High Probability Short Term Trading Strategies
Although I have hundreds of "trading" books that I have picked up over the years this is one of maybe half a dozen that I read again and again.
Many people baulk at the price (I think I paid about 140 bucks when I bought it) but in this case I believe you get what you pay for.
The main thing that attracted me to the book at the time was the fact that Linda Bradford Raschke had credibility. There is no doubting her success as a trader and as manager of her own hedge fund. Many people are cynical about her simply because of her £350 a month chat room. If you can overcome this kind of cynicism then the book is worthwhile reading.
Given the price, many people are critical about the simplicity of many aspects of the book. However, this is one of the reasons why I keep going back to it. Sometimes, it is all to easy to get carried away with trading ideas, developing ever more complex theories in an attempt to explain the behavior of markets and ever more complex methods in an attempt to trade them.
When I feel that I am getting too "clever" (happens to everyone I think... mainly as a result of the boredom that trading can induce every now and then) I pull Street Smarts out and re-read it.
The main focus of the the book is pattern based trading. To quote the authors, the patterns described are organised around three distinct swing trading concepts by which support and resistance are formed, namely, tests, retracements and climax reversals.
"Test" setups described include: Turtle Soup, Turtle Soup + 1, 80-20's, Momentum Pinball and 2 period ROC.
Retracement patterns include: the Anti and two types of ADX trade (Holy Grail and ADX Gapper).
Climax patterns include: Whiplash, 3 day unfilled gap reversals, spike and ledge and Wolfe Waves.
The book also features appendices documenting backtest results on some of the set-ups described in the book (independently conducted by Moore Research) as well as a section on trade management.
When I bought it I also found the section on the use of TICK and TRIN in S&P futures trading particularly useful simply because there was no detailed information elsewhere about the use of these two indicators. These days, with the amount of information available this section may not be quite as "unique".
Overall, the book is useful on two fronts. Firstly many of the patterns still work and mastered properly can be used profitably. Secondly, the book highlights the kind of elements you should be looking at in developing a systematic, price based, approach to trading.
