Product Description Take advantage of price swings in strongly trending securities and pump up your portfolio!
Want to know the strategies of successful swing trading? This friendly guide covers the ins and outs of this risky but profitable investing approach, explaining all the basics in plain English. You'll see how to use the two investment approaches - technical and fundamental analysis - to indentify promising securities in strongly trending markets. In addition, this guide covers how to calculate investment returns and, most important, how to manage your portfolio's risk.
Learn from a highly experienced trader, analyst, and portfolio manager - the author shares his insider knowledge
Understand often overlooked topics such as money management, journal keeping, and strategy planning - key areas that will largely determine your success
Focus on the fundamentals - often overlooked by swing traders, fundamental analysis can increase your chance of success
Determine your entry and exit points with technical analysis - read charts, apply indicators, and compare markets
Evaluate companies with fundamental analysis - grasp the basics of financial statements and the criteria to screen for undervalued or overvalued stocks
Develop and implement your trading plan - outline what you trade and how often, decide your risk tolerance, and calculate your performance
Open the book and find:
The differences among swing trading, day trading, and buy-and-hold investing
The pros and cons of technical and fundamental analysis
A step-by-step anatomy of a trade
A wealth of charts and screenshots
Real-world examples of swing trading successes
The 10 deadly sins of swing trading - avoid at all costs!
Sample trading plans
Useful resources for navigating data
Customer Reviews:
Really Helpful January 6, 2009 I am not the most knowledgeable about trading but as a physician who prefers to manage his own money rather than have an advisor lose it for me, I picked up several trading books: among them, Swing Trading for Dummies. It was extremely helpful, the most concise, and the easiest to understand. Whatever trading jargon I didn't understand was followed up with well thought out explanations.
I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to understand swing trading better. Whether you are already knowledgeable in the field or just picking it up for the first time, this book will teach you a lot.
Swing Trading Globally and Multi-asset Classes December 9, 2008 3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I always thought "swing trading" referred to trading with a time horizon of a few days. This author, however, defines it as trading with a time horizon of a few days to a few weeks. So this book is geared to trades that could last a month or long--something I consider outside the realm of short term trading.
In any case, the book is split into five parts: Part 1 discusses the fundamental info (how markets work, what things to look for in a broker and deciding whether to trade using fundamental analysis or technical analysis). What I did appreciate in Part 1 is the author's focus on multi-asset classes and global stocks. Most short term trading books I've read seem to believe that only one asset class exists in the world: U.S. stocks. This one takes a different approach. The author stresses the importance of looking beyond the traditional pale of U.S. stocks and examines international stocks, commodities (via ETFs) and currencies. By expanding your investment universe, you're more likely to find securities with the right characteristics.
Part 2 has three chapters on technical analysis covering (1) charting, (2) indicators and (3) trading ranges or trends. Almost any technician knows how to interpret MACD or Stochastics, but how to use them properly is key. For example, the author stresses the importance of "only going on green". That is, we often find charts or indicators with buy signals but you can only buy the day a signal is actually given.
Part 3 is all about fundamental analysis. I don't use fundamentals that much in my trading so I read this part more with an eye to understand certain concepts. The discussion on debt and leverage was helpful given the current financial mess we're seeing. The author appears to have been right on his call that Marvel was highly leveraged and not worth swing trading on the long side.
Part 4 is perhaps the most important part of the book (and why was it put last?). It discusses risk control, developing a trading plan, using intraday charts and walking through an actual swing trade. By far, the most useful chapter was the managing risk chapter (10) because it covered position sizing, placement of stop loss orders and how to limit losses at the individual stock level and portfolio level. The last two concepts seem to be similar to Alexander Elder's "shark bite" and "piranha bite" concepts.
Part 5 is the "Parts of Tens" which is made up of two "top ten" chapters: Ten simple rules for swing trading and ten deadly sins of swing trading. If you've read Parts 1 through 4, you'll already have covered both top ten lists. The sins include things like starting with too little capital, gambling on earnings dates, trading penny stocks and violating your trading plan.
Pleasantly Surprised December 7, 2008 4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I was pleasantly surprised when I picked up this book at a bookstore. I normally have low expectations for Dummies titles. Let's be honest: you don't usually find gems among "Dummies" or "Idiot" books.
But I can state that Swing Trading for Dummies is my favorite book on short term trading. The book is the only one I've found which provides proper coverage on all aspects of trading--from designing a trading plan (part IV) to managing risk properly (chapter 10) to performing intermarket analysis (chapter 6). While most swing traders shy away from fundamental analysis, the book covered the essential items traders should understand in a company's financial statements and how to arrive at a ball park estimate for a company's shares in a few minutes.
The book has several charts to illustrate trading examples and stresses the importance of simplicity in designing a strong trading system. There was also good humor throughout which made the book an easy read.
