Customer Reviews

Trading with Oscillators: Pinpointing Market Extremes -- Theory and Practice (Wiley Trader's Exchange)

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

 

 

The "absolute truth" is in the book's own conclusion: "The evidence suggests oscillators function better as discretionary or forecasting tools than as the foundation for systematic trading strategies." The subtitle "Pinpointing Market Extremes -- Theory and Practice", lead me to expect exactly the opposite. If you've already read some articles about the standard oscillators, or read any other books that covered them, you already know everything you'll know after reading this book. Even the index, glossary, notes, etc., only get the page count of this slim paperback up to 160. The book promises a lot but delivers very little. The author generated some charts showing the various oscillators he describes, but doesn't contribute anything new himself. It's really no more than a survey of other peoples work. I didn't feel I got anything useful for my money. A beginner who wasn't already familiar with the normal selection of oscillators would be far better served investing in Kaufman's latest edition.

This book is not "a breakthrough" about oscillators, but a simple collection of some indicators. It lacks the intellectual depth of the book, "Trading for a Living," by Dr. Alexander Elder.

In the middle of the book, the author presented others' tests on some popular oscillators and the conclusion is indeed ugly for any "meaningful" usage of any oscillators, but the author had to acknowledge numerous times in the book that the oscillators do pinpoint the extremes of underlying markets quite well. The reader is then left wondering what has been gone wrong. The author does not offer any deeper insight than the plain facts. In fact, it is not the oscillators' fault, but the people use and test them in the wrong way.

The later half of the book is even more disappointing. The author just briefly outlined some new ideas and innovations, but never gave any test results. You might wonder why? The author clearly has the backtesting tools in his hands, TradeStation by Omega Research. He could have just run a few model tests on S&P500 or some other indexes and shown those results in his book, but he never did so. Should readers use those new indicators or not? The author did not answer directly to this question, but used the old testing results of some other indicators to conclude his book, "The evidence suggests oscillators function better as discretionary or forecasting tools than as the foundation for systematic trading strategies."

Overall, this book has some value to educate the general readers and introduce the ideas of momentum-based indicators, but fall short of the promise in its title, "Trading with Oscillators."

I was the type of person whom the author describes as familiar on a superficial level with oscillators and their use in trading. This book took me to a deeper level. Lots of good stuff and depth. The author is not shy in documenting oscillators weak-points either, so it's not just a market cheerleading book. Kind of overpriced for a pretty thin paperback, but I'm not sorry I bought it.

This book is like a college work, it's not for traders. It has a lot of tests, and says a lot about why not to use oscilators. But in the end is the feeling that this book was made for a college lecture, not for discussion with traders. Don't waste your money, nothing can be learned from this book.

Lots of information on lots of technical tools, all in plain-english. This is required-reading for any investor who wants to understand oscillators.

If you are looking for a Holy Grail Trading System, you won't find itin this book. But, if you'd like common sense explanation of a complicated subject this book is for you. Chapter Four is the heart of this book. For me, as a professional options trader, Chapter Four of this book clearly set forth concepts about oscillators that I had long suspected, but was unable to reduce to concrete terms. This book is worth every penny.

Until I'd read this book, I'd never heard of 'Phantom Divergence' mentioned in any other trading literatures. This market idea may open up a completely brand new perspective on Divergence as a valuable directional signal in market.

After buying software that used oscillators and, reading the explaintions about oscillators, I was still in the dark. This book gave me the knowledge to use oscillators in an environment that gives the trader the biggest edge.