Short Term Trading Strategies That Work (Hardcover)

~ Larry Connors (Author), (Author)

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<br /><br />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<br /><br />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

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

Product Description

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!

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 140 pages
• Publisher: TradingMarkets; 1st edition (November 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0981923909
• ISBN-13: 978-0981923901
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 8.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #26,139 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 63 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 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

50 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

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

By	ActiveTrader "ActiveTrader" (New York) - See all my reviews

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 31 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars About as good as a high school term paper, February 26, 2009

By	PerennialTrader "PT" (UT) - See all my reviews

I decided to purchase this book after having read a great article that was co-authored by Larry Connors in the February 2008 issue of Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities that I thought was well done. When Connors' book finally arrived my first impression was disappointing. The book is about as thick as a magazine and it is written on 8x11 sheets of paper with 12-point font and generous spacing. After having just spent $50, the 125-page book seemed somewhat of a letdown. As I flipped through it I noticed that on several pages there were only three paragraphs of writing and sometimes a page with only a giant chart on it, not to mention several blank pages inserted to give the book a little more fill. It actually reminded me of a high school term paper that stretched one page of information into three just to make it look big.

But I know not to judge a book by its cover or how many words fill a given page so I sat down and gave it a read. It only took me an hour or two to finish and when I put the book down I felt that I had learned a few interesting ideas worth further testing but overall, I also felt that there were a lot of holes in the content.

The key points:
- Buy pullbacks (repeated over three chapters)
- Trade with the trend as per the 200 period ma
- Use RSI
- Use the VIX to help time trades
- Don't use stops
- Trade at the end of the month
- Hold trades overnight
- Don't quit

Ironically, Connors magazine article, which covered one of the points in his book, the "Double's Strategy" was better than the book itself.

In summary, I would recommend this book for anyone just starting in the trading business and/or the trader who can't seem to trade profitably with any sort of an edge. The book will serve as a starting point and nothing more. An experienced, profitable trader should pass on this book, as you are sure to be disappointed.