Customer Reviews

How to Make a Living Trading Foreign Exchange: A Guaranteed Income for Life (Wiley Trading)

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

 

 

This is an interesting read with some solid methods for trading forex. My biggest complaint is that it only talks about positon (long term) trading based on the daily charts, and has almost nothing about day trading. Position trading is fine if you have a large amout of capitol and can withstand some major drawdowns, but the majority of traders are starting with much less money. The author has been a professional trader for many years, and at least this is a book written by someone who actually does make money consistently and has a long term track record of success. The methods presented are successful in the long run if your account can withstand losing hundreds of pips 45% of the time.

If you are looking to investment in the Forex market then this is a good starting point.

WHAT THIS BOOK IS:
1) A complete set of trading strategies with entry and exit points laid out clearly. Although you have to pay some attention to what is being said because there are a couple of 'mis-statements' that won't make sense until you realize they are editting errors and/or typos.

2) A long-term way of investing your money in a reasonably conservative fashion.

3) A good way of earning 5+% return per month on your capital.

WHAT THIS BOOK IS NOT:
1) A day trader's bible. All strategies are based on daily and weekly price movements.

2) A get rich quick scheme. Face the facts, making 5+% per month is pretty darn good. Anyone who promises more is full of what we hauled out of the calf pens when I was growing up.

Yes, all the strategies are probably available for free 'somewhere' on the internet. But for a couple of bucks you get it all in one spot.

I have 1+ years experience trading Forex and in the months of September and October 2010 I made 5+% per month using only the strategies in this book.

Would I recommend this to a friend - Yes

What the author shares are ideas worth testing. For example, while the inside lemonade trade works well on some markets, it doesn't work at all on others. This is typical of any strategy, and my point is you need to back test these ideas. To further my point, Inside Days works on some currency pairs, and Inside Lemonade works on some currency pairs ... not necessarily the same currency pairs. Inside Days might work on one pair, but the lemonade trade doesn't work on the same pair. You should program each trade individually and give each trade a test on each pair to find what works and where it works.

Surprisingly, I didn't find the Reversal Day setup to be profitable on any pairs. The Reversal Lemonade works on a few.

Channel Breakout, using the typical 55/20 that Courtney also suggests in the book, doesn't work on a single currency pair. I see the potential of this trade though, with a better stop ... I'll be reprogramming it to exit on fractals using a shorter time frame than the time frame on which I entered on a channel breakout. I did find 90/90 works on some pairs with 30 minute bars.

Regardless of whether one of Courtney's specific trade setups work, the best thing to take away from this book are his ways of thinking:

1. His approach to psychology is great and can be summed up quickly: Consider yourself to be a casino, with the market as the gambler at your card table, and your trade setup as your card game. You lose some, win some, and overall you take home a profit. No need to freak out and yell at the monitor when a trade isn't making money. Play your hand and then play the next hand.

2. Program numerous trade setups that are based on a fundamentally sound idea. For example, inside days and reversal days, as well as reversal lemonade and inside lemonade, are all fundamentally sound, although they are not all profitable on all pairs. Start with something that works fundamentally. Program it, backtest it, throw out the ones that don't work, and forward test the trades that do work. Don't expect any trade to work on every pair. Trade it where it works.

3. Once you see it works even in forward testing, such as with a demo account or a small live account using micro pips, then open a larger live account and let it work for you.

Personally, I wouldn't get caught up in paying anyone to coach you to trade, which seems to be the end goal of this book. There are also a lot of typos that can seriously confuse you if you don't pay a lot of attention to what you're reading. I found them while highlighting and working through sections. Courtney says at the end of the book you can go to his website to ask a question, but I've never received a single answer. Lack of follow through and some trades that don't even work = 4 stars.

I teach forex trading to an already well trained group of traders. We are accomplished technical traders and this is a fabulous text book to learn old school technical/bank style trading. Best I have found. Very solid stuff, and best of all it works.
You could actually make a living for life trading Courtneys methods.

On the plus side: I really find by far the strongest point of this book (I have read many forex books) that he mentions many others and their work/methods, in stead of pretending to have all the forex wisdom himself (like most other authors do). This gives confidence about the writer himself.
Other plus: I really have the idea he is a clever guy but....

Minuses
- knowing something and knowing how to explain it clearly are two different things. Way too many side trails and unnecessary examples makes you really need to study everything 3 times to get to the essence of what he says.
- many errors in the book; a few other reviewers have given examples already but there are unfortunately many more
- some strategies/methods he describes are plain non sense. I have back tested them over 2 year periods using special software (Forex tester) and some are losing methods. Other indicators by him work well in the examples in the book, but I can find many examples in the same currency pairs where the indicator hopelessly fails.

Overall worth reading but use use some methods and forget the rest.

This book has very good information. However, it needs to be professionally edited, so that the author's intent is more clearly stated (and mistakes are corrected).

This book contains some solid forex systems that do make money in the long run, no doubt about that. Even though the author only reveals the backtest of the powerful Conquistador system, most of the other winning trading setups (like the new Donchian system) have been fully backtested elsewhere.

This book is also full of extremely clever trading ideas that did make a huge difference in my daily trading.

So buy it, use it, profit from it, this "just meat and potatoes" forex book definitively belongs to your trading library.

Haven't gotten through the first two chapters yet and I've noticed three big errors that I'm either completely wrong about or someone didn't edit:

1) Page 2, he talks about handling a billion Pound short sell yet in the fifth paragraph he says "We knew the pressure of selling 1 million cable was going to cause a sharp drop in the price of the Pound Sterling."

2) On page 9 he talks about how to use a stop order, and he uses the example of how you can use it to buy EUR/USD at 135.60 and he says verbatim "To exit the trade, you should it trade down 135.30." Now, I'm no Forex wiz, but we can all safely say that if EUR/USD ever went to 135.30 the world economy would collapse instantly. He may just be joking here, but the careless typing combined with the ridiculous example leads me to believe this is either a poorly edited or poorly written book.

3) On page 16 he talks about swing highs and swing lows and he says to look at the months of April and October using the previous graph, but the graph only runs from June to March and the month of April is not included.

I could finish the book and write the review then but honestly seeing these 3 errors so far has got me worried about using this text as an instructional basis for a trading endeavor I could lose all of my money in. I might put it on the shelf (or in the dustbin) and use a book from the "For Dummies" series instead, as I'm sure those are read by way more people and therefore is bound to be proof-read more.

I have read this book and am very disappointed. The Book tiles says " A guranteed Income for LIfe". I trade forx and have read several books on this topic. I know there is no such thing like guarantee in investing. You can try your best and make the odds in your favor but no gurantees.

Author writes about several methods to trade FOREX. They work sometimes and they do not work other times, and when they do not work, they lose big money. It may wipe your entire account.
Sale of this book is guranteed income for the author, but not for you.

If you don,t believe, buy it and regret it.

Mr. Smith seems to have been trading and writing books for decades, and in this book his considerable experience is distilled into a cohesive work. This book is geared toward long term traders, carry trades, institutional styles of trading. Would definitely recommend to an experienced trader, a very solid work, nicely done.