A Serious Subject Written With Wit and Humour
The book is on a serious matter which is how to win at trading but its not a dry book at all and at times, I found myself laughing out loud when reading it as Gallacher attacks so called accepted investment wisdom. If you read this book, you will see why most traders lose money and also how intelligent people in most areas of life lose there common sense when it comes to investing and hold ridiculous beliefs.
Accepted Investment Wisdom – The Truth
Novice traders should read this book because it shows up a lot of commonly accepted investment wisdom as complete nonsense. He attacks Fibonacci trading ( quiet rightly in our view) for the ridiculous idea that a 12th century theory on rabbit copulation is seen as a serious investment theory and this also leads him on to attack another couple of theories related to natural order in the markets – Gann and Elliot Wave theory. Both these theories contain Fibonacci and he rightly, exposes these theories as flawed but he does it in such a way, that after reading about them you actually think – how can anyone take them seriously?
Of course he's right but its a sad fact that most new traders believe in the markets move to a universal law.
Gallacher is very hard on chartists who claim they can beat the market and that there is some secret code and after dealing with Fibonacci, Gann and Elliot he turns his attention to numerous other well known figures in investing and to prove his point on charting – he take one from John Murphys classic book “Technical Analysis of Futures Markets” He takes the chart and simply shows how misleading it is, to draw trend lines in the way Murphy has knowing what has happened. Many traders put to much emphasis on the back testing and looking back but Gallacher, takes what is considered a standard reference book on technical analysis and shows up its limitations.
One of my favourite parts of the book is where he attacks the idea of neural networks being a way to trade the markets. In my view, he gave this idea the bashing it thoroughly deserved. Another part of the book I found highly amusing was when Gallacher questions the 2% risk rule at a seminar and shows why people believe it and why, it's actually not a great way to trade and the logic upon which it's based is totally flawed.
Its not all about bashing investment theories though. The author does give some great insight into building any sort of trading system for profit and covers the basics of fundamental investing (of which he is a big fan) and really brings trading back to what I would call back to reality which is - to have good money management, do your research and develop a plan and ignore, all the rubbish written about scientific order in the market and secrets to beat the market.
Should you Buy this Book – A 100% Yes!
I would recommend this book to anyone serious about trading and especially to novice traders, who buy the endless stream of get rich quick Forex robots, expert advisor’s and the guru products which tell them, they have found the secret of success and make you rich easily.
After reading the book, you will not only have gained some great trading advice, you will know how you can win and shake your head in disbelief at why so many traders follow, what is put up as conventional investment wisdom, when its obviously wrong. A trading exchange giving away a Gann Angle tool as a serious investment tool? Its amusing but true. A great book written with wit and humour which tells the truth and a book we whole hardly recommend. I will leave you with two quotes from well known traders from the cover:
"Intelligent, funny, and brutally homes-offers a clear psychological mirror in which to recognize-and hopefully reform-your trading flaws." (Jeff L. MacKenzie)
"A wonderfully witty book. It's one of our all-time favorites” (Alexander Elder)
We hope you enjoy the book as much as we did and it helps you achieve currency trading success.
