Market Timing for Dummies is packed with expert advice on how to increase your profits and limit your risk. It helps you grasp the psychology behind market timing as you learn the basics of the method, analyze our finances, select the right software and equipment, and define your market trading style. You’ll get the hang of using technical analysis to identify trends and reversals, catch key turning points, and manage risk as you track general market trends, develop a feel for when a particular trend is vulnerable to change, and seize the moment!
Introduction:
Market timing is the most essential aspect of all trading and investing endeavors. If you think about it, timing is the key to success in many things you do. Try to hit a tennis ball without timing your stroke. Or try to run a yellow light before that camera goes off behind you without timing. So why is it that if you’re talking about getting married or buying a house, people say that “timing is everything,” but when you talk about market timing, people roll their eyes and tell you that it’s impossible? In fact, market timing isn’t just possible; it’s central to successful trading because whenever you mistime an entry or an exit to any trading or investing position, you run the risk of reducing your profits or losing money outright.
Indeed, because market timing is so misunderstood and maligned, it’s still an area of trading that few people practice — openly, anyway. Its shady reputation gives the successful timer an advantage over the financial planner, the retail broker, their unsuspecting clients, and their buy-and-hold strategy. As others hold on to falling stocks through bear markets and see their assets dwindle, you’ll be able to make money or preserve more of your bull market gains by applying the market timing techniques in this book. Am I guaranteeing you gains? Of course not; you don’t get guarantees on anything in life. You wouldn’t stay on a sinking ship in the middle of a hurricane, yet millions of investors decide to ride out massive bear markets and stock market corrections, pinning their hopes and their retirements on that old adage “the long-term trend is up.”
Being different could make you money if you consider market timing a viable alternative to the old Wall Street “buy and hold” swindle. If you have any doubts about considering market timing, remember that Wall Street has also given us things like portfolio insurance, the savings and loan crisis, the Internet bubble, and most recently the subprime mortgage crisis. Each of these little gifts from the guys who tell you that holding stocks for the long term is the only way to fly has also led to major bear markets where investors have lost billions by holding on to their investments too long.
Sure, the market came back. But in many if not all cases, the best that most buy-and-hold investors got was all their money back. Those who sold early in the start of the down trend had more money to invest when the market turned up. Better, those who sold the market short actually made money when the market fell. And because of new products, such as exchange-traded mutual funds (ETFs), short selling is as easy as buying shares of stock through your online broker with one click of the mouse.
This book is about staying with the overall market trend. It’s about knowing when to get in and out of your trading or investment positions with enough time to preserve more of your hard-earned money. Accomplish that, and when things turn around, you can start in a better place than someone who rode the bear market all the way down to the bottom and is only likely to get her money back — if she’s lucky enough and has enough time.
Contents:
- Becoming a Market Timer
- Peering Inside the Mind of a Market Timer
- Preparing Yourself and Your Finances for Timing
- Charting Your Course: The Market Timer’s Edge
- Timing with the Reports That Move the Markets
- The Seasons and Cycles That Infl uence the Markets
- Digging In to Trends, Momentum, and Results
- Timing with Feeling: Making Market Sentiment Work for You
- Timing in the Real World: Examining a Sample Trade
- Timing the Stock Market
- Timing the Bond Market
- Timing Foreign Markets
- Timing the Metals, Heavy or Not
- Timing Commodities: Making Money Down on the Farm
- Timing Currencies and Related Markets
- The Timer’s Dream: Sector Investing
- Timing Financial Service Stocks
- Timing the Technologies
- Timing the Energy Sector
- Timing the Health Care Sector
- Ten Game Savers to Know and Trust
- Ten-Plus Awesome Resources
Market Timing for Dummies By Joe Duarte pdf
Liam Khan (verified owner) –
Market timing eluded me for years, then the principles and strategies laid out in this book have made timing a useful tool for me.
I found the section on methods and strategies especially enlightening and this may well have been the missing piece in my own education. The application section is a definite help in understanding timing.
The section on sectors has really made me money over the last year in the area of financial services and even more so in energy. I doubt that my trades would have been nearly as productive without this information.
Finally, the Ten Game Saves is a top ten list that every investor should memorize and use whenever trading.
All in all, I would give this a five star rating based on clarity of the concepts, usefulness of the information and the helpful illustration of the techniques and strategic approach.
Eleanor Smith (verified owner) –
I have to say, I wasnt expecting much from a “For Dummies” book but fact of the matter is that they are not all bad. Market Timing for dummies for example is a well written book with some great ideas and explanations on how to time different markets, i.e, indexes, different sectors, bonds. The author is also very knowledgeable on market dynamics techincals and fundamentals alike and explains everything in layman terms making the book really accessible to anyone.
Ella Bowers (verified owner) –
Great read
Manuel Anderson (verified owner) –
Awesome
Phillip Nolan (verified owner) –
it covers most of the basic basics of market timing. i feel it has too little emphasis on market psychology, and does not really reveal any striking insights or cool practical examples. a lot of the book is just about generalities.
Makenzie Simmons (verified owner) –
The book attempts to give the investor an edge in “playing the market.” This is accomplished by reviewing the tools and techniques that people in the industry use. Here are the good and bad on this book.
.
.
ADVANTAGES
.
1. The author reviews the things that move the market: Federal Reserve action, economic reports, seasons, cycles, trends, and fads.
.
2. The book simplifies the technicalities of technical analysis: candlestick and bar charts, moving averages, trend and momentum oscillators, and Bollinger Bands.
.
3. His treatment on timing the stock market is adequate. Unfortunately, discussion on the bond market, foreign securities, metals, commodities, and currency trading are sketchy and incomplete.
.
.
DISADVANTAGES
.
1. If you followed every advice and use every tool in this book, you will not become a millionaire. The average investor is playing against a “stacked deck.” Investment bankers, hedge managers, mutual funds, and investment companies hire the best people to gain every advantage possible: statisticians, mathematicians, behavioral scientists, and physicists. Some firms rent computer space in the New York Stock Exchange. They install their computers a few feet away from the NYSE mainframes and connect them with optical fiber. The attempt is to gain the extra nano-second advantage when economic reports and news are dispersed. The information is quickly analyzed, and billions of dollars of securities are purchased or sold before the general public can react.
.
The average investor does not have these resources. He studies the information, watches the market trends for a few days, and commits his money. By that time, the market has either shot up or “tanked.” The reality is simple. The average investor is always too early or too late in the game. He is always left “holding the bag” or “picking up the crumbs.”
.
2. Technical analysis is useful in explaining historical data. As a predictive tool, it is useless. The fallacy of this concept is the mistaken assumption that investment behavior is rational. In other words, people invest in a logical way because they always behave in a predictable fashion. If this were true, than how the market reacted in the past will duplicate itself in the future if similar events occur again. Technical analysis quantify these patterns into charts and numbers.
.
These mathematical tools serve a predictive function. If future market actions match past charts and numbers, the investor can see the predicted outcome – history repeating itself. As a result, he can financially benefit by taking the corrective action beforehand – “buy” or “dump his investment holdings.”
.
The fallacy to technical analysis is the basic mistaken assumption that people are rational and invest in a logical way. The reverse is the reality. Investors are illogical and chaotic – the market will do what it damned well pleases. No one can accurately predict the future, especially market experts. Of the millions of investment advisors, only Peter Lynch and his Fidelity Magellan Fund has consistently beaten the market. Since his retirement, no one has come close.
.
The author is in this group. Although he has impressive credentials and accolades, the man is not a “godzillionaire.” He is still working and earns his living by writing books on investing. If he has not made his millions using his own advice and knowledge, I doubt that the reader will.
Mabel Stanley (verified owner) –
Great introduction to market timing techniques, though never originally trained in using moving averages I feel very comfortable using these strategies. I’m currently using only a 20 day average and so far it’s working nicely.will use some of these tactics to trade the international markets as well.
Reginald Shelton (verified owner) –
Perhaps the single hardest thing to do in the market is to timing your entry and exit with investments/trades to maximise profits. Joe Duarte maintains the marvellous tradition of the “For Dummies” series of being eminently readable as well as extremely informative.
As a rather small time trader who is continually struggling with timing the market Joe Duarte sets out the issues and suggests some useful strategies in managing the process.
A great addition to any trading/investing library.