The Visual Investor: How to Spot Market Trends
$17.60
The Visual Investor: How to Spot Market Trends distills John J. Murphy’s decades of technical market experience into a clear, visually driven framework for identifying trends, leadership, and market direction with minimal complexity. Rather than overwhelming readers with indicators or formulas, Murphy emphasizes price structure, relative performance, and visual confirmation—the elements that experienced technicians rely on when time and clarity matter most.
The book’s central idea is that markets communicate essential information visually if you know what to look for. Through clean charts and comparative analysis, Murphy shows how to identify uptrends, downtrends, and transitions, how to recognize which sectors and asset classes are leading or lagging, and how to align decisions with prevailing market forces. This visual discipline helps traders and investors avoid over-analysis while improving timing and confidence.
A key strength of The Visual Investor is its integration of intermarket and sector relationships in a simplified, accessible way. Murphy demonstrates how to use relative strength, ratio charts, and broad market context to validate signals—without turning analysis into a complex macro exercise. The result is a practical approach that works across equities, sectors, ETFs, and broader asset classes.
This book is especially valuable for readers who want a high-signal, low-noise method to stay aligned with trends. It functions equally well as an introduction to visual technical analysis and as a refinement tool for experienced traders seeking clarity and consistency.
✅ What You’ll Learn:
- How to spot market trends visually using clean, uncluttered charts.
- Identifying leadership and laggards through relative strength analysis.
- Using ratio charts to confirm trend direction and market bias.
- Recognizing trend transitions before they become obvious headlines.
- Applying visual analysis across sectors, ETFs, and asset classes.
- Filtering noise and avoiding over-indicator dependence.
- Building confidence through confirmation rather than prediction.
💡 Key Benefits:
- A simplified, highly practical approach to technical analysis.
- Reduces analysis paralysis by focusing on what matters most.
- Improves timing by aligning decisions with trend and leadership.
- Works well for discretionary traders and longer-term investors alike.
- Complements more detailed technical or system-based methods.
👤 Who This Book Is For:
- Traders who want clarity and speed in market decision-making.
- Beginners seeking an intuitive entry into technical analysis.
- Intermediate traders refining trend-following and sector rotation skills.
- Investors who prefer visual confirmation over complex models.
📚 Table of Contents:
- What Is Visual Investing?
- The Trend Is Your Friend
- Pictures That Tell a Story
- Your Best Friend in a Trend
- Is It Overbought or Oversold?
- How to Have the Best of Both Worlds
- Market Linkage
- Market Breadth
- Relative Strength and Rotation
- Exchange-Traded Funds
- Sectors and Industry Groups
- Mutual Funds
The Visual Investor: How to Spot Market Trends By John J. Murphy
| Author(s) | |
|---|---|
| Product Type | Ebook |
| Format | |
| Skill Level | Beginner to Intermediate |
| Pages | 334 |
| Publication Year | 2009 |
| Delivery | Instant Download |
13 reviews for The Visual Investor: How to Spot Market Trends
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Adalee Valdez (verified owner) –
Great book for the technical minded.
Coraline Casey (verified owner) –
As a relative newcomer to active investing, this is the best book on technical analysis I have read. It’s an easy read, but definitely deep enough to get started. After wasting considerable time selecting amongst other people’s strategies and setups, I realize this book is all I need.
The first half of the book is basic technical analysis. Probably the most essential topic, finding support/resistance and drawing trend lines, is discussed first. Only a handful of indicators are discussed later, but they are discussed at length. The book motivated me to reduce the number of indicators on my charts and better understand the indicators that I do use.
The second half of the book was eye opening to me as I don’t have a financial or economics background. The material on sector rotation and intramarket linkage was a good read. It made me think of the broader market beyond what stock or ETF I’m currently studying.
The charts in this book come from stockcharts.com. However, I can’t think of anything in this book that you can’t do on any other popular charting platform.
Alayna Harding (verified owner) –
Super informative read. Enjoyed every page. A must read for the avid investor who wishes to learn the basics of technical analysis.
Adriana Shields (verified owner) –
If you trade or invest in the financial markets, you need this book.
Devon Dixon (verified owner) –
An excellent introduction to technical analysis, inter market analysis, and charting. A nice writing style along with interesting historical analysis keeps the pages turning.
Harry Hodge (verified owner) –
I have been saving and investing since the early 1980’s. I’ve been reasonably successful and I have been able to fund a comfortable retirement. Historically, I’ve been a buy and hold investor, concentrating primarily on the fundamentals, and on buying solid businesses. With a long time horizon, there was no need to try and “time” the market. Just hold solid businesses through the inevitable downturns…
But what if you could take advantage of those downturns, reduce your exposure during times of extreme volativity, and have fresh capital to invest when the markets settle and prices begin to rise again? You could significantly increase your profits, and cut down on those sleepless nights.
I admit I looked at charts, but really didn’t understand or care about Technical Analysis. This book demystifies the principles so that virtually any investor can understand what’s important to look at, understand what you’re looking at, and what would be an effective course of action, based on what is actually happening right now in the real world. Fundamental analysis is, in effect, trying to figure out what “should” happen in the market. This book shows you how to interpret what IS happening, and what you should do about it. Extremely powerful.
Blakely Cuevas (verified owner) –
Like the section on sector rotation, don’t care much for the indicators though macd,Bollinger bands,rsi. etc,etc.
Brodie Hurst (verified owner) –
So many terms outlined,love this book$$$
Kyler Gillespie (verified owner) –
To find the best stock in a given moment is not an easy task. Surprisingly, the author has illustrated a systematical way to spot the booming sector and the best stock. His approach is simple enough to implement and does not require any of the economic knowledge. Before I read this book, I have just completed another book – Invest with the Fed by Robert Johnson. In Robert’s book, he has explained his findings in great detail on which sector has high potential based on the Fed monetary policy. His quantitative methods and decade long studies were given in the book. But after I read John’s book, I have to say that John’s top-down approach is much practical and systematic. You don’t need to read Robert’s book to find the right sector. John’s method will automatically find it for you at the right time. As John presented, by studying market carpet and comparing the relative strength, you can easily spot the best sector. And then, zoom into the right stock within that sector. Moreover, John’s approach seems to be future-proof even if the economic situation or the Fed’s role is changed.
While reading this book, I have also bought John’s classic – Technical Analysis of the Financial Market. That book covers many more areas, but this little book is more down-to-earth with many modern upgrades such as charting tools and indicators. Both books are well done, and I highly recommend them.
Alianna Jaramillo (verified owner) –
Excellent summary of stock market!
Love it.
Annabelle Ahmed (verified owner) –
This book blends a thoughtful approach to identifying market trends with specific examples about ways to play the trends. I would recommend this book to anyone curious about understanding how markets work.
Riggs Pruitt (verified owner) –
Every investor should study this
Brecken Berry (verified owner) –
I would like this book better if it was a little bit newer. Also, the graphs need to be in color. They were difficult to read many instances. I like the book it did give me a bunch of tips. Was worth the money.