Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Technical Analysis: The Complete Resource for Financial Market Technicians, 2nd edition, Charles Kirkpatrick II



Praise for the First Edition

“I’ve been reading technical analysis works for forty years. This is the first book on the subject worthy of being called both comprehensive and disciplined. It will be a great asset to both practitioners and serious students alike.”

-- Phil Roth, CMT, Chief Technical Market Analyst, Miller Tabak + Co.

“The authors deftly straddle the divide between the artistic and the rigorous aspects of technical analysis. The publication of this text is an important financial-market event and the authors are to be congratulated.”

-- John Bollinger, CFa, CMT, President, Bollinger Capital Management

“The authors have done a superb job of making the subject so understandable, setting goals for each chapter, and seeing they are met, with a concise summary at each chapter’s end. After four decades of practicing the subject, I am proud to place my colleagues’ book in a prominent spot in my technical analysis library.”

-- A lan R. Shaw, CMT, former Managing Director, Smith Barney, second President of Market Technicians Association

“As both a technical analysis teacher and practitioner, I have long looked for a book that covers the subject from a practitioner’s perspective and at the same time meets a student’s need to learn a complete body of knowledge. Kirkpatrick’s and Dahlquist’s book is the first I have seen that hits the mark on both fronts.”

-- Bruce M. Kamich, CMT, Adjunct Professor of Finance, Baruch College, and former President, Market Technicians Association

“This book is an excellent contribution to technical analysis literature. The authors are careful not to overstate the powers of technical analysis, and they include an appendix on statistical procedures and end-of-chapter review questions to empower the new technical analysis student. As either a stand-alone text or as a companion to other technical analysis books, this book should appear on every technician’s bookshelf.”

-- Hank Pruden, Professor of Business and Executive Director, Institute for Technical Market Analysis, Ageno School of Business, and Golden Gate University

Technical Analysis is the primary book on the subject suitable for full-length courses taken to achieve the Chartered Market Technician (CMT) designation and series 86 exam exemption.

Already the field’s most comprehensive and reliable guidebook, Technical Analysis, Second Edition, has been fully updated to reflect the latest advances. Selected by the Market Technicians Association as the principal textbook for its prestigious Chartered Market Technician (CMT) program, this book systematically and objectively introduces the entire discipline.

Using hundreds of updated illustrations, the authors show how to analyze both markets and individual issues and present complete investment systems and portfolio plans. Readers learn how to use tested sentiment, momentum indicators, seasonal effects, flow of funds, and many other key techniques. Drawing on current research, the authors reveal which chart patterns and indicators remain the most reliable, demonstrate how to test systems, and show how to use technical analysis to mitigate risk.

This edition covers recent advances in pattern recognition, market analysis, systems management, and other areas. It introduces new confidence tests; innovations in exit stops, portfolio selection, and testing; and the implications of behavioral bias for technical analysis. The authors also reassess classic methods such as intermarket relationships and measurements of market strength, identifying pitfalls that have emerged in recent years.

The second edition of Charles Kirkpatrick's (2011) Technical Analysis: The Complete Resource For Financial Market Technicians is as good as (or even better) than the Fidelity Technical Analyst stated. I went to another Fidelity training session and this book was presented as the best single technical analysis book currently available. The writing style was clear and was accessible to the "intelligent layman." If you happen to have a long-term background in trading as well as a strong fundamental understanding of statistics (especially regression analysis), you will appreciate the depth of coverage and the references to other sources. This is a fine text for a technical analysis course and is also an excellent source of information about many aspects of technical analysis. The text is 671 pages long. The index is 34 pages long. The reference section is 25 pages long. There is a section on basic statistics in an appendix as well as a glossary of technical terms. On a scale of ten I give this book a "ten" and I have never previously given a book such a high rating.

I begin my investment by using the value investing approach. "Securities Analysis" and "The Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham are excellent books on value investing. They taught me how to pick stock based on fundamental analysis and give me great advice on investment - be patient, look for great business with great management, insist on margin of safety, future value is a function of present price, sell to optimists and buy from pessimists. I did make good profits by following Benjamin's advice. However, very often I buy too early when the stock price is falling and I sell too early when the stock price is rising. I can do much better if I had read this book. This book tells me how to measure market strength, why trend analysis is important, when to buy and when to sell by using various indicators, oscillators and patterns, how to confirm signal with volume. Now I can enter and exit a position with more confidence and most importantly, I make more money than before and loss less. I even allocate a portion of money specifically for short-term trading. I highly recommend this book to traders and value investors. Besides, "How to make money in stocks" by William J. O'Neil is a good companion to this book. William's book introduces his CAN SLIM method to pick stock and shows a lot more real life examples of patterns.
After the economic crisis in 2008, I think trend analysis becomes more important in investment as the market fluctuation is more frequent and violent and causes the buy-and-hold strategy less effective. I still use the value investing approach to pick stocks, but I need to act like a trader at the entry point and exit point to improve my profit margin.

For starters, I'd be a little wary of earlier reviews - since the book is hot off the presses as this review is written, such earlier reviewers are probably writing about an earlier first edition of Technical Analysis written in 2004.

Onward and upward --

If you're a student itching to know more about the nuts-and-bolts of technical analysis, and you want a comprehensive treatment of the subject all in one book, Technical Analysis by Kirkpatrick and Dahlquist is for you.

If you want a reference text to review the state-of-the-art in say, short term trading patterns, sentiment indicators, or market periodicity, Technical Analysis is for you. You'll get what you're looking for and a whole lot more.

For a relative newcomer like myself, this is the best compendium on the subject of technical analysis that I've seen (and I've sure been looking around these last few years). Though rare for me on a textbook, I read it cover to cover. It's obvious that the book's foundation is academically sound as well as practically informed.

And it's not all at an academic distance either. There are some excellent real-world examples. For example, there's a discussion on using short term trading patterns for Apple (AAPL) - when to enter the trade, when to set the stops, and so forth. There's another discussion of exactly how to quantify market cycles or waves. A third example is his treatment of "forward lines" (future lines of demarcation, or FLD) to determine support levels for trending stocks. These examples only scratch the surface.

The reader can even strike gold in the book's appendix. There's an appendix by a Dr. Bauer that's one of most concise and clear treatment I've ever seen on statistics. For years, I used the various distributions and tests (chi squared, t-test, f-test, etc.) "plug-and-chug" to solve engineering problems. Dr. Bauer's article in the appendix added tons of clarity in a few short pages.

Kirkpatrick's and Dahlquist's book is something to behold. Utmost clarity is the rule. Plentiful examples drive home the points being so well made, that anyone having the aptitude to ultimately use technical analysis to advantage could easily make short easy work of the book's topics. What a wealth of knowledge in one small package.

Product Details :
Hardcover: 704 pages
Publisher: FT Press; 2 edition (November 25, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0137059442
ISBN-13: 978-0137059447
Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 1.2 x 9.4 inches

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