Opening-price

I like the ideas but hard to implement and certainly notthing extraordinary. This book is over rated ...

The book is basically a series of studies on reoccuring patterns in the stock and commodities markets. Crabel found that volatility is mean-reverting in the speculative markets. Just as night follows day, volatile markets follow quiet markets. There are more than a dozen robust volatility patterns evaluated and explained. The only real weakness I can see is that Crabel used point values instead of percentage values. This was a common mistake of professionals back in the early 1990's. You will need to convert these. For example, if the S&P 500 is currently meeting the criteria for one of the low-volatility "set ups" then place a buy stop 2.5 points above the open and a sell stop 2.5 points below the open. If filled set your mechanical stop-loss 1.5 points outside the current days existing range.

Well, 2.5 points was a reasonable move back in 1991 (when the S&P was trading around 400). But 2.5 points is just noise today. To adjust simply divide 2.5 points by what-ever the S&P was trading at back in 1991 to get a percentage. Then multiply this percentage by today's S&P level (around 1000). This will result is something like 6.2 points. Do the same thing for your stop-loss as well.

Crabel's logic was/is sound but the research in the book should have been based on percentage moves. These are what have held reasonably stable over time.

Also, to be successful you will need to be able to track at least 75-100 stocks. Otherwise you will not get enough set-ups to maintain proper diversification. Volatile, liquid stocks obviously work best. A program like Neovest or Radarscreen (Tradestation) will be very helpful.

What the readers here say is true. I bought a used copy for about 1100 a few years back and was well worth it. An absolute tour-de-force of ideas and studies that are in use by Toby Crabel himself (he runs a hedge fund). The primary method he uses (ORB) is actually used by the majority of Hedge Funds today. I do reccomend that the reader check other auction sites for better deals.

The opening price principle could be written on one page. I have books on Fibs, I didn't need another. Give me a break!!!!!!!!

Perhaps one of the most poorly written books I own. The author should either get some new friends to inform him of his lack of writing talent, or he should be imprisoned for such an apathetic attempt at writing. On top of that, his "Opening Price Prinicipal" is a completely stolen method. Toby Crabel was one of the original co-creators of this technique. The information on this technique is better explained in "The Ultimate Trading Guide", "Long Term Secrets to Short Term Trading", and "Professional Stock Trading". Of course, if one can track down Crabel's book, then you have the original work which is very thorough. At then end of the book, he does have a rather paltry chapter on Fib ratios that can be found and better utilized in numerous other books. In summary, this book is poorly written, weakly paraphrased, and completey lacking of any original content.

This book seems to be centred around a single idea - "the opening price". It shows that in about 75% or the time the 'high' or ' low' for the day will be somewhere around the opening price. There are many charts (stocks only) illustrating the principle. There is also an introduction to Fibonacci theory. Others who have bought the author's other books, in my opinion, do not really need this one.