Rating: 
Summary: An easy read for anyone that understands swing trading
Review: Alan Farley wrote one of the best swing-day trading books around. His 7 bells are very useful, to complement your own trading ideas. Every chapter has useful information that you can use, as well as information that you may aleady understand.
One book will not make you a master swing trader but this one can get you started in the right direction. He understands how
easy it is to lose money trading and drives home the importance of entering the market at the correct target and cover losses quickly if it does not work out. Thanks Allen, this book is well worth the cost of admission.
Rating: 
Summary: Like milking an ancient cow...
Review: By way of analogy, a trader reading this book is a bit like a starving man sitting down to milk an ancient cow. The drops of wisdom did yield themselves, but not without prodigious effort. A starving man will still take on the job however and future second edition would benefit from a copious edit.
Before going long on this book, investigate his website http://www.hardrightedge.com to learn more about "the seven bells" which is the focus of this book.
Rating: 
Summary: The worst I have read, and I've read plenty.
Review: First read Mr. DiBona's review of 3/21/2002 below, with which I entirely agree. I've traded professionally on the PHLX, been trading full-time from home for over 3 years, and read close to 20 related books. If you are new to trading, I recommend Alexander Elder and/or Van Tharpe. Beyond that, read Larry Williams, Linda Rashke, Larry Connors, John R. Hill (publisher of Futures Truth magazine), and John Murphy. For fun, read any of Jack Schwager's "Market Wizard" books (the first is the best). Complete your library with classics from Edwards & Magee and Welles Wilder. Then, and only then, begin to trade with your hard-earned money. Good luck!
Rating:
Summary: Much better than most
Review: I have made money using some of his ideas.
He is worth the time and effort.
Organization and illustration placement could be better.
But he has good present day profitable ideas.
Nothing phoney.
Jack Stern
Rating: 
Summary: Great Book - But Not for Beginners
Review: I read several of the the reviews posted here before purchasing this book. Their appears to be an extreme divergence about the book's quality because of the writing style. A lot of people say it's "dry" or "pompous" and that they have difficulty getting through it. A lot of other people say it is an overall excellent text.I have a strong background in finance and capital markets. However, I would not rate myself an expert or even having a solid grounding in stock market technical analysis. Well, technical analysis and market pattern recognition is what swing trading - and hence this book - are all about. Farley does an excellent job laying out complicated principles into clearly stated, well-organized, non-mathematical passages. These passages are nicely complemented by graphic illustrations. While I largely read the book in order (start-to-finish), I did jump around a bit and read sections out of order. I also re-read sections several times over across different days because the book deals with conceptually difficult issues (using technical tools and market patterns as indicators to understand basic market sentiment and behavior). I think people who didn't like the book for it's style probably fall into a few categories. First, I think there are a number of people who bought the book with little or no knowledge of markets or trading and thought this would lay out a road map for how to get rich quick. Well, this book doesn't do that. To be successful as a trader takes a LOT of time, effort, study, and interpretation). Second, I think there are a lot of people out there whose most complex daily readings are on the order of People Magazine. Well, learning about complex issues, sentiment, and technical mathematically based tools is on a different order altogether than reading at Brittany Spears. If you fall into either of these categories, you probably want to reconsider trading for a vocation or avocation. Individuals with a committed interest and at least intermediate knowledge of equity markets will find this a good book. Be advised - it is to be treated more like a text book than casual reading.
Rating:
Summary: Read it and Loved it
Review: I would like to strongly recommend this book to everyone. I have been trading stocks for about 4 years and read almost every book written on trading. This book covers so many important elements of short-term trading, including patterns, indicators, psychology, cycles and execution. It doesn't only touch upon these issues but explains them thoroughly with excellent illustrations, I counted over 180 of them. If you're anything like me, you will appreciate all of the charts as visual aids for the teachings in the book. I also found it to be very well organized. The early chapters required a lot of attention. But everything really starts to click as each new chapter builds on previous information. By the time I got to the excellent "7-Bells" sections, I could almost anticipate how the author was going to treat his detailed examples. I learned a tremendous amount reading this book. My overall rating is 5 stars. It is well worth its price tag and you will get what you pay for.
Rating:
Summary: This book should be clasified as FICTION
Review: Is any truth in this book? I don't think so! My only advice is: DON'T WASTE ANY TIME OR MONEY ON THIS BOOK, UNLESS IF YOU WISH TO KNOW HOW TO WRITE FICTIONS IN THIS FIELD.
Added: After submitting this review, I noticed another hyping review just posted. I add the following comments: ANY CLAIM MUST BE BASED ON FACTS. That so called 'very useful 7 bells' are never properly specified, in the traditional spirit of Edwards & Magee, as well as required for any responsible writers. In today's computer age, a reasonable question should also be asked: What is the percentage rates of success for any patterns, indicators, or any other means. Of course, if the writer could not define his/her 'useful pattern' in specific terms, then you have to use your full imagination learned from the Emporer's New Clothes to 'GUESS' what the writer is talking about.
Rating:
Summary: Ever wonder why TA got a bad name?
Review: Look no further, and just read this book...
The only thing that I wish to stress here is that if you wish to believe any positive reviews on this book, either on this amazon website or anywhere else, you ought to find at least ONE SINGLE theory from this book which the reviewer(s) dare to make any claim that he/she had benefitted so far, and then try to reproduce yourself. If you cannot, you might as well just forget all about this book and be very confident that you would not MISS ANYTHING important, except hypings.
Rating:
Summary: Good ideas but difficult to read
Review: Pros - The ideas in this book are great. It really helps beginning traders focus on the right things. Too many traders focus on all the wrong things because not many books stress the significance of time, cross verification, and S&R. They focus on outdated chart patterns that usually fail. This book focuses on practical setups that are reliable and helps mold a winning trading mentality which is the most important of all.
Cons - This book has very little structure. Each section seems to be nothing more than a list of random trading facts written in paragraph form that have little to do with the title of the section. This is not a book you can expect to easily highlight and flip though. It takes time to absorb but I can assure you it will be time well spent.
Suggestions - If you don't have much technical knowledge, start off with John Murphys "Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets". Its a great introductory text. After you have a basic knowledge of Technical Analysis, take you time and read Farley's book.
Rating:
Summary: A good book beyond the apprehension of the mass
Review: Seldom on Amazon a popular book (with 187 reviews utd) carries so extreme comment as this. I fully understand so because I did have negative feeling of it, which only improved gradually from page to page. In the beginning, the book really seems so complicated, full of jargons, candlestick charts elaborating on chart patterns with little reference to oscillator indicators like MACD, Stochastics, which I personally believe the alignment of several of them to be a prerequisite for any profitable trade. In the end, I realized that if I didnt put so much emphasis on the words "Swing Trading" and its virtual difference with "Momentum Trading" which the author criticized much, this book is not so bad when considered to be a general trading book with above average practical advice. Amongst others, I found the following so called 7 Bells, tools to locate outstanding opportunities most interesting. 1. Dip Trip - Price that moves against a strong trend will rebound sharply
2. Coiled Spring - Constricted price gives way to directional movement
3. Finger Finder - Candles flag reversals in the next smaller time frame.
4. Hole in the wall - Gap downs after strong rallies signal a trend change
5. Power Spike - High volume events print the future diretion of price (Big volume kills a trend)
6. Bear Hug - Weak markets drop quickly after rallying into resistance
7. 3rd Watch - Breakouts through triple tops signal major uptrends In a word, this book is quite a helpful tool of reference amidst the competitive life of trading which regular glance of its graphs do help much to refresh one's mind. Complex, time consuming but well worths the price.
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