Review of Trading Commodities and Financial Futures: A Step by Step Guide to Mastering the Markets, 3rd Edition (Hardcover)

Too much novice information, considering this is the internet age and three quarters of the book can be found for free by just looking a little which is what the internet/search is for. Hardly anyone that knows "nothing" about investing is going to start trading commodities first, which it seems the book is addressed to.

This book would have been hot about 1985, helping you calculate a simple moving average with a pencil and paper. It really needs updating to remove anachronisms.

The big illustrated trading system TMVTT should be taken with a pound of salt. I have tested these kind of algorithms using trading software on historical data and their results are unimpressive in my opinion. I wrote special code to test the "trend reversal day trading system" as published, and ran it against two years of U.S. Dollar / Swiss Franc through February 2006. Doesn't work. As a concept these systems have their merits as serious reminders of how important it is to trade with the trend, but mechanically they don't work in real markets in general. This has surprised me every time I test mathematically the actual results of these approaches, since I do believe the author is correct in saying they are commonly used in markets, and frankly it could be a big reason why technical analysis has a bad name for a lot of people with casual exposure.


If your trading plan is to hold a contract for a fairly long period (many weeks, months), or you want to be convinced to, this is where the wisdom of the book shines.

The book does have its appeal in the oddest places (some comments on contract terms, agricultural trading rules from the grave) that make you aware of the sincerity of the author and appreciate him overall for the effort.

It took me 2 hours to get through the whole book, and another hour to write the code and test the algorithm. And I'm pretty much done with it. But I'm no novice. But then, you probably aren't either.



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