Customer Reviews

Streetsmart Guide to Timing the Stock Market: When to Buy, Sell and Sell Short

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Many of the technical analysis books only show you the patterns, they don't go deep enough into what you should do when you see those patterns. This book tells you what you should do and gives you case studies. If you want to build a system for trading stocks, this book should be in your library.

As good a book as you will read on Technical Analysis as it relates to the Stock Market. Very well written and edited with lots of charts demonstrating real case histories of the strategies employed. All the material was practically presented in a clear and logical manner. In short it was a an easy read which is good because you will want to return to it often to review key points of interest. Stresses the importance of looking at the markets from first the long term (months) to the intermediate term (weeks) and finally to time your trades using the short term (days). Well done and thanks.

This book has an exellent balance between TA and prescriptive action. It's not enought to be able to read a chart, you have to know when to act and what action to take given what the chart is telling you. This is not the very best book on TA, it is the very best marriage of TA and practical advice as to what to do with the TA. For example. Both for long and short positions he has a long check list you should make copies of and go through for each stock you take a position on. Further, he has three excellent case studies on buying into an established trend, buying a long term breakout, and buying into a repidly moving market. His 6 chapters on Selling Short are the only reference materials I could find when researching a book on shorting, still in print, of any substance. Again there is a checklist and case studies. Finally, his two chapters on Market Myths should be posted above every online investor's computer.

As a long-time avocate of investing on both the short and long side of the market I love the symetrical thinking throughout this book. There is just no way you will become a good investor unless you adopt this symetrical view because as every investor must realize by now, the market doesn't just go up, it goes up 2/3'rds of the time, and down 1/3rd of the time at twice the rate. It's a pitty this book is so little known. If you are on the perverbial desert island, this is the investment book you want. If you want to get into the nitty-gritty of TA look at the Bible, Technical Analysis of Stock Trends 7th Edition by Edwards and Magee. ISBN 0-8144-0373-5. Mere mortals should prefer Alexander's book. Best of trades!

RocketRoys

When I picked up this book, I expected something similar to the book All About Market Timing, which overall I thouht was a good book. However, I got something very different in this book. This book consists of an introduction to a handful of indicators, such as on balance volume, the macd, moving averages, stochastics, and some subjective price patterns.
The description of these indicators seems okay to me, although nothing special. He has a brief section on options, where he makes a lot of extremely dubious claims, including the often-repeated professionals sell options, amatuers buy them. I suppose if you repeat this lie often enough, somebody is bound to believe it. He goes on to describe what is apparently his preferred option strategy: covered calls. There's nothing wrong with covered calls or being long premium or any other option strategy, but to claim that one is correct and the others are wrong is quite questionable.

He also is fond of uncovered puts, as a viable option strategy -- unfortunately, this strategy does not work out over the long term; you make steady small profits until you encounter a 10+ sigma event in the market, and get blown out. The lessons of LTCM and Niederhoffer should not be forgotten, especially given that equities markets trend far more than one would assume based on a log normal distribution. High probability trades are not always good trades!

I'm trying to get a handle on the intended audience of this book. It seems to be intended for people new to a technical approach to the market, and if that's the case, I don't think it'd make it to my top 100 list of such books. If someone is new to technical approaches, i'd probably recommend the much smaller (and in my view, much more useful) The Visual Investor by John Murphy.

Overall, I think this book should be avoided like the plague. There's nothing new in this book, just rehashed age-old advice, some of which is dubious, some of which is good.

I bought this book swayed by the good reviews it has. Then I tested some of the buy/sell signals that the author proposes and found that they worked better if one is aiming to lose money.

To be fair, I did not test them all, and some may work. But I tested the Price Action indicators against more than one stock and had I followed those indicators to buy/sell stock I would have had lost money rather than make it.

I took a quick glance over this book at a local book store. The author took a few popular indicators and commented on them with respects to various stock picks, plus other discussions on technical analysis that I found to be basic materials. However, he put a little twist in one of indicators that I found very interesting (I haven't thought of this indicator this way before). Thus, I programmed this method of analysis into my TradeStation and found it working quit well. Thanks Colin.

The indicators for buying into stocks on both the short and the long side are all standard metrics that are known to intermediate level investors -such as VIX, TRIN, chart patterns such as triangles, lower-low and higher high analysis. Alexander's contribution is to put them together in an action plan. Given this I fail to see why some use this book and obtain poor results. This book is not a substitute for Murphy, or Edwards and Magee, Bulkowski, Achelis or other pure TA books. It is a description of how to integrate TA to actually make trades.

I've adopted this guy as my rich Father. The author of this book has real world, practical, sensible advice given to me througout the years from dear friends in the market who incidentally are very wealthy. I rate this book a 10 if they had it, the predicted rating (4) IS WAY TOO LOW! Thank you, I already made money by following the easy, common sense principals found in this magnificent book. It already paid for itself. Thank you Mr. Alexander.

No single book on investing will provide you with all the knowledge you will need to be comfortable investing, but Colin Alexander's book comes as close as any. The book starts with the basics, and assumes no prior knowledge or experience with trading. It explains, in detail, the major charting patterns and technical indicators, and provides an algorithm for when to buy and sell. Having read over a dozen books in the field, I find that his suggestions are in-line with the prevailing philosophy of most traders. If you have yet to read a book on technical analysis or swing trading, I would highly recommend to start with this book. If you are already an intermediate trader trying to elevate your technical skills, you may find this work too rudimentary. All in all, this is an outstanding work that is clearly written and easy to implement.

This book is a tremendous gift to future generations and should be the basis of a mandatory course for everyone in highschool. If it were already, many of my friends and acquaintances would not have lost their fortunes in the last 3 years' bear market.
There is a mountain of great advice and detailed checklists for buying, selling and shorting stocks. Some of my favourite quotes are as follows:

-"The mutual fund industry constantly trumpets from the rooftops the merits for the long term...However the benefits...diminish significantly when capital is constantly eroded by transaction costs and withdrawals to pay capital gains tax...Dickens observed that 'the business of lawyers is making business for lawyers.' Things do not change. The investment business is not immune to mutual back-scratching at the expense of the public...There is no doubt that the rapid turnover of stocks is one reason why so few funds come close even to equaling the performance of the stock indexes."

-"Never put a large amount of money into stocks all at once."

-"Buy bonds for retirement when you are retired."

-"It is as important to know when to sell a stock, or when to sell it short, as when to buy it."

-"It is an absolute certainty that in the future there will be stock market declines similar to the one in 1987. Some will be more severe and some will last much longer." [Alexander's book was published in 1999 before the major bear market of 2000 -...]

-"During a general bear market put [ALL] your money into cash equivalents like Treasury Bills until the storm blows over...Contrary to popular belief, for all practical purposes there are no stocks to own when the general direction of the market is down."

-"There is certain to be a sell signal for every stock you ever own...Warren Buffett...has shown that the stated policy of the mutual fund industry ['buy and hold'] does in fact work...in a bull market"!

"The market is always right; you either make money or you lose it!"

-"It often happens that the stock that doubles once goes on to double again...the greatest stocks always look expensive."

-"Buy strength, not weakness!"

-"Do not buy many different stocks...Aimless diversification merely increases the liklihood of investing in fewer great stocks."

-"Always place an initial protective stop as soon as you buy a stock."

-"A Lindahl price rule and a double reversal price rule are particularly powerful indicators of the potential for a stock to make a substantial move."

-"You should never own a stock making a new 52 week low but you might well consider selling it short."

-"In a general bear market you should generally do nothing but sell short, if you are in the market at all."

-"The downside [in] writing options is [they are] a waste of time compared with owning stocks like Microsoft and Intel when stocks are really running."

The book has many more gems and concrete action plans. It is the most useful book for the public I have ever read. It should top Hillary Clinton's autobiography and Harry Potter, but, regrettably, it won't! People will continue to listen to their liars - their brokers, financial planners and mutual fund salespeople, regrettably. A few will read the book, and be wiser, and richer!