Customer Reviews

Seasonality: Systems, Strategies, and Signals (Wiley Trading)

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I was expecting alot more from someone referred to as the foremost authority on seasonality in the futures markets. While I give Jake alot of credit for bringing greater visibility to seasonal trading strategies through his earlier research from the late 70s on, this book was somewhat of a disappointment. My first concern is that a large portion of his data modeling is based off of cash market data. While this often allows one a much greater data pool to tap which in turn can assist in lending statistical significance to apparent patterns, I have to question the validity of this approach since as most traders know, futures prices often diverge significantly from those of the cash market. There are no clear trading rules elucidated for particular seasonals, and individual contract months are not well touched on. In addition, while technical filters are mentioned, there is no clear integration with seasonals. For anyone actually interested in trading seasonals with very clear rules spelled out with specific seasonals based on individual contract months, I would highly recommend John Momsen's "UltraReliable Seasonal Trades." While I haven't traded Momsen's methods long enough to draw a 100% conclusion, I've already made significant profits with his systems. This text didn't add enough workable knowledge to warrant the price IMHO. It does however provide some decent info on performing your own seasonal research by data mining...

Most seasonal trading is already factored into the price, right before the season starts. Something like 2 out of 10 seasonal trades work nowadays. Technical Analysis has eliminated many of the seasonal signals.

In fact it is prohibited by the National Futures Association for brokers to even discuss or promote on the basis of seasonal trading. That says a lot to me.

In the past 11 years I have been a futures broker, futures investor, and author of several futures books and I tell all of my clients not to rely on seasonal trades. And if they do follow seasonal trades use tight stops for when the market goes against you.

Jake Bernstein is the foremost authority on seasonality and this book clearly demonstrates the power of this approach. It is also an easy read for the beginning trader.

Mostly concerned with the commodities and futures markets. Interesting, lots of charts and tables, but the only information on stocks is a table on page 87 showing that from Jan 1897 to Dec 1983 the Dow Jones Industrial Average posted a gain 68.1% of the time the day before an important holiday and 52.2% of the time the day after. Good to know. It was something I had already recognized, but knowing that the day before is significantly better than the day after is worth while. Also Monday is the worse day of the week for stock prices. There's even a book entitled Don't Sell Stocks on Monday(1986) by Yale Hirsch.