Short Term Trading Strategies That Work [Hardcover]

Larry Connors (Author), Cesar Alvarez (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2008

Market volatility has been at record levels in recent months, leaving every trader and investor to ask the same question: "Am I prepared to handle the market conditions?"

In Larry Connors', CEO and Founder of TradingMarkets, Short Term Trading Strategies That Work, he discusses 16 simple strategies crucial to the success of any trader or investor. These strategies have been both back-tested up to 1995, but also have been traded by Larry and his team under multiple market conditions.

This is the must have book for anyone seeking to improve their trading in any market condition.

You'll see strategies and methods which you've likely never seen before, all of which are statistically backed by more than a decade's worth of research.

The Single Best Oscillator for Traders Do you know what's the best oscillator to use for your trading? In Chapter 9 you'll learn the one oscillator Larry believes is the closest to being the holy grail of oscillators. And you'll see the test results when applied to over 77,000 trades since 1995!

How to Make Your Trading Edges Even Bigger On pages 39-48, Larry will teach you the one simple technique to help make your daily trading edges even greater.

Learn to Properly Trade ETFs Larry teaches you some of his best strategies to trade popular ETFs like the SPYs, QQQQ's and many of the more actively traded ETFs. Professionals are flocking to ETFs and now you'll have in your possession statistically backed ETF strategies you'll be able to apply for years to come.

How to Trade Using the VIX Do you use the VIX to time your trades? You'll learn numerous ways to use the VIX, many which have been over 70% correct going back more than a decade.

"Larry has done it again. He delivers an insightful handbook of practical, useful and timeless methods to profit in the market." Tony Saliba, CEO of BNY ConvergEx LiquidPoint; Profiled in Market Wizards

The Mind Trading is as mentally tough as any profession in the world. Now learn from a world class expert, who Larry interviewed on extreme psychological training and what it takes to succeed not only in trading but in all walks of life.

Learn how to improve your trading results by purchasing Short Term Trading Strategies That Work today!

Editorial Reviews

Review

Larry Connors has years of trading experience and has once again put that experience to paper with this book. I was just a few pages into it when his message hit home. As a result, I have already improved my methods to become better at what I do. --Michael Kahn, CMT, Columnist for Barrons Online, Editor, Quick Takes Pro newsletter

Short Term Trading Strategies That Work is a worthwhile book to read if you're a short term trader. It is simple and relies on respectable tested research. It can only add money to your net worth. --Victor Sperandeo, CEO and President of Alpha Financial Technologies LLC; Profiled in The New Market Wizards

You'll keep this book on your trading desk at all times because the quantified strategies presented have a very high probability of success. --Kevin Haggerty, former Head of Trading for Fidelity Capital Markets --Kevin Haggerty, former Head of Trading for Fidelity Capital Markets

About the Author

Larry Connors, CEO and founder of TradingMarkets.com Mr. Connors has over 26 years of experience working in the financial markets industry. He started his career in 1982 at Merrill Lynch and later moved on to become a Vice President with Donaldson, Lufkin, Jenrette. In addition to his role as CEO of The Connors Group, Mr. Connors serves as a Managing Partner of Connors Capital, a private investment and financial markets research firm.

Mr. Connors has authored top-selling books on market strategies and volatility trading, including How Markets Really Work, Street Smarts (with Linda Raschke), and Investment Secrets of a Hedge Fund Manager. Street Smarts has recently been selected by Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities magazine as one of The Classics for trading books written in the past century. His books have been translated into German, Italian and Japanese.

Mr. Connors' opinions and insights have been featured or quoted in: Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Barron's, Bloomberg TV & Radio, Dow Jones Newswire, Yahoo! Finance, E-Trade Financial Daily, Futures Magazine, Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities, and others. Mr. Connors has been a featured speaker at a number of major investment conferences over the past decade.

Cesar Alvarez is Director of Research for Connors Research LLC. Previously Mr. Alvarez was a senior designer of Excel, helping Microsoft further create and build-out Excel. For the past 8 years Cesar has been a professional market researcher.

Mr. Alvarez has been at the forefront of stock market research, having developed a number of successful trading systems now used by numerous investors and fund managers in the United States and internationally. He is also co-author of Short-Term Trading Strategies That Work.

Cesar attended the University of California, Berkeley where he received his Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 1989 and his Masters of Science in Computer Science in 1990.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 140 pages
• Publisher: TradingMarkets; 1st edition (November 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0981923909
• ISBN-13: 978-0981923901
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 8.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #572,224 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

134 of 137 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Semi-Serius, January 15, 2009

By 

Shalom Yariv (Yavne, Israel) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Short Term Trading Strategies That Work (Hardcover)

This is a no-nonsense, very well written trading strategies book, with statistical back-tracing to support its claims.

There are two major messages in the book, and anything else in the book rotates around these claims:
1. Always Trust long term momentum (never buy the market when it is below its 200 days moving average) and
2. Buy short-term lows, sell short-term highs.

That's all.

I did test the statistical results and did get results that are consistent with the book. But as it is always the case, back-tracing is not a proof for future results, no matter how good the past results are.

A problem which I found with the statistical analysis, is that it completely ignores risk factors, such as standard deviation and the Sharpe ratio and also, their is no evidence for the robustness of the strategies and their susceptibility to small parametric changes.

The book is pretty close in its contents to the corresponding website:
http://www.tradingmarkets.com, which caused me to feel that the $50 spent on this book aren't justified.

Summary:
Pros:
- Very well written.
- Clear reading. Easy to implement the strategies.
- Substantial statistical backing of each and every strategy.


Cons:
- Too expensive: very similar to the web site
- Statistical analysis does not cover risk aspects
- Poor coverage for short and market neutral strategies

101 of 107 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read it...and my trading is already improved, November 26, 2008

By 

Positive Logic (L.A.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Short Term Trading Strategies That Work (Hardcover)

I am mostly a short-term trader so I buy every book I can find on the subject in search of something that will help to improve my performance. As my wife can attest...I am usually disappointed and throw them into a storage box in our den so I can sell them on eBay. Most of it is pure garbage either written by people who don't trade or who are guessing about what works merely because it looks good in back testing.

On the other hand, Larry Connors' new book on Short Term Strategies is sitting in a place of honor on my book shelf along with the small handful of books that have truly helped me in my trading over the past 20 years. What I appreciate about Larry's research is that he doesn't just look at pretty patterns on a chart. Instead, he finds edges that hardly anybody in the trading world or financial media knows about and builds strategies with simple rules that any trader can apply.

This book contains numerous stock and ETF strategies that, in my opinion, are worth thousands of dollars to any trader who will spend them to learn learning them.

Do you want to improve your trading? In my opinion this book will help you get there.

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Gem for the experienced Trader looking for an edge, February 10, 2009

By 

J. J. Kuhr - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Short Term Trading Strategies That Work (Hardcover)

For a novice to investing, the very slim book might appear to be a letdown. Lacking experince they may not know what they have in their hands. But for the experienced trader looking for an edge or a refinement to an entry, this book is well worth it's money. Unfortunatley, the author hints at the power of combining strategies and personalizing them, but he provides few examples to guide novices. The experinced trader will take the presented "edges" and back test them on a platform like TD Ameritrade's Strategy Desk or MetaStock, and they will find they are able to verify the value of the disclosed strategies. What is presented in this book is very powerful, but it is one of many parts of the process to become a better trader. I personally have found great value in the RSI work and the simple Double 7's strategy. My first small 100 share test trade paid for the book more than three times over.