I assure you that the content and ideas are simply original and made me money so far.

First of all, the title of the book is extremely misleading. This is not a book about market neutral/pairs trading, contrarily to what I thought (to be fair, that's my mistake, I could have looked at the table of contents and purchased it too impulsively). A more appropriate title would be something like "Technical analysis for today's markets".

In any case, I read the book, and while some of the sections gave me ideas for my own trading system (e.g. the comparative quantile analysis) and had sound reasoning -- other sections felt like I was reading an astrology book. Gartley patterns, Fibonacci ratios, what??! If you're going to advance such far-fetched ideas, you should probably provide some empirical evidence that it actually increases ROI or reduces risk, or something to that effect.

Bottom-line: I did get some good stuff out of this book, but it did require reading through some painfully sketchy stuff. Additionally, this book wasn't at all what I was looking for (but that's partially my fault).

such a bad book..completely meaningless..it isnt about long/short market dynamics at all. the author doesnt even know how the market really operates and just citing some academic research as if he really knows what they mean.