Future-investment-opportunities

This book has many fine features but has two serious drawbacks as well.

On the positive side, I have never read a more complete polemic in favor of the hedge fund industry. He shreds EMF with loads of good evidence and humorous anecdotes. However, there seems to be a constant drive to reinforce this point. Unfortunately, it takes away from a more thorough analysis of the types of hedge fund investing.

Another problem with the book is that it has trouble discovering its audience. At times, we get detailed descriptions of what alpha and beta represent (Finance 101) and at other times, abstruse PM concepts are brushed over as common knowledge.

I would definitely recommend this book but I recommend that the reader is accompanied by a Dictionary of Finance and Investing.

The iceberg on the cover represents total risk-partly visible and partly not. Ineichen's point is that hedge fund or absolute return managers tackle total risk while their traditional mutual fund counterparts worry about only one part of it, namely the risk of straying from their benchmark. His extensive discussion contains worthy lessons for all investors who want to understand risk. While not every chapter may be useful for every reader, this book is an excellent place to learn about alternative investment strategies.

This is an excellent introduction for potential investors to assess risk and reward.

For more on new hedge fund products, hedge fund leverage, and off-balance sheet risk, I also highly recommend Tavakoli's "Credit Derivatives" 2nd Edition.

The report has a clean, simple and well-organized flow for someone trying to break into the hedge fund industry and was very useful, contains really good information on how to prepare for hedge fund interviews and what SEC, Bloomberg and online resources to access when researching particular hedge funds.

The report is very good at identifying free online resources to get at hedge fund holdings and PM information and strong sample resumes for various types of analyst and trader positions. Also good at preparing me for interview-type questions based on fund investment strategy.

As a recent graduate of Harvard I used "Hedge Me" to prepre for a round of 3 interviews in NY. I eventually received 2 job offers and now work at a major fund located in mid-town.

This book allowed me to speak intelligently about the sector. While I had majored in economics, I had little practical understanding of the nuts and bolts functioning of a hedge fund.

From salaries, to trading techniques, to what a firm looks for in making hiring decesions, this easy-to read pamphlet made my interviewing expereince much easier. There's not another book that I know of that explains its subject in a more precise and clear fashion.

Pattern cycles show swing traders where to find consistent profits

Future trading is where you hold a position for 1-3 days and capitalize on cyclical swings in buying and selling behavior.

Master Morning gaps

Use multi-time frame Fibonacci retracements to locate turning points

Watch the market clock

New high generate greed carrying prices higher

Use math-based indicators to verify the price pattern

Buy at support and sell at resistence

Strong price movement pairs disciplined momentum strategy with preferred swing trading.

The swing trader checks the 60-minute chart for support-resistance but uses the 1-minute chart to time execution of the short-term flow of the market

Market insiders use the volatility of first-hour executions to fade clean trends and empty pockets

Time should activate exits on nonperforming trades

Decide how many bars must pass before a trade will be abandoned, regardless of gain or loss

Volume leader predicts price change. Volume reflects latent energy that releases itself through trend

Expect to stand aside, wait, and watch when the markets offer nothing to do

Constricting price bars, lowering volatility and range placement signal the end of one swing and the beginning of a new impulse
Oscillators measure this important guage through overbought-oversold polarity

Price acts differently at tops and bottoms

Breakouts and breakdowns attract many participants but require precise timeing to turn a profit

The highest profitability will come when entering a position at the end of a low-volatility period (contracting bar) and exiting on a volatility peak (expanding bar) just as the trend pulls back
Technical Analysis teaches traders to execute positions based on numbers, time and volume

As volume cranks up at 3:00pm don't expect anyone to change the channel

Big volume kills moves

The Commodity Channel Index (CCI) is a timing tool that works best with seasonal or cyclical contracts

RSI indicator is supposed to track price momentum

Sixty percent or more of total daily participation occurs during the first and last hours

Spend more time controlling losses than seeking gains

Every good analysis should validate current conditions through both forward (strength) oscillators and backward (momentum) indicators

Popular oscillating tools, such as RSI and Stochastics, identify overbought-oversold markets. Moving averages and MACD look back and measure momentum change. Or swing traders can just draw simple trendlines and channels in all time frames and use those instead as primary momentum tools

The lack of a simple linear relationship between volume and price change frustrates attempts to make accurate predictions

Don't fall into the complexity trap

Wow, this is a very good book. I don't understand why anyone would attack the language or the approach. If you want to read a comic book, head over to the grocery store. They have quite a lot of them.

The language and terminology used by the author adds greatly to the comprehension of the material. And there is an EXCELLENT glossary in the back of the book. I've also noticed that his terms are not grabbed out of "thin air". Most of these concepts originated in excellent studies on the futures markets done over the past 20 years. For example, "negative vs positive feedback" comes from research done by Raschke and others in the early 1990s. Farley just does a much better job explaining the complex ideas to the average trader, and telling them how to take swing trading positions based on their power.

This book is very original and not part of the cookie cutter garbage that passed for a "trading book" before the bear market started. It's SO appropriate that MST showed up just as tougher days hit the stock market. Farley's book offers a very effective way to deal with these choppy markets. And he does a fabulous job getting the message across. Reading the book does not take an advanced college degree. But it does require a commitment by the reader and a willingness to learn something new.

Highly recommended!

I found the text to be powerful, informative, and very helpful. Its not for everyone. It does requires the reader's attention but overall its an outstanding work. 5 Stars. This has become one of my favorite TA books without question. At the time I read it, it seemed to incorporate everything together. I have kept it close by my computer and have referred to it many times.

Farley is not for beginners by any means. And he has to be read carefully to be understood. But this is a a very, very good book - probably one of the best. There are many pages of in-depth strategies. Yes, the book should be written more clearly but reading it is absolutely worth your time.

I heard Farley in an interview state he purposely challenged traders by starting the book with topics that confused and frustrated them the most. He also said he left the noise level "high" in the charts because that was the real world that traders had to trade.

As for the one star ratings - I cannot understand how much they missed the brilliant content. Definitely not for everyone.