The Trader’s Book of Volume: The Definitive Guide to Volume Trading

Very good education about volume, indicators and oscillator.

Those who only follow price movements are missing much of the story. Trading volume provides a strong clue as to whether a market price will continue a trend or reverse. It can indicate to us whether big money players are behind those buy or sell orders. They may not relay to us their intentions in words, but their actions in the marketplace can tell us that they think they know something worthy of a big bet. Volume analysis helps us to read the market’s mind much like noticing a person’s body language may allow us to ascertain his thoughts.

Mark Leibovit is the foremost authority on trading volume theory. He has written a marvelous book that virtually covers it all. It’s well worth a thorough study by serious traders looking to gain an advantage over those on the opposite side of a trade. I’m sure it took up much of Mark’s valuable time, but I thank him for passing so much of his knowledge and expertise to the rest of us.

I found the book a terrific study of why volume is an important ingredient in technical analysis. In my more than three decades of trading, I have found that the casual trader looks at price, ignoring half of the information that’s available. It’s like trying to walk on one leg. Price times volume gives you money flow, and that’s a very important measure to see of money is flowing into or out of a stock.

I always enjoy the views of people who have been doing something well for many years. In this business, you continue to learn, no matter how long you have been doing it. Nothing replaces experience, and Mark Leibovit has it when it comes to volume. This is a complete handbook of the different signals you can get by observing and studying volume. In fact, in my own career volume has allowed me to catch most of the major market turns of the past 34 years.

Of course, the danger with writing any book like this is that it attracts the dissenters and people who think they know better. Some believe that everything should be translatable into a mechanical system. Well, ask the “quants” who tried “systems” in 2008 and lost their shirts.

Volume is a tool, not a system. In fact, is there any “system” in the world that works all the time? Perhaps Goldman Sachs has one. But unless you have that, you have to do it the hard way and study, study, study. This book is a great addition to my analysis library.

This book was a disappointing read for me. The author didn’t really offer much new. To his credit the book is an expansive presentation to many volume indicators. However, there were many times where I felt that the author repackaged free sites on the internet. The author’s book title should be taken in an “encyclopedic” sense not in a “mastery” sense. It will show you how to trade different volume indicators based on popular practice. The author starts the book by stating that he has a proprietary volume indicator, the formula of which is not discussed in the book. He then goes over his many newsletter packages that you can subscribe for to get access to signals from this indicator.
The author presents the popular belief that strong volume in the direction of the trend confirms it and that week volume during corrections means the trend will resume. I don’t believe in at least the past 3 years that this statement has held up well. There has been many low volume rallies that lasted for extended periods of time. Additionally the author’s own examples had many flaws. He would show that volume is supposedly decreasing on a correction by connecting two volume spikes and then state that the volume is decreasing. But the volume is increasing if you look at it generally or look at the period’s MA. The two spikes are a phenomenon of their own. The book has many examples were the volume pattern is questionable at best. He also delves into the classic chart patterns like head and shoulders and talks about how volume contracts in the right shoulder but in real life there are so many head and shoulder patterns were volume doesn’t confirm them. I want to state that I have been actively trading for 10 years now. If you are a beginner, this book may be a useful read for you.

This is really something new. I find that it is well written and clearly thought out. Does it work? Well I am working on that now but it does give a litle more insight as to what volume is trying to tell us. It also goes into simple trading systems.

This book offers a most comprehensive one-stop shop focusing on applications of volume toward stocks and stock market trading utilizing technical analysis. From the the basic axiom of ‘Volume precedes Price’ and Granville’s breakthrough technical OBV (On-Balance Volume)indicator…. Leibovit, who has been a respected proponent of volume based technical analysis for over 3 decades has compiled a bible on the important influence of volume on trading markets and trends and the many ways it can be usefully calculated. This book fits every library shelf of market players who use technical analysis.

I have purchased quite a few trading books. All trading books usually teach you something. Although if I could do it again I would only purchase about 20% of them. Unfortunately one has to “speed read” the book for about an hour before one can decide if it is worth spending much time on it, even if in my opinion very few books contain only garbage. Up to now my all time favorite were Magee and Edwards (earlier versions) + the usual “reminiscence of a stock operator” and Schwager’s for fundamental analysis. “The Trader’s book of volume” deserves its place on the “trader’s books” Best of the Best shelf!