A Short Course in Technical Trading teaches proven long- and short-term trading techniques (with an emphasis on short-term), covering basic indicators and how you can best use them to your advantage. This Book includes a trading game so you can trade along with the lessons, posing likely problems that you’ll encounter once trading begins. As trading becomes more complicated, so do the problems.
Author’s Introduction:
Trading is all about making money. Technical trading uses chart patterns, indicators, some simple math, and clear rules to make money. There are many successful traders who use instinct, but I believe they’ve got a computer going inside their heads, looking for patterns and signals that tell them prices are going to surge ahead or stop and reverse. Experience teaches you what works and what doesn’t work.
In this course we’re going to take some simple ideas and turn them into successful trading. If you can’t turn an idea into profitable returns, then you’re wasting your time. Trading is really all about making money. Using technical analysis is an unbiased way of evaluating a stock, index, or futures market. If the price is going down, it doesn’t matter if the analyst is reporting that the company is undervalued, or that the pro forma performance shows a potential profit in six months—the timing is not right to buy.
However, technical analysis isn’t enough. It doesn’t tell you how to trade. There is a big gap between analyzing the market and trading, and it is filled with trading losses. How can you bridge that gap without making every mistake yourself? You can learn from someone with experience. Good advice moves you along faster, but making mistakes yourself is an important and unavoidable way to learn. This course is intended to do both—teach you what works and give you a chance to make mistakes without costing you anything.
You’ll find traditional instruction alternating with “words of wisdom,” a series of trading games that I encourage you to play, and comments on what is likely to go wrong when you trade. Those comments are the result of reviewing the trading of other ambitious students. We can learn from their mistakes in order to make fewer mistakes of our own. I’ve been developing trading systems for 30 years, traded them myself, and directed others while they were being traded. I’ve profited from their successes and lost when they failed. By now I have a good understanding of what works and what doesn’t work, and why. This course is an effort to pass on that knowledge to you.
In case you’re thinking that this is a magical method for profitable trading, you’re wrong. There are no secrets in this course, just sensible methods and hard work. You should be able to take what you learn and use it as a solid foundation for moving forward, or you can trade successfully using only what you learned in this course.
Contents:
- 1. Timing Is Everything
- 2. Charting the Trend
- 3. Breakout Trends
- 4. Calculating the Trend
- 5. The Trading Game
- 6. Channels and Bands
- 7. Event-Driven Trends
- 8. Controlling the Risk of a Trade
- 9. One-Day Chart Patterns and Reversals
- 10. Continuation Patterns
- 11. Top and Bottom Formations
- 12. Retracements, Reversals, Fibonacci Numbers, and Gann
- 13. Volume, Breadth, and Open Interest
- 14. Momentum and MACD
- 15. Overbought/Oversold Indicators and Double Smoothing
- 16. Managing Your Entry and Exit
- 17. Volatility and Portfolio Management
- 18. Dow Theory
A Short Course in Technical Trading By Perry J. Kaufman PDF
Rose Crosby (verified owner) –
This book is a terrific basic text for those who are looking for a clear and concise introduction to technical analysis. Of great value are the personal insights of the author, a noted authority on the development of trading systems.
Cameron Valenzuela (verified owner) –
Investors and traders who have been battered by the markets in recent years may find themselves saying, ‘There must be a better way.’ There is: systematic trading. In this timely book Perry Kaufman provides an excellent introduction to the world of systematic trading, where rules–not emotions–rule.
Abel Singleton (verified owner) –
In trading, timing is everything, and now is the time to read this excellent and easy-to-follow book on technical trading systems by Perry Kaufman. He shares his trading tips, insights, and sound advice. He takes you from his rules on price to the recognition of trends and the importance of breakouts. Enjoy this book and find out why trading systems work and which ones work the best.
Henley Warren (verified owner) –
TA is a highly sophisticated topic which cannot be covered thoroughly with a 316 page book. That’s for sure. In fact, the author had been honest not to over promise with the humble title of his book. The scope of discussion is limited to chart patterns, trendlines, channels, moving averages, Fibonnaci numbers, MACD, Stochastics, RSI and a few others. As the author had emphasized his objective to make his book only an introduction to TA, I am not going to comment on the variety of TA tools covered. However, I still want to criticize on some of the weaknesses:
1) Number of real life examples/price charts are few.
2) The choice of parameters for MACD and Stochastics had not been discussed
3) False breakouts are so frequent in the author’s graphs samples (that’s a fact of life, I admit). However, the author made little attempt to teach readers how to avoid such traps with the use of multiple TA tools.
4) The relative weak Q&A sections that questions are focused on readers’ understanding of the definition of jargons instead of the usage of TA tools.
Though the price is affordable, I am hesitant to recommend it to any aspiring trader/investor who are serious to get an elementary but quality course on TA. It’s not the cost of the book that matters, but the cost of time and potential trading loss for reading it.
Tristen Salgado (verified owner) –
In no way is Technical Analysis a easy subject to tackle. It’s full of intricacies, formulas, and complexities that most people have a hard time getting a full grasp of what they are trying to accomplish with technical analysis.
Mr. Kaufman does an excellent job of bringing this subject to the reader in a digestible form. As the author of three financial books I can attest to the difficulty of separating the art from the science of technical analysis. In “Futures For Small Speculators” I only bring it up briefly. In this respect Mr. Kaufman shines and exceeds my communication abilities.
This is a great start into the world of Technical Analysis without having to be overwhelmed by mathematics.
I definitely recommend it.
Marvin Barrett (verified owner) –
Looking for a book to get started in TA as a complete novice to the field? You might give this book a try. It’s a nice introduction by a guy well known in the field of system trading and technical analysis. Kaufman has also written a pretty comprehensive work of almost 1.000 pages on technical analysis, well worth considering if you’re serious about technical analysis.
This book is just what the title says it is, a short introduction to TA. He’ll explain all the concepts to the reader in an understandable way so you can apply most of the concepts.
He’ll show you how to apply this stuff on futures and stock charts, probably the reading why you will be buying this book.
In my opinion he could have spent more material on technical indicators and oscillators, instead of all those chart patterns, but that’s personal taste. Another disadvantage is his part on the RSI indicator. I’m not sure how he did it, but he completely messed up the explanation on this indicator. Normally this is a pretty simple technical indicator to understand, but he uses confusing formulas which didn’t help at all understanding this indicator.
Avalynn Mathews (verified owner) –
I’ve read a decent amount of books, and articles describing various technical strategies and how to use them. I am no expert on them and use them as one tool among others as a way to make investment decisions. This book is clearer and easier to understand than most. Technical analysis can seem silly for many people until you truly get it. This book demystifies things a bit. One definite drawback though is the editing is quite poor. There are numerous mistakes referencing wrong prices, and charts which sometimes made me wonder if I was looking at what the author was writing about. If not for that issue I may have given it 5 stars as the book is what is says it is and does it quite well.
Kendall Murphy (verified owner) –
Limited, dated, reference diagrams are poorly placed. Little to no discussion of the various free on line sources for using techniques. Great Excel modeling formulas but why use bother with plentiful great progrms. I don’t know why I gave it two stars. Worthless, really.
Jamir Novak (verified owner) –
Haven’t gotten to it yet but it appears to be an excellent primer. Very satisfied with it.
Kaiya Conley (verified owner) –
Clear and easy to follow explanations from a professional point of view. This is a down-to-earth method used for teaching my masters-degreed daughter how to trade-for-a-living when she couldn’t find a job coming out of school. If you are serious this book is a must.