Customer Reviews

Long-Term Secrets to Short-Term Trading

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought the book and enjoyed reading it. I have also attended several of his seminars (total cost around 6000 $. I like to think of myself as an independent thinker. I am an active and profitable trader. Not as proftable as I would like so I keep reading/evaluating digesting new books. Here;s the scoop

Tihs book offers a first class springboard into successful trading. There are no assured success in trading because we basically trade people psychology which is difficult to predict at best ! This book offers ideas strategies which you should modify to your taste and liking. I have taken some of his concepts and programmed a system that i have strated to trade successfully in the s&p futures markets. It has a valid premise, tests well on backtesting and walk foward testing. So I got my moneys worth from the book. This book is much better than the average trading book since it provides specifics. There is no subastitute to back testing, it does not assure success but it reduces the chances of using a flawed strategy. I don't agree with williams in terms of stops. He uses a money management stop but appears to vary it every year. I believe that the stop should be adaptive based on market parameters. Hope this review helps.

I believe that larry williams is a genuinely successful trader but we should not expect him or anyone else to divulge their best system in a book that costs < $ 100.

I have traded for almost 7 years and have read over 120 trading books. Out of all of those books only about 6 are worth anything. This book by Larry Williams is one of the good ones. No book is going to hand you a great trading system, but this book gives you a number of very solid ideas upon which to build a good system. As Larry says in his book, take his basic ideas and put in hours of work to figure out how to get them to work for you. If you are looking for a way to read a book and then start making tons of money, that book does not exist as far as I know. This book plus a lot of work can get you there. The only question I still have about Larry Williams is why did he sell books in the past that claimed to show you his million dollar methods (mid to long term) when it was obvious that he was using completely different methods for his own account (short term). Account statements printed in his pamphlets and books clearly proved that.

This book is an excellent example of why non-statisticians should be prohibited from writing books on statistical subjects.

With some computer program and a bunch of historical data on the futures markets, Williams is able to find dozens upon dozen of trading systems which *would have* produced spectacular results if they had been followed. A fool will no doubt believe that this is the real deal, but the law of averages guarantees that future results applying the same rules to the same markets will produce equally spectacular losses. Markets change. Duh.

More importantly, Williams breaks every law in the book regarding the design and testing of trading systems. He massively overfits his data to "profit spikes" and doesn't bother to forward-test any of his systems on data which they haven't yet seen. These alone are fatal flaws and guarantee the invalidity of the systems. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing... Even worse, the concept of statistical significance seems to be beyond Mr. Williams, who is even proud of his lack of mathematical ability. If enough systems are tested with enough data, one is bound to turn up cases where 80% or 90% of the trades would have been winners.

If all that wasn't a big enough disaster, this book is littered with typos and inconsistencies -- places where one thing is said in one paragraph and then another thing is said in another, or appears to be the actual case in a related diagram. This makes the actual rules being profferrd difficult to discern at times. These flaws are simply inexcusable in a book costing this much and pretending to be of a professional caliber. It's also aggravating that the technical terms (about two dozen of them) in the computer printouts with which the results of the numerous models are presented are never adequately explained. And Williams is inconsistent in his rules: at one point in the text he's advocating following the trend, at another point trading against the trend is the way to riches. On top of all that, one has to endure endless silly platitudes and the recounting of numerous trading war stories. Ugh. I couldn't get through it fast enough.

Given thousands of traders in the markets, it's a statistical certainty that a handful will be outrageously successful. That they think it was because of something they did, and then go and write basically worthless books about it, is little more than hubris. If Williams has done anything right which is quantifiable, it's my guess that it's the fact that he's used stops to prevent taking the big loss. This is hardly news. Save your money and hope that maybe the local library was dumb enough to buy this book.

As with his "Definitive Guide to Futures Trading" Volumes 1 & 2 Larry gives the reader dozens of gems. There is no 'Holy Grail' but there are patterns and other indicators which work on all markets in all time frames. Larry is a teacher. He shows you how an idea is used to generate a system and how to improve it. Everything he shows he invites the reader to go beyond his words and experiment in building your own system. I was a reluctant trader until I used some of his ideas from the "Definitive Guide to Futures Trading" series and constructed my own system. I know exactly what everything in that system does and know that it is profitable. I believe that this is what Larry wants every reader to do from his books. I am now retired and trade only 6 months out of the year. Larry gives a money management tool that is worth 100 times the price of the book. Proper money management can make a marginal system a winner. My advise is BUY EVERY BOOK THAT LARRY WILLIAMS HAS WRITTEN!

When I first encountered this book at the library I thought it was fantastic. It utilized methods of getting the odds on your side and used money management to make millions!
Well, once I tried his mostly badly explained techniques using Tradestation 2000i on S&P500 and Bond data from Norgate the results were not so flash. He also is a blatant lier. He mentions that each test in his book uses a $50 commission. Well they don't. Only very few of them do, as you can see from the System Writer printouts. As soon as you add commission, the hundreds of trades turn a super winning system into a dreadful loser.
Its a pity that this book doesn't deliver what it seems to but it is different and quite enjoyable to read; although you need to take notes as you go along!
I did learn one good thing. Find a system that offers you the edge, consistently, and use money management to make you rich.

I'm still going through the book (few weeks now) trying out some of his methods on different data, but the techniques don't hold up so well in real life.

The author has good credentials but I found it very difficult to find much in his book that I could use. Pros: some good stuff on entry and exit points. Cons: book runs on and on, lacks salient points, ends in "buy on strength, sell on weakness", "buy new highs, sell new lows", and some kind of diary that made no sense at all.

Includes a long winded discussion of back tests on futues that was not convincing. My guess is that Larry has some real wisdom, but he needs somebody to help him put it on paper.

I was happy and making money slowly and steadily until i read this book. after reading is my account dropped from +50% for the year to +22% so far. his statistics are way over fitted. i realized that once i tested his data. the thing that i never understood is that why do these people keep publishing books if they are making millions. i know the answer now. they are not making millions trading , they are making it selling the book. maybe you can figure a way to make money with his stuff, but i couldn't.

best of luck

After reading most of this book, I realized that there are some good common sense tips that we just don't think about. I immediately applied them and found some successful use of these tips. However, the book chock full of poor explanations, some awful grammar (poor editing?), and certainly is a chore to soak in. Charts leave you hanging, as they are poorly or lazily explained. I read many technical networking books from Cisco Press, electronics engineering books, financial books, chess books, and other publications which many others would find difficult to read. I find this text near the top of the most difficult to read (speed-readers will not learn anything). When comparing this book to other texts, it seems he's making a desparate attempt to cram his whole life's reaserch (his "working thesis"), abridged into one small book, with absolutely no effort to promote retention. I believe Larry Willaims to be an expert on trading, and I welcome any info he has to offer, but I see him as no teacher. It would be better for him to teach a string of writers, and practical acedemic teachers his techniques and let them connect his knowledge to the common reader.

Ignore the one star review from some guy in NY who claims to be a profitable trader since he surely did not read this book!

Larry Williams has taken a lot of the information that he shares at his Inner Circle workshop and provides it here. Of course there is a lot more to learn at the workshop, but this book will give you a great understanding of how Larry Williams trades. There are a few spelling mistakes in the book; however, one should be able to follow the material anyway. I would recommend this as an introductory book for beginner traders only with another book such as The Futures Game (which can provide a more well-rounded education into Futures trading). This is a much more specific book with money-making strategies throughout. If you have sufficient capital, and can remain dedicated to a particular trading methodology, then you have the potential to profit greatly from this book.

The Austin Renegades are a team of comodity traders and PhD level mathmaticians that are examining the strategies and models put forth my Mr. Williams. Using chaos math (as preached by the infamous "Predictors" of Santa Fe) as a harsh judge of Larry's hypothesis, the results are completely as advertised.

Beyond his algorythmic success is the more important theme that long-term good trading is a result of hard work, discipline, and most of all, money management.

Assuming the above, Mr. Williams breaks down trading success into two components: Market Bias(set-up) and Entry/Exit Strategy. He hammers home that both are necessary for long term sucess.

In short, his work is not a "Holy Grail" of trading to be followed blindly, but a definitive trading tool to be incorporated into one's own personal style. An absolute must for any traders library.

===========================================================

As an aside, we have read some the vituperative commentary directed at Mr. Williams via the forum of these book reviews. We speculate on the motivation since the diatribe was not focused on the publication, but he author.

===========================================================