Trading Basics By Thomas Bulkowski

Trading Basics is first book in three part series Evolution of Trading by Thomas Bulkowski. The two other books in the series are Fundamental Analysis and position Trading and Swing and Day trading.

The first book in series is a big disappointment. It has no clear theme and has no coherent framework. The chapters are disjointed and read like extended advertisement for Bulkowski's previous book Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns. In almost  every chapter for almost every point the author rfers to his earlier book.

More than that the basic flaw in the book is lack of central theme. The book is divided in to seven chapters :

1. How to retire at 36
2. Money Management
3. Do stops work
4. Support and resistance
5. 45 tips trader should know
6. Finding and fixing what is wrong
7. What we learned

As you can see there is no logical sequence to them and each chapter is series of studies the author conducted on some of these topics. While some elements of the tests are interesting in most cases the recommendation derived from them is very generalized. For example after series of test you will find advice like:

• Hold as many position as you can comfortably manage while maintaining diversity
• Scaling in works, but only if the stock rises
• Support gets stronger over time
• if price stalls near an old high it could reverse

This is just few examples of general advice you will find in this book. At the end of the book the reader is left wondering how are these things relevant in larger context and what was the purpose of this volume. 

There is nothing significantly helpful in this book and I would recommend traders to avoid spending 75 Dollars (45 dollar on Amazon) on this badly written first volume. There is hardly any meat and coherent narrative in it. looks more like an attempt to en cash on the popularity of his previously acclaimed book by splitting disjointed chapter in to a book and pricing it at high price. I do not mind paying for a book if it is well written, has useful ideas  and coherence but sadly this book lacks all of that. 

In next couple of weeks I will  have reviews of volume 2 and 3.