Rating: 
Summary: Learned Alot About The NYSE
Review: get this book is you want to learn how the markets really work - i first bought Farrell's book when it came out in Russian - this one is the first of Farrell's 2 books on trading and it was written prior to 2001 at a time when the NYSE traded in fractions - much of the material in this book is very much relevant in the year 2003 - the reality is that the NYSE floor traders are still in the business of trading against you and me - what this book teaches in vivid detail is how they do it and how to turn that to your advantage by buying and selling with them, not against them - the author teaches that in bull or bear market, wall street always makes money at the expense of the investing public -
Rating: 
Summary: Old info badly written
Review: While some of this material may have had meaning at one time very little of it actually applies to internet trading at this time. What little information is in the book, both current and out of date, is written so reduntantly that it is the perfect cure for insomnia.
Rating: 
Summary: Wanabe Guru
Review: This book is an instruction manual for making millions in listed stocks geared towards someone with limited experience. Sound Familiar? Dave Delgado advertises on late night television how people can make a fortune in the real estate market and someone else advertises how profitable classifed ad placements are. Question: Why would someone give away their recipe for success to millions of potential competitors (based on the sales figures for this book) for the price of a book? Is it possible that selling advice to the masses is more profitable than making a teeny in some illiquid listed stock? It would seem logical to conclude that if an assured method for making teenies in unknown stocks were so profitable then big money institutions would soon arbitrage out any profitable scenario that the average Joe could attempt to exploit. If a formula emerges, well capitalized quant shops will soon exploit it (I know for a fact that big money institutions like Susquehanna and D.E. Shaw have computer programs in place).
Rating:
Summary: NYSE All the Way!
Review: I am a fan and follower of Chris Farrell's NYSE trading strategies - this book, to sum it up, is a guide to anticipating and exploiting temporary supply and demand imbalances in NYSE listed stocks - Farrell terms the strategy "scalping" - the author was pounding the table back in summer 1999 when this book first came out saying that the NYSE is a better market to trade than NASDAQ and that traders should stay away from trading NASDAQ stocks because the order handling rules are less fair than the NYSE - he is still saying that now in 2002 - those that have listened to that advice have fared very well -
Rating:
Summary: No longer relevant in today's market
Review: Sorry folks, although a good educational read, this book is outdated (1999). His technique is to get in between the bid and ask on low voliatile NYSE stocks and thereby skim a 1/16 (teenie, 6 cents) out of the spread. Sounds promising, but unfortuanetly, the NYSE no longer uses fractions, its all decimals and has been that way for a good while!! Given today's 'decimal' market, scalping the spread can be easily blocked by a bid .01 greater. I would be interested in knowing if Farrell is still trading and if so, how might his techniques have evolved. Any updated books out there???
Rating: 
Summary: Great Strategies!!!
Review: This book is the 2nd book I've read on the subject matter. I wished I had read it before I read Christopher 2nd book (The day trader's survival guide). Even though the book is a bit wordy, it will provide great strategies for the novice reader.
Rating:
Summary: eye opener-
Review: I learned alot from this book - synopsis: basically, the specialists on the NYSE and the NASDAQ market makers make tons of cash at the investing publics expense - this book very accurately details how to turn the tables on that and allow the individual to trade the general public's "order flow" - in a sense, the same thing that the big firms do - the basic reason is that, as the book says, is that there are "fair order handling rules" that force the NYSE specialist to give priority to customer orders before their own orders at a given price - that is the real point - day traders who make money in this business trade like market makers and specialists - buying dips, selling rallies - buying on the bid - selling on the ask - for those geniuses that attempt to pan day trading in general, or this book in particular, here is some enlightenment from a full time day trader who spent too much money on useless charting software, seminars, and high priced exectuion systems before it dawned on me -I wish I read this book first - take a look at the "time and sales" in a stock NYSE listed stock like Auto Zone (AZO) or Dynergy (DYN) and you tell me if the "scalping" strategy that the day traders and specialists do wouldn't make money virtually every single time when the spreads are wide - in most cases, the mainstream public will unfortunately never understand how the markets actually do work and how those that are successful make their money in them - the smart money is inherently contrarian -
Rating:
Summary: bravo to Christopher Farrell
Review: I bought this book back in 1999 and recently re-read it - I'm a student of the markets and was curious to see how things would stack up now, in 2001, that everything trades on the NYSE trades in decimals vs fractions - the book is very, very on the money in explaining how the NYSE works and how the specialists profit at the investing public's expense - not much has changed in the way the markets operate now vs how they operated during fractions - so, i decided to pursue this more - in mid-October, I had an opportunity to sit with the author for about 2 hours and I saw him take about $2500 out of the market in that time span (not kidding) - to the people out there who think that this strategy doesn't work - great! keep believing that! to the rest of us, I think we can learn a thing or two about buying and selling from this paperback book -
Rating:
Summary: a flawed system by a poor trader
Review: The author's system involves buying listed ultra low-volume stocks with wide spreads and essentially getting between the spread by then immediately offering at a fraction below the highest current offer. Of course, this theory has undesirable attributes, specifically those that are associated with trading in low-volume securities. Two that immediately come to mind are partial fills and getting stuck in your position for long periods of time, not to mention that the specialist in the stock will immediately realize what is happening and squeeze the trader. In low-volume stocks, the specialist has all the time in the world to play these games. Apparently however, the system worked well enough initially for him to make some money consistently over time, that is until he publicized it and the spreads of these stocks immediately shrunk to the point where his system simply wouldn't work. The most fascinating chapter in the book details how he lost $12,000 in less than 24 hours trading in one stock when he departed from his usual trading system. He demonstrated his lack of trading skill by making every beginner's mistake and apparently making his trading decisions on his opinions or feelings rather than technical analysis. As a professional trader, I was shocked that such a person would actually be hired by two Wall Street firms as a trader, as he claims in the book. If true, it doesn't say much for Wall Street "insiders".
Rating:
Summary: 4/5 a rip-off, 1/5 good reading
Review: Have you ever heard about those "luck chains" (at least it is called so where I live) - I'm talking about the prospect of paying a 100$ to someone to become a part of the luck chain, and then you have to find 3 people that will give you 100$ and so on and so on. Well, think for a moment what would happen if everybody did what Christopher suggest in his book... how in the world would anyone be able to make a profit when each single second probably every available stock would be monitored by other day-traders?
The other part about volatile stock trading is OK, but there are other much more elaborate books about that topic.
To sum up: this book has an expiry date. When enough people read it and start doing what it states, those methods become useless. That is my opinion.
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