Customer Reviews

Technical Analysis Explained : The Successful Investor's Guide to Spotting Investment Trends and Turning Points

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This text is well known and required by the MTA for its CMT program. Its author is well studied and an expert at technical analysis and has a good historical approach. HOWEVER, his writing style is horrid. I am a fully licensed securities professional and have done technical analysis for a considerable amount of time. Even when I know what he is trying to say I personally find it almost impossible to understand some of his paragraphs. Throw in some typographical errors and some paragraphs are too obtuse to bother trying to decipher. Further, the charts in this book are not the best. They are all so compressed his examples are difficult to find and seldom marked. Its hard to find the early part of a year when the whole year is about an tenth of an inch. Buy this book if you have to or if you can read his style easily that you see in the sample provided. If not there are equally good books on the same subject out there.

Though the book is detailed and fairly comprehensive, the poor editing mars the quality of the book. Even the acknowledgement page contains 4 typos. That is a certain embarrassment. It is difficult to overcome the initial impression of sloppy editing and the book seems to have been rushed to meet some deadlines.

If you can get past the editorial issues, the book is a good collection of almost any interesting technical indicator that is available. While this book cannot be a substitute for the classic book by Murphy on technical investing, it is still a good resource for any investor. Of specific interest to the reader who is already aware of the technical investing (and a Murphy fan), the sections on "psychological strategies" is an interesting read. Other than that the book presents information from a huge variety of sources that has anything to do with indicators and oscillators. If you want to invest in only 1 book on technical investing, the book by Murphy is a better bet, with its better organization, editing and use of examples. This book, however, is a welcome addition, and not necessarily a must-have.

This book has become one of the classics for the beginning technical analyst, and is one of the two texts set for the first level of the Chartered Technical Analyst exam. I'm working my way through it, but I've found myself as frustrated as informed. Certainly you will find some information about almost every technical indicator that you will hear about in the press or on the web, but the attempt to be comprehensive means that the treatment of many issues is cursory at best.
Worst of all, though, is the almost total absence of editing in the first half of the book. Some random examples - the RSI formula is misstated, the text refer to charts that don't exist, charts are mislabelled (e.g a Microsoft chart labelled as WalMart). One important table has the column headings offset by one column. The accompanying workbook suffers from the same problem (e.g reversing answers to multiple choice questions). And to add insult to injury, the book is falling apart! Martin Pring's contributions to technical analysis is unquestioned - unfortunately the poor editing and presentation of this expensive book does poor service to his reputation.

One person mentioned typos. Another mentioned poor writing. Still another mentioned how Pring seems to give no clear stance ("the price will always move up if the chart looks like this picture, but it might move down" <--- read that 4-5 times a page and it gets ridiculous!). Now allow me to mention what you SHOULD buy instead of this book: an interactive CD that Amazon sells for almost half of what the producing-company sells for on their website and it is incredibly instructive: InTeLyze.

I am not associated with InTeLyze in any way and I was thoroughly impressed --- right after being severely disappointed that I wasted my money on Pring's book. I am very educated and have a finance background, but pretty new to TA... and I felt like a complete idiot reading Pring's book. It wasn't me... it was horribly poor teaching.

While the book is generally well organized and presents materials helpful to the beginning technical trader in simple terms with examples, visual organization of the book leaves the reader page flipping and frustrated. Rarely are the graphics or charts which are referred to in the text on the same or nearby page. I constantly find myself having to turn pages and search out which chart is being referenced, a very detracting exercise when trying to study technical analysis!

Great book. I got it thinking it'd relate mostly to candle charts. But it covers everything. The book is pretty confusing at first and takes awhile to get used to the author's writing style. He uses words that college business students should understand. It'll take you forever to read, if you want to learn what it has to offer, but it's well worth it. Just google the topics after reviewing to get a full understanding of what Pring offers. Well worth the $10 used price (got lucky!.

This is by far the best book that I have read on Technical Analysis. My only concern is Pring's misdefinition of MACD. Pring defines MACD as an oscillator when in reality it is a trend-following indicator. He defines MACD as dividing the 12 day EMA by the 26 day EMA, when in reality MACD is defined as subtracting the 26 day EMA from the 13 day EMA.

This book has a lot of good information on technical analysis but due to his poor writing style in order to understand what he is saying you might have to read reread & reread and I'm sure that you wont understand everything he is trying to bring out, the charts are really complicated to follow they are mostly not on the same page as the reading material that has you keep turn page back & fourth a few times to get through one chart besides for the fact that they are very small& busy(try to find a peak & through in a 1/4 of a centimeter with MA's trend lines right in middle of it)there are many other good books on technical analysis out there

Goes through all the basics of trendlines etc, I really enjoy Pring's writing style and analogy's. This book alone won't turn you into a profitable trader, but will give you the core you need to seek out a good system and understand it.

I am writing this review retro as I bought it several years ago, and I think for a very basic, easy to understand approach, it was the best one on the shelf. One, he starts with the most basic idea and progresses to more difficult. Two, it includes a CD with self tests after each chapter. If you cant get the test right, then you didnt get the material so it is a good checkup on your understanding of the material covered. Third, I still find it uncommon to see instructional manuals and the like in audio or video format. I get really tired of reading text all the time. Pring responds in audio after each question and tells you why its right or wrong. Again, what good to know the right answer if you dont understand why its right! This book is a great beginner book for first timers and a step closer to the AV interactive books that are the next technology.