Review On Forex

Review by Ikayakbr:

Without a doubt this book is far superior to anything else available on the subject of forex trading. “Forex Patterns and Probabilities” will become a trading classic not only for the tremendous amount of useful information it provides, but for the easy and fun way that the information is presented. The author, Ed Ponsi, presents very detailed strategies and then demonstrates them to the reader in a very concise manner. This is exactly what I needed and what most traders need – clear, unambiguous directions that explain in perfect detail exactly what the trader must do to make money trading.

The author caught my attention when he appeared on CNBC, and it became immediately clear that he was not the average guest. He has a relaxed manner and a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of trading, yet he explains everything in a very down-to-earth manner. He has a real ability to explain trading in a way that is easy to comprehend for the average person. The book reflects that.

The one thing that is abundantly clear is that the book is written by an actual trader – you can tell by the tremendous detail and the clear thought process that the author has actually used these strategies, and he even shows examples where the trades didn’t work out. He shows trading as it really is, not the idealized version presented in most books.

When I read this book I felt as if the author were speaking directly to me in that pleasant, easy-going manner. The book is free of technical jargon and is even amusing at times. I especially enjoyed the stories about the author’s early days as a trader on Wall Street, and the way he relates trading to everyday life.

This book contains some real eye-openers, including a chapter that will forever change the way I think about trading. The author applies game theory to show why most short term traders lose money, and what you can do about it. This alone was worth the price of the book. Another section exposes the conflict of interest inherent in the introducing broker relationship. You certainly won’t see that in any of the books written by market maker employees. Another great section showed how to set goals. There was so much good, useful information in this book, and it was so easy to read and entertaining, that I couldn’t put it down. I recommend it highly to anyone who is serious about trading for a living.

Review by Zaphod:

This book presents a rare combination – excellent content presented in language that is easy to understand. This is exactly what I needed, a clear series of trading tactics and strategies with no mysterious technical jargon to confuse the reader. The author wastes little time and “gets to the good stuff”, a welcome relief from all of the filler-laden material on currency trading that permeates the industry.

I find it refreshing that Ed Ponsi does not try to hype anything in his book, he just gives good solid trading techniques and advice. This is in stark contrast to so-called ‘authors’ who are really just shills for currency market makers or signal providers, trying to hype their products. Why is there so much hype in the trading world?

The author is adamant that traders need to use different tactics for different situations. I have been using the FXED Trend strategy and Ed’s multiple time frame strategy and they’ve been great, especially on the trending currency pairs. When the market ceases to trend, I switch tactics as recommended by the author, and use the Elevator Trade or the FXED Fibonacci Trade.

The bottom line is, I really enjoyed this book. It clearly states what traders must do to succeed, so I recommend it highly. Five stars.

Review by Midnight Toker:

This is easily the most valuable book of the nearly dozen or so I’ve read. Have you ever wondered why the market moves against you when you follow text book technical set ups that every trading manual states you should? It’s because the brokers and dealers know you will and actively go after your position. It’s obvious to me now but before reading this book I didn’t know MY broker was out to aggressively take my money.

This book has given me a whole new view of forex trading and because of it I’ve stopped scratching my head and begun to make gains. I know the real game now and have adjusted my trading to take advantage of it.

Review by Sue:

Unlike most Forex books, this does not reiterate basic strategy and definitions. Rather, it assumes that the reader knows the basics, and concisely reveals how the Forex dealers can use those strategies against the reader. The author’s material corresponds well to common complaints from traders worldwide (check out Forex trader blogs at any website). The graphs are well-laid out, and helpful for elaborating on the counter-strategies described by the author. A quick read, but surely complex enough for re-reads. I cannot comment on whether the author’s strategies will indeed ensuring “beating the dealer” (have not tested them yet), but I think that revealing how the Forex establishment can take advantage of traders will make readers more cautious, and less trusting. Should be part of any advanced beginner’s library.

Review by SBJ400:

Let me say right away –

I judge harshly any material that promotes another product. This book promotes the author’s website constantly throughout. You must pay to be a member after a trial period LOL

0 for a measely 7 days!!! That is what the author calls TRIAL. LOL I thought you were trading because you needed money…not because you have tons of money to flush down the toilet?!

Here are the exact current details posted from the author’s website –

Trial Membership ( for the first 7 days. Then 9.95 for each month)

First 7 days . Then 9.95 each 30 days as a full Monthly Member.

Monthly Membership (9.95 for each month)

Semi-Annual Membership (99.95 for 6 months)

Annual Membership (00.00 for 12 months)

BEWARE NOVICES !!!!!!!! Tons of people write books and create websites just to get the eager novice to depart with money!

One simple question to ask yourself -

If the author is such a great, successful trader…why would he be busy chasing down subscribers? Would you? Wouldn’t you be busy scooping up pips and not bothering with some silly website and trying to drum up business for it?

For the money he is charging per month, you could buy DVD workshops and seminars from some of the top traders out there and you get to keep those DVDs and watch them over and over at no charge.

I do agree that the general VAGUE substance of this book is generally accurate. You could learn a few things…BUT what this book will teach you is freely available online at some great Forex websites for FREEEEEEEEEEEEE !!!! Just Google search “free forex training” or try “baby pips”. You will learn FAR MORE than any beginner book will ever teach you there for free.

Also, the candlestick advice in this book is so generic and vague you could lose plenty of money. Let me quote the book -

“Dojis become a most significant reversal signal when seen after an extended rally of long-bodied candles” (by the way, the plural of doji is doji…not dojis)

This holds a tiny kernel of truth to it in that doji signals are more powerful signals after a large move in the market. THE TRUTH ENDS THERE. According to THE guru of candlesticks…Steve Nison (the man that brought candlesticks to the West and the one you should learn them from and the man this book gives no credit to as a source for further education)…according to Nison’s teachings doji are not reversal signals by themselves. Doji represent transition or confusion in the market. You cannot just assume the market will reverse. You need more confirmation. Candlestick signals by themselves are not reason enough to trade!

For a novice, simplistic, generic advice like this could wipe your account out in days.

I am not saying the author is a bad person or has bad intentions. I am merely judging the book. I do feel there are many good little tips in it…BUT the same info is available for free. Since this book does not delve into meaty, strict detail about anything…you will only scrape the surface, get excited and will be more likely to subscribe to the website. I think that is the plan behind this book. For some people…that may be a good thing. As a novice, you should research, investigate and learn as much as possible before paying one single penny to anyone! How do you know what to pay for or subscribe to when you do not understand Forex, trading or any other relative issue????

Use the internet, GOOGLE as much as possible…chat in forums, take your time and LEARN then make purchase based on intelligence not knee jerk excitement. Forex is rife with scams, hustles, fast buck programs and systems.

Review by Glenn Woodford:

Wayne really hits the mark with this book. It’s a basic summary of the method he teaches at www.fxbootcamp.com. Not only does he cover the technical and fundamental aspects that a successful Forex trader needs to know, but he covers the other all important topics too, like risk analysis, trade plans & journals, trade reviews and having the right mindset to be a successful trader. All with no Fluff!

I found Wayne’s book really helped me trade according to MY rules, not the markets rules. This meant that when I trade, it’s become a lot of fun again. Now I am trading in one night, profit wise, what I used to trade in one month.

If you want to get a clear sense of what is in this book, have a look at his videos on FXStreet.com blogs called “2 Hour Video: Strategic & Tactical FOREX Trading”. blogs.fxstreet.com/fxbootcamp/2008/03/12/2-hour-video-strategic-tactical-forex-trading

I recommend this book to anyone who feels there is room to improve in their Forex trading, or is looking for a reliable, simple system to follow. The method outline in Wayne’s book won’t give you every pip in a market’s movements, but it will provide you with a large portion of them, in a conservative manner.

I also recommend this book to new FX Bootcampers, as it will help them come up to speed quickly, with the method Wayne teachers at FX Bootcamp.

In response to Jeff Marsick’s review (RE – Good But Poorly Edited), I agree that this book could have done with more editting. In regards to Wayne’s MACD settings of 21, 55, 8, this is in fact correct. One of the things with Wayne’s method is that he uses a slowed down MACD oscillator to guage MARKET speed (medium term price action) and a sped up Stochastics oscillator to measure PRICE momentum (short term price action). This is covered in the above mentioned webinar video at around 18 minutes into it.

Review by bspringholz:

I have spent 20 years researching and trading stocks and bonds, and was interested in currency trading. I purchased a number of books on foreign exchange. I read this book first, Essentials of Foreign Exchange Trading, and I found it an excellent choice. It has also been a good companion to my experimentation and trading on one of the major FX trading websites.

It starts off with a good introduction to the principles of currency trading and includes a discussion of a wide range of trading approaches to help understand which best fit your personality and style. The chapters that dive in on technical analysis (using candlesticks, moving averages, fibonacci/pivot point, elliott wave) are especially good; it is obviously the author’s specialty. That was good for me since my background is in fundamental analysis and the author’s treatment of technical analysis was comprehensive and helpful. The sections on fundamental analyses were good too, although I went through them quickly given my familiarity. My primary focus was to “expand the toolbox” with technical analyses and this book served that goal. Also, importantly, the book is written in an entertaining and fluid style. It was easy to read and absorb.

Overall, I found the book excellent and recommend it.

Review by Warren C. Hutchison:

I traded forex a couple of years ago and I’ve just gotten back into it recently. Got this book right when it came out because I’ve been following the author’s daily currencies analysis and attended a few of the webinars he gives. From the title of the book I was thinking that it might be a bit basic for me since I’ve traded forex pretty extensively before. But it’s turning out to be extremely helpful because it has a lot of really useful strategies and techniques. The book pretty much goes all the way from beginner to advanced and explains everything really thoroughly and clearly. I have two other books on forex trading that I bought in the past, but this one is by far the most complete and useful one. For me, chapter 5 on forex trading methods and strategies was one of the most comprehensive descriptions of trading strategies that I’ve seen. Also really liked the technical analysis chapter. Definitely recommend this book.

Review by Cali Kid:

I had read several books on the subject before seeing Jeff Glenellis’ book. And I had spent the better part of a year trying to trade Foreign Currency Exchange (Forex) unsuccessully. There are many successful traders using any number of trading methods, and many of them offer books about it. But none ever offered to TEACH me their methods (even some to whom I paid significant sums of money) the way Jeff G does in his book.

I bought this book in an earlier revision, about a year ago (before it was available thru Amazon). So I have already become proftable using what he teaches in it. Jeff G presents several very concise trading methods in easy-to-follow language. He is also the only one I ever saw present an actual profit progression from compounding, where he has actually worked the plan and compounded a small initial startup into a significant sum of money.

But more important than any method, he teaches a great deal on how to properly manage the money in your trading account, to protect your capital. If you start with 00 in your forex broker account, yet you wipe it all away in a few losses, you lose. But with a good method, the right money management of your trading capital, some consistent work and a little old-fashioned discipline, you can start with as little as 0, and compound it all the way to M in less than three years — while drawing out an ever-increasing income every week along the way.

Further, many people “bait” you with an intial book, but once you buy it, then they start to bombard you with more stuff they have to sell, that has the “deluxe” or “really great” information. And once you buy that, they then proceed to offer you the “super-secret” stuff, and so on. Or they “bait” you with the inexpensive book, and then want to sell you thousands of dollars worth of “mentoring” (that turns out to be from people who don’t even do what they’re teaching). Jeff G has done none of that. Since I bought his book originally he has NEVER offered to sell me ANYTHING else extra. All the goods are in the one book.

And as to “mentoring”, for those who are interested, there is a one-time membership fee (of less than 0) to join his on-going service. Anyone can talk to him personally in the members-only room on most trading days. He actually does what he is teaching, does it most every day, and any member who wishes may join him there.

And even then, he has never asked for even one penny for anything else extra.

For those who wish to learn to trade the Forex successfully, I’ve never seen anything better at any price.

Review by David Dube:

I bought the online version of this guy’s book last year, and joined his so-called “Trade Call List”. I paid for this and all it ended up doing for me was make me lose 0 trading currencies.

His strategies are absurd and his suggestions are amateurish at best. Not only will you NOT get rich following what’s written down in this book, but you will most likely lose every penny you spend trying to implement his advice.

The strategies range from being vague and complicated and highly-discretionary, to being outright wrong and having no chance of ever working. The impression I got after more research was that he borrows bits and pieces of tactics from different places, information that has been around for a long time and puts them together as “his” strategy, without ever giving the complete picture. He always leaves out some important information that makes long-term success elusive.

As an example, the strategy involving the GBP/JPY breakout. This doesn’t appear to work in the long term. If you trade it the way he suggests, trading every single breakout every single night, you might make some gains, but you will more likely end up giving back all or most of these gains, especially if you use a 1:1 reward-to-risk ratio.

I say this because this is what happened to me. This is how I lost 0 trading currencies. The only way this might work is if you use a 2:1 reward-risk ratio, using 100 pips as your profit target, and 50 pips as your stoploss, and move your stoploss to breakeven after you gained 50 pips. If the market was willing to give you that on a consistent basis, this strategy might work.

But, even then, you have to be prepared for some severe drawdown months, especially in the summer(low-volume) months from June to August. The months I tried it in were July and August of last year, and I just kept having loss after loss after loss. The few wins I had were not enough to make up for the losses, and I ended up blowing through my entire account.

Another way it might work is if you were somehow able to predict how far your winners would go, and then “let these winners run”, as the saying goes.

Jeff said nothing about the risky summer months in advance. He only mentioned it after the fact, to subscribers of his “trade call” list. He also said nothing about the risk of drawdowns.

I have since read that it is better not to trade breakouts alone, in and of themselves. You should only trade breakouts which have a bias to them, bias meaning a pre-existing trend, and this trend should be of a certain strength. Not all trends are created equal. Not only that, but the channel that you are trading the breakout from has to be a certain size and a certain shape- the smaller and more narrow it is the better.

He says nothing about this in his book. I had to discover it on my own, after losing 0 following his advice.

After being on his list for awhile, I have discovered that he tries out different strategies in a haphazard fashion, all of which are highly untested, and all of which seem to lose money in the long-term. I haven’t made a dime following any of his recommendations.

The only good thing I can say is that I have gotten a few good ideas here and there from his book and list, ideas which were only mildly interesting and only somewhat helpful.

As far as making a million dollars in four years following his advice, it hasn’t happened to me and I doubt it will happen to you. This is what’s known as “hype”. My advice would be to take his book with a huge grain of salt.

At the very least, practice the strategies on a demo account for at least 3 months, before committing real money to them. Be certain that you ended the 3 months in profit. And, even then, be sure not to over-leverage yourself. From my experience I would suggest that you prepare for the worst-case scenario, and make sure that worst-case scenario would only wipe out a quarter(one-fourth) of your account. Even less than a quarter would be preferable.

The worst-case scenario, in my opinion, is losing 4 times in a row, 4 consecutive losses. You should make sure that losing 4 times in a row will only wipe out a quarter(one-fourth) of your total account balance. If you then lose again on the fifth try, reduce your trading size to one-half of what it was. Then try 10 more times. If you lose 10 more times in a row, stop trading for the month. Either try a new strategy or wait until another month and try again.

I think the following items are worth looking at:

The London Rush System.

My advice with this is to trade the first one that breaks out, when more than one is giving a signal. Use a 100-pip profit target and a 50-pip stoploss. Move your stoploss to breakeven when you’ve gained 50 pips. Make sure to use the included MT4 indicators and template. Also, I would stay away from a currency whose spread is more than 15 pips. I’ve been making a consistent 400 pips a month with this so far. MIG is the best MT4 broker to use with this because they carry all of the GBP-crosses, and they let you use their MT4 demo for free.

Forex Deal Butler

This one is really expensive, but it seems to be really good for daytrading. However, I have not yet tested it myself.

Solomon FX

They have tons of strategies which are apparently well-tested.

You can find these items by looking them up on Google or Clickbank.

Review by Jackal:

The author presents four very useful tools for trading stocks, commodities, or currencies. These are: two time-frame momentum indicators, Elliott waves, Fibonacci with price, and Fibonacci with time. You can use these four tools as a discretionary trading system, but the Fibonacci discussion is especially valuable in and of itself. The author has been around 20 years providing trading advice – an indication of some quality.

I appreciate that the author isn’t trying to hard sell his software and newsletter. You can apply the ideas in the book without buying anything more from the author! That is an honest touch that is appreciated.

The style of the text can be somewhat annoying at times; it is a bit repetitive and has too many comments about not-so-good advisors out there somewhere. (No need for the author to point this out unless he wants to name the offenders.) It would have been good if the author told the reader how this book compares to his earlier book “Dynamic Trading”. My take is that the current book introduces the two time-frame momentum and streamlines the other information on Elliott and Fibonacci, but it would have been useful to get this information from the author. Is the previous book superceded in his mind or does it still have value?

All positive reviewers (13 of them at the time of writing) have only reviewed this book and nothing else. Clearly the author has a fan club. Irrespective, I can really recommend this book.

I have written several short reviews on trading books. The best way is to compare the score on the books I’ve read. Many reviews on amazon.com are just glorious 5 star reviews. I use all five categories; sorry but everything isn’t “great”. Books rated 5 are very good. Books rated 4 are good solid books well worth reading. Books rated 3 can be bought by some people who read a lot or have very specific needs. Books rated 1 or 2 I would not recommend buying or reading. Naturally all in my humble opinion.

Review by NYCTrader:

Miner is one of the few trading authors that seem to have some practical, successful trading experience. His book offers a complete trading plan from identifying the high probability trade setups for any market and any time frame right through the exit strategy. High Probability Trading Strategies is not the typical compendium of the old tried and true indicators and Fib retracements but a logical and practical approach to high probability trades with small capital exposure.

His Multiple Time Frame Momentum strategy is brilliant in its simplicity and execution. The Beyond Fib Retracements chapter shows a couple of unique strategies that help you to identify in advance which retracement level should be support or resistance. He also explains in a logical and practical way how to use simple pattern and timing strategies to identify the targets for trend reversal. Miner focuses on exit strategies as much as entry setups for a complete trading plan from entry to exit, just as the title describes.

Especially valuable is the video CD that is included with the book. I’ve had several trading books that included a CD but most of the CD material did not complement the book, let alone appear to be professionally produced. The 2 hour video CD with High Probability Trading Strategies is a valuable complement to the book material as Miner goes through several trade examples bar-by-bar. I think any trader will be very pleased with what they learn from High Probability Trading Strategies.

Review by Mark Twain:

Nothing new or great here. If your just getting started this book will help with the basics. The part about system development is very sparse (essentially just says use ms excel for backtesting). Overall I felt fleeced paying retail for this at B&N.

Review by Richard Reed Jr.:

This book is supposed to be for beginners in forex. But it is very poorly done. It mostly deals with fundamental analysis, but in a very unorganized and unstraight forward fashion. He shows bar charts and candlestick charts without bothering to explain how to read them. He even starts talking about pips without explaining what a pip is. Then he just gives the standard overview of technical analysis. Nothing truly in depth. He mentions using a practice account, but kind of pooh-poohs it. Then he challenges people to open ,000 and ,000 accounts and make 10-15 pip trades. This is not good in my opinion.

A person should open a practice account an stick with it until they can make money consistantly. Then they should open a small account (,000-,000) and trade partial lots till they get the hang of it. And unless they like scalping (10-15 pip trades), they should aim for 100 pip trades. The only way I could ever make only 10 pips is to risk 30.

Read Currency Trading for Dummies. It is a very well thought out, organized, and certainly more informative than the Forex Trading Course. The dummies book also has suggested reading at the end for further study. The Forex Trading course has a few books mentioned throughout, but considering how bad The Forex Trading Course is put together, I wouldn’t trust the books listed outright.