TA of the financial markets
If I'd ready Murphy's book first, I think I'd have been more impressed. As it was, I read it after two other books that I though were far superior - the Schabacker masterpiece (which I've just reviewed elsewhere in this section), and Schwager's "Getting Started in Technical Analysis", which is a much better book than the title would suggest.
Don't get me wrong, Murphy's is not a *bad* book it wouldn't have garnered the amount of praise that it has got by being bad. But... I don't think it's *that* good either.
It's a whirlwind tour through everything TA, with everythiing from triangle patterns to candlesticks to Elliot waves covered at breakneck speed. Which is the main problem, for me - it's OK as a book to dip into (much like that TA from A to Z book that was mentioned), but it's too superficial to really by the "bible" that it's been painted as.
For example, Murphy covers reversal patterns in 30 pages, with "the importance of volume" meriting a whole page of its own in there. In contrast, Schabacker devotes 148 pages to reversals, and the importance of volume is integral to the discussion of all of them.
For me, it's an OK book, but it's not essential by any means - I read it and was very disappointed by it. After all the hype, I was expecting something definitive - if this had been a geographical guidebook, I expected the full ordinance survey map and extensive local knowledge, whereas this is more along the lines of "if it's Tuesday it must be a breakout".
I also thought it was bloody expensive for what you got - it's a big book, but £50 for McTA Lite?
And most damning of all - I wonder how accurate it is? I caught a couple of fairly glaring mistakes in it - for example, the neckline of a H&S formation drawn in the wrong place - if it can't get something that fundamental rifght, how confident can you be of the rest of the material