The Master Swing Trader: Tools and Techniques to Profit from Outstanding Short-Term Trading Opportunities (Hardcover)

~ Alan Farley (Author) "Swing traders must compete against the best-informed crowd in history..." (more)
Key Phrases: many swing traders, personal trading plan, swing tactics, Townsend Analytics, Bollinger Bands, Pattern Cycles (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Swing trading is gaining popularity as a powerful method to increase returns--and potentially lower risks--by profiting from short-term price moves. The Master Swing Trader explains how traders can use technical analysis, charting, and market sentiment to make trades that hold through price fluctuations and noise with wider stops.

This complete, practical guide to making profitable short-term trades--based on the author's popular Mastering the Trade online course--uses dozens of charts and graphs to illustrate proven swing trading concepts and strategies. Experienced day, position, and online traders will benefit immediately from: - The 7 Bells – unique tools to uncover promising short-term prospects - Techniques to profit from low-risk short sales - The 4 repeating cycles for perfectly timed trades

From the Back Cover

Powerful Strategies to Slip Between Day Traders and Long-Term Investors--and Grab Hidden Trading Profits!

Located in the gray area between the lightning-fast day trader and the endlessly patient buy-and-hold investor, the modern swing trader executes intermediate positions that offer highly lucrative results with less volatility. The Master Swing Trader contains a wealth of practical insights and information for using this powerful trading method to profit from short-term price moves often missed by other market participants. After beginning with a detailed background on Pattern Cycle applications and the trend-range axis, The Master Swing Trader presents:
* Dozens of specific trading strategies and setups that include precise reward, risk, and stop-loss considerations
* Concrete tips, tactics, and workflows to make informed choices at each stage of short-term trade evolution
* The 7 Bells – unique tools to uncover high-probability short-term trading prospects

With more than 200 charts and dozens of proprietary setups that illustrate both classic and highly original short-term tactics, The Master Swing Trader doesn't leave your trading profits to chance. Coldly analytical and backed by real-time trading results, this proven course for short-term traders will help you improve your bottom line, lessen your risks--and increase your confidence in building solid profits in today's volatile markets!

Biased news stories spun by insiders to manipulate options prices…Questionable stocks pushed by analysts so their trading departments can unload bloated inventories … Quick-trigger day traders chasing the latest chat room buzz …

Today's top market players understand that our "efficient" markets are actually highly inefficient, driven by insiders with hidden agendas and an irrational pack mentality that has little to do with underlying value. Fortunately, this constant imbalance generates repeated, high-probability trade setups--and Alan Farley's The Master Swing Trader reveals how you can find and profit from these difficult-to-spot opportunities before they disappear.

Farley's innovative system is based on Pattern Cycles--shifting market stages that repeat in an orderly, predictable process through all price charts and time frames. These classic Pattern Cycles:
* Describe the machine language within market opportunity
* Reveal the origin of the trade setup
* Explain how to capitalize on inefficiency through every bull and bear phase
* Show exactly where to uncover consistent profit opportunities
* Offer natural methods to shift tactics quickly as conditions change
* Predict the impact of the emotional crowd on trend, range, and price development

The Master Swing Trader will help you apply Pattern Cycles to your advantage, over and over again. By encompassing virtually all market action, and revealing how price moves in a highly predictable manner, its powerful tools will give you the edge you need to take other people's money before they take yours.

In today's lightning-fast markets, open information makes profit opportunities decidedly more difficult to spot and capitalize upon--with the investing herd becoming far more skilled at spotting inefficiencies and closing them up quickly. The Master Swing Trader will teach you to recognize these trade setups one step ahead of the crowd, dive in for solid profits, and close out your position before the majority has even caught on.

Pattern Cycles are not easy or automatic; they require concentration, discipline, and skilled execution. But the payoff of these classic strategies is virtually unlimited. Turn to page 1 of The Master Swing Trader now, and open a new world of trading possibilities and profits--the world of the master swing trader!

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 443 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (December 13, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071363092
• ISBN-13: 978-0071363099
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (276 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #39,628 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

365 of 380 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars There are much better books out there., March 20, 2002

By	RICHARD DIBONA (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I realize there are many people who are very passionate about this book, but I am not one of them.

I bought this book when it first came out and have tried multiple times to get something out of it. I just can't. It is an impressive looking book to flip through, though. There are complicated looking charts throughout, and the natural first thought is how exciting it will be to be able to utilize these charts and the tools behind them. I kept reading and reading, waiting for him to get to his point. It just never comes. And the book is written in this almost sing-song like tone. I wish I was an English major so I could better describe it. It's almost like reading an endless string of fortune cookies. Here's a random example from a random page I just opened up to (all of the writing in the book is just like this): "Modify personal style frequently as skills grow. Experience awakens fresh tactics. Trading rules should not strangle fresh ideas. Update them to incorporate your trading evolution. Decide where to place focus at the beginning of each market day. Choose wisely and setups will explode as predicted." Picture over 400 pages of this kind of writing and you have this book.

I realize I will get panned by those who are, for some reason, really into this book. I am writing this review to try to appeal to those who can be objective. There is a common thread among the negative reviews for this book. Pay attention to it. It is not just a coincidence.

107 of 113 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Wrong Title, August 9, 2005

By	Ed Davis "Ed" (CA USA) - See all my reviews

After reading this book, I thought that the author is extremely dishonest, and that the book should be named as
"Swing Rambling On Specially Selected Stock Charts By A Random Mind".

If there is anything that could be called "new" in this "book", it is the dishonesty of the writer who made such "tardemark-claim" on the so-called "seven bells". Yet there is nothing, not a single "bell" is defined in any way, even not defined loosely. That's only useful for the writer: since nobody could test it, or claim whether or not they actually work. Sound familiar? Uh!!! It reminded me the infamous fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen.

I would like to give the writer a second chance: If he could define a single thing out of the "7 bells" on this board, I will be more glad to tell him what is wrong with his "work."

71 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must Have for Traders, January 6, 2001

By	LAC "lowellc" (California) - See all my reviews

The Master Swing Trader by Alan Farley will improve your chart reading skills faster than any other trading book I have read (and I have a LARGE technical analysis library.) Whether you trade from 5 minute charts or never look at the market during the trading day, this book will improve your bottom line.

Every book claims it is going to help you understand chart patterns, but then limits the coverage to items like the classical head-and-shoulders or triangle patterns using standard breakout techniques. Alan takes you inside these patterns, and often shows you how to beat the crowd by understanding what is really happening. His approach has much lower risk and often a higher profit potential.

And that is only the start. Classical patterns are the ones that "everyone" knows, but unfortunately, what everyone knows seldom makes money. The Master Swing Trader takes the concepts that make up patterns, and shows you where invisible trades often exist. But since the general public doesn't see the early trade, they buy or sell after you have established your position. This improves your risk/reward ratio even further.

This book is not for the absolute beginning trader, since it assumes some knowledge of basic technical analysis. There are several points in the book where Alan assumes you have already heard of Vic Sperandeo's 2B Top or Dr. Alexander Elder's Triple Screen method. (Keep reading - they are eventually explained.) But if you are looking for a book that does more than just rehash existing materials, this is the one you've been looking for, this is the one.