11/16/2006

Junk book is #1 book recommended by readers of Kirkreport

Kirkreport has a list of 100 books which influenced his trading and at the end he has the number one recommendation by readers. The book recommended by most is Entries & Exits : Visits to 16 Trading Rooms.
Now most readers of this blog know that according to me this book is complete junk. Worst the negative reviews on this book just keep mysteriously disappearing from Amazon. The Amazon review process is sham. Publishers and authors are allowed to edit the reviews and Amazon deletes the bad reviews. See this review below, somehow it has survived.

Extremely Disappointed, June 4, 2006
Reviewer: bartok69 (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
I wrote an unbiased review on here that gave the book 2 stars. The review was deleted.

The summary of my previous review is that the premise of the book is brilliant, but the execution is poor. All of the traders interviewed are either Elder's students, or teachers at his trading camp. Essentially, they all trade the same system, and the book reads like promotional material for Elder's trading material.

I'm not sure why my review was deleted. This irritates me greatly. I buy a lot of books on Amazon and depend on other customers to provide neutral views. I'm highly suspicious of all of these 5 star votes given by reviewers who have written no other reviews. Traders, please be skeptical.


Here is my take on that book.

Entries & Exits : Visits to 16 Trading Rooms

Save your money don't buy Entries & Exits : Visits to 16 Trading Rooms by Alexander Elder. You will not regret buying it. Because it is an extended informecial for his trading seminars and chat rooms.
Alexander Elder gained his fame with the book Trading for a Living: Psychology, Trading Tactics, Money Management which had some useful trading concepts. Rest of all his book are attempts at milking the fame achieved from that book. This latest book is a high priced junk to attract more people to his trading chat room and seminar.
The book interviews 16 traders and looks at their entry, exit and trading methodologies. Elder adds expert comments to their own methods and offers some suggestion. The problem is all the featured traders are teachers at his chat room, or ex students. There is no performance criteria for selecting them. Most of them going by the interviews have still been struggling with their trading. The entry methods in most cases look similar, why because they are all followers of Elder and their methodologies are copycats of his methodologies. There is hardly anything new or insightful in these interviews. In case you are dumb there is also a very high priced guide to the book.
If this book is so bad why the reviews on Amazon so good? Because Amazon allows authors/publishers to edit the reviews and if you post negative reviews they just delete it.As someone on Amazon forum has said it correctly
If Elder knows so much why doesn't he stop writing expensive books and go trade and keep his mouth shut. I think there is more money to be made in trading camps, books, seminars and webinars than in trading!!

Don't waste your money on this high priced junk.

2 comments:

Stock Operator said...

Pra-

You tell it like it is. I think a lot of experienced traders feel like this about many trading "gurus", online newsletters, and for-profit blogs. "A sucker is born every minute."

Pradeep Bonde said...

Any book where Amazon resorts to deleting negative reviews is suspect. Any book where there are several first time reviewers writing glorious reviews is suspect.