Value in Time: Better Trading Through Effective Volume

This book was recommended by Alexander Elder and so I bought it. The book is carefully made and relatively easy to read but the practical usefulness is limited for my computer and mathematical skill level. Anyhow it is useful reading but not to the extent as Elder’s books. Not a waste of money to get some intersting views but not very practical for my srtruggling trading efforts.

Pascal has written a very thorough, analytical work explaining new technical analysis methods, indicators, and techniques he has come up with — most of these are for examining large money trading volume versus small money. He has done this away from the normal “Wall Street” world in Belgium, and has come up with indicators never seen before. Pascal’s engineering background has served him well in applying a “scientific” approach to chart following. Most of the best technical indicators for trading are not widely followed, and it would be advisable to read this in-depth book to “stay ahead of the trading curve”.

One of the very few works that introduce new and fresh methods in TA world too often filled with reworkings of past approaches.
Program based trading is becoming more and more important in the overall exchanged figures and EV is a potential killer application to win the competition in this new framework.
Active Boundaries is a new and powerfull system to objectivelly measure the “psycological” state of a single security as well index composite owner and using it in our trading a great advantage .
The backtesting presented works are very usefull to understand the strenght and weakness of the singles as well combined method.

Falls apart with assumptions of float analysis that may or may not be true. The truth is you don’t know who is cashing in the chips at a given time and presumptuously deciding you’re able to with assurance prove a stock is moving into new hands at a level is rediculous. Nice try though!
If you’re going to make a science out of predicting who did what when or of uncovering commercial activity I think you’re going to have to get alot more specific than what’s in this book.

Who would have thought that an interesting breakthrough in technical analysis would come from a trader who lives in a small European country wherein the principal language is French? Stock trader Pascal Willain realized that the traditional concept of accumulation/distribution oscillator was incorrectly based upon a uniform volume distribution over different prices. In “Value in Time: Better Trading though Effective Volume” Pascal, in lay terms, presents the accumulation/distribution oscillator corrected for normally distributed volume over different prices. He calls his method Effective Volume. Effective Volume contributes to the unmasking of the smart money, allowing the average stock trader to see the actions of the major market players. And who wants to trade against the major players? Willain’s evidence is both interesting and compelling: the genius is in the simplicity. I suggest that to become a more profitable trader, you should understand the effect of volume on price action. VIT is an excellent contribution to the trading literature in understanding volume.

I have read perhaps 100 books on trading and many authors point out that the proper interpretation of volume with price action is a major part of improving one’s trading results. For me, integrating volume analysis in my short-term trading or longer term investing has been elusive.

One of the author’s innovative tools —- Effective Volume —- makes the interpretation of volume an easier matter. Effective Volume is a tactical tool that allows us to see what large players are doing so we can be more assured that an expected trade direction (up or down) is real.

It should be noted that the author has developed a unique approach to technical analysis and his various tools are innovative and ground breaking. I have limited my comments to only one of his very original tools (Effective Volume) because the recreation of his other tools are not likely by the typical trader / investor, whereas Effective Volume might very well be.

So, until various platforms offer the author’s tools (which I hope will be soon), we need to fend for ourselves. The detailed descriptions, explanations and examples of the wonderful Effective Volume tool make it feasible for some traders / investors to duplicate this tool themselves.

What I particularly appreciate is the author suggesting specific trading rules to be used with Effective Volume, as well as describing the limitations to blindly following this or any other indicator for that matter. Adding this tool and the author’s suggested rules to whatever arsenal of technical analysis you already use is very likely to improve your trading.

There are many nuggets of wisdom and the author’s personal rules for trading throughout the book, that make this book a rare gem, even if none of the revolutionary tools are used by the reader.

The author uses inexpensive off-the-shelf software to slice each trading day of a stock into one-minute segments. He finds the average one-minute volume for the day and separates the minutes into those with above or below average volume. In each group, he adds up the volume of minutes with rising prices and subtracts the volume of minutes with falling prices. This gives him two cumulative volume lines: one for the minutes with above average and the other for below average volume. He named them Large and Small Effective Volume.

The minutes with above average volume reflect the impact of the big money and often have predictive value. When you find a condition in which the big money starts pushing up a stock, while the small money remains negative or neutral, an upside reversal is in the cards. When the big money starts pushing the stock down while the small money is flat or buying, a downside reversal is more likely.

The author introduces another key concept which he calls Active Boundaries. When the returns from a stock over a period of time reach their upper boundary, the expectations for a further rise diminish and a downside reversal is more likely. When a stock declines and hits its lower Active Boundary, bullish expectations become high and the stock has a greater probability of an upside reversal. Numerous charts show how to catch reversals using these concepts.

In addition to Effective Volume and Active Boundaries the author describes several other concepts. He has a very rare ability to stand apart of the crowd, to question accepted concepts, and to come up with new ideas.

In the interest of full disclosure: I met Pascal a couple of years ago while working on my book Entries & Exits (John Wiley & Sons, 2005), which includes a chapter on his approach.

During the past year I have been receiving Pascal’s analytic emails in which he shares his research into current markets. After you read this book, I suggest you write to Pascal and ask to be added to his mailing list!

I expect the concepts of Effective Volume, Active Boundaries, and others in this book to become accepted by many serious traders. As always, the early adopters will reap the greatest rewards.

Pascal Willain has created the first truly unique way to analyze institutional buying and selling patterns of stocks since perhaps the invention of the stock chart. We are lucky that Pascal is willing to share his techniques. This is a difficult book to read because every page involves something brand new, never seen before. So reserve more than a weekend to read this book. Then go join the community by finding his website where he shares even more every day.

This is the the only book that discover what is going on in the backstage of the market. Through the different indicators described in the book we can clearly see what ‘smart money’ are doing. The book is not easy to read. You will have to read it few times to fully get the described concepts.
Almost all the ideas described by Pascal are possible to implement in your own trade platform. I said almost as a one of the indicator (Supply Analysis Tool) was left in the dark. You get only the idea what it is about but I think that hard thinking person can discover the mystery behind it.
Overall this the best book about how the market works described in a very technical way.

Just like Wycoff, Arms, Sipley, Cottle, Murphy, O’Neil, Pring, Connors, McMillan, Dr. Elder, even Cramer(and a dozen others), you get something worthwhile and significant, plus an upgrade to Wycoff tape reading work. Mr. Pascal Willain spent a major chunk of time and energy on this to get it up and running. His subscription service(awesome support service) keeps you aware of volumes and up to speed, and he allows probing questions to enhance your perceptions for success, even in down(bear and consolidating) markets.

I have seen many times in his service, where Institutions kept price under control while accumulating shares, then allowed an explosion in the stock price. Twice I saw the charts, and heard one of the company mgrs. on CNBC at the same time the price started going ballistic (fast).
Sometimes a stock can move with just confidence statements from a trusted “expert”.

Pascal is an honest, caring person in his e-mails, and sincerely goes the extra mile to help you learn about his tools! I admire him and his “ULTRA EXPERIENCED & BRILLIANT TEAM of friends who
keep the daily e-mails at such a high precision of awareness level. His services are as powerful as the book that builds the foundations of understanding about the applications of his
new and unique tools. (Obviously, several institutions have equivalent tools that they’ve had custom built for $???,???. plus ? dollars, and we will never get to hear about unless we’re best friends to the team of programming experts who are probably sworn to secrecy! GS 1.8 bill Q3? profits. How else, without some form of EV/AB/TEV/++)

This is worth the time and trouble to buy and read 4-6 times till it sinks in, you’ll be a few

I found this book was hard to follow, it’s very analytical, and the examples he uses (at least as far as I got in the book) are hard to follow. I tried going through a couple of chapters and hope the next ones will indeed be more narrative as some other comments said it would be, but they weren’t. I think the book is good for someone that has a very analytical approach to trading, and has time/resources to program this into some software in order to use it. I also thought that the author has no possible way of identifying insiders from small players, since he mentioned that large institutions DO fragment their orders into very small ones, so who’s to say which participants are making these trades??