81 of 87 people found the following review helpful:
A Teaser Not a Pleaser, August 26, 2000
Reviewer: A reader
This book promises to take you into the Promised Land of traderdom but leaves you in the desert. It's up to you to find the water. The author may give you some pointers as to where you might find it but you may easily die of thirst trying to get there.
At best, this an introduction to the author's trading methodology. It broadly covers her different techniques: Elliot Wave used in conjunction with oscillators, Fibonacci price projections and retracements, Gann time and price analysis, reverse engineering of indicators to project price. Sounds good doesn't it? Well don't hold your breath. The author keeps the secret of the Holy Grail to herself. If you want the answers, you will have to take her seminars or subscribe to her service.
Just to give you a sense of what I mean: One chapter is entitled "Price Projections by Reverse-Engineering Indicators". You get four pages of excruciating detail on how to export into excel, but when it comes to how she actually reverse engineers the indicator she writes, "Just know that some reverse-engineering projections require you to know the indicator formula and to have Excel generate the results, rather than just plugging in the indicator values from Trade station." How does she do it? She hired professional programmers to do it for her. Yes, that's all very well but then what do we need the book for and why are we paying her? Then there is the infamous Composite Index indicator so essential to her system. It has been repeatedly commented on in the other reviews here. She repeatedly promises to discuss the formula in various parts of the book and a whole chapter is devoted to it. The author writes, "By now you are probably trying to find the formula for the Composite Index". No such luck. Instead, you get, "Forgive my inconveniencing you, but look toward the Aerodynamic Investments Web site... for the outcome of this sticky dilemma." What a tease!
And those aren't the only secret keys she keeps. In the chapter on Gann you find that all the wisdom of Gann is useless for trading indexes unless you possess certain secret conversion factors unknown by the general public, but which were revealed in some letters of Gann possessed by a friend of the Author. These documents were mysteriously destroyed upon his death. "All my attempts to acquire them or to have them preserved failed.," she writes. At any rate she's not revealing the conversion factors.
Later she writes, "While the revelation that a conversion factor is used will understandably discourage some of you from going further and tempt you to skip the remaining chapter..." and then tries to lure you in with "So hang in there as this discussion has only scratched the surface. Besides, aren't you curious about the fourth dimension within the pyramid that I passed over so quickly in the beginning of this chapter? Good. Thought that might work. Onward." But all the reader gets on the pyramid is three scanty sentences in a paragraph in which the author states that there are three dimensions in a Pyramid. But hold your horses, there is also a fourth dimension: time. "It is Gann's Master Calculator or Square of 52," the author states. This fourth dimension can be derived from the Pyramid, but here the author leaves you ruminating once again this time about how to divine the mystical qualities of the Pyramid. You will never know.
Ah, but isn't that why we bought the book in the first place, to find out what we will never know? Don't think to transgress the portals of the Temple of Giseh.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Some Good Ideas But Mostly Gobbleygook, March 31, 2005
Reviewer: Tom The Trader (New York) - See all my reviews
TAFTP has its moments, but I dont think this book was the godsend others make it out to be.
An example of a good point is the author's notion of optimizing the cycle length to find the best %D to use for a particular security. That's a good read. The next chapter suggests drawing oodles of trendlines on a chart and looking for intersections. If you draw enough lines on a chart you are bound to find one that supports what you believe. I just ddnt buy her premise at all.
Some concepts that can be described quickly are laboriously drawn out. 5 pages dedicated to the dangers of looking at small charts where data can be compressed is 5 pages too much.
Other commentators have talked about "sophistication" and "complexity" as virtues of the book. I disagree. Complex doesnt mean better. Simplicity breeds success remember. This book gets wordy and its ideas are sometimes hard to understand. That doesnt make it a better book nor does it make its ideas more credible.
The CMT has put this on their required reading list but I wouldnt give that too much weight. They have been criticized that their syllabus isnt quantitative enough so they needed to incorporate something like this. Besides, half the book isnt tested for CMT.
Lastly, like far too many technical analysis books, there is a lot of, "this makes total sense looking backwards," about this book. Had you bought in 1994 at this signal (which became obvious in 1998) you would have made a lot of money!
Rather than shlep through TAFTP, there are better books out there. Trading Sytems and Methods by Kaufman comes to mind.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
inseparable companion, November 30, 2004
Reviewer: Hello "Hello" (USA) - See all my reviews
In this book, Connie presents and indicator which she claims is an "inseparable companion" to the RSI.
In my mind, this book itself is an inseparable companion to John Hayden's RSI book. Following on John Hayden's footsteps, who renamed Cardwell's positive and negative reversals, as Hayden's MDRPs (momentum discrepancy reversal points), Connie has made an identical copy of Cardwell's CFG indicator, renamed it as the Composite Index, and claimed it as her own "after much expense and hard work"
After all the nagging and bragging in the book about not giving out her secret indicator formula, it turns out that the formula is not even hers.
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