7 Simple Strategies of Highly Effective Traders: Winning Technical Analysis Strategies Yhat You Can Put Into Practice Right Now

This concise book provides short- to medium-term traders with easy-to- implement simple trading techniques that can be used to trade any vehicles such as stocks, commodities, foreign exchange, options and futures. Also, the book comes with a free eBook download to an eBook reader, smart phone or computer.

According to the authors the seven trading strategies presented in the book are “…straightforward, readily applicable tried and tested, and most importantly successful. Interestingly, no back test results on any of the strategies were presented to back up their selection of these strategies. However, the authors combined background is very strong in financial subjects with many years of experience trading, managing money, and publishing 18 books.

The layout of each chapter is similar and uniform – introduction followed by background, executed examples with charts, and conclusion. At the book’s end, the authors provide three critical rules for trading success. They are using volatility-based stocks with an ATR or 2 or 3, keeping losses small, and not trading more than 2% of capital on any one position.

Throughout the book, the authors stress the importance of taking small losses and gains 80% of the time, but they should be looking for big winners when conditions are right 20% of the time. This approach they say should lead to more stable and higher returns with minimal total losses.

The first strategy involves buying trading range breakouts with momentum (e.g., a gap with high volume) where the trade is not held for more than a week, and most often completed the next day. The second strategy focuses on event trading based on economic, financial, and banking data releases and announcements (e.g., GDP, non-0farm payroll, unemployment, CPI and FOMC). The goal is to gain an understanding of the value of specific information and what the latest report means in relationship to the expected numbers. Then the trader can follow a pattern and set of rules the day of the announcement waiting for one minute after the announcement to take a position, thereby avoiding the need to forecast the numbers reported. The key is to trade the break using tight stops.

The third strategy is to day trade using pre-determined trading plan with specific risk parameters to prevent losses rather than reaching a daily profit target. Support and resistance levels can be used to select trades for the day. For example, the trader can use a 30 minute chart with five days of history to ascertain those levels.

Strategy 4 uses mean reversion (linear regression line around a trend line). Since equities typically go back and forth around a trend line, the authors found that about 70% of the trades occur near the mean price. Therefore, the strategy is to go long as price declines below the mean regression line, and vice versa.

Strategy 5 involves using moving averages to ascertain buy and sell points. The authors recommend using two moving averages with a crossover to pinpoint the trend change. Suggested pairs include 50/200 sma,10-ema/24-sma for equities, and 9-ema/16-sma for currencies. Moving averages are best used with other confirming indicators such as RSI or Stochastics.

Strategy 6 uses trend lines and channels trading with the current trend. And Strategy 7 uses candlesticks. This is not really a strategy per se, but the authors believe that certain candlestick patterns can be used to forecast future price movement.

In summary this book is a suitable primer for new or some experienced traders who are searching for one or clear and simple strategies that are well-known. As the authors mention, this book is not a comprehensive manual, but rather a useful source of trading strategies that the reader can take further by using other more resources. For example, readers wanting to use candlesticks would need to refer to specific books or websites on the subject to become proficient in their use.

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