5 comments about Technical Analysis for the Trading Professional.

1. I am an experienced trader and an avid reader of trading books. This book has nothing new to offer since the author doesn't reveal any of her secrets unless you are willing to go to her website and pay $800 to get access to some of her indicators. She spends pages and pages to expalin very simple concepts. Total waiste of money and time.



2. This is a hard book to read but I think it's from a stream of consciousness that's "in the zone." It's one of probably only a handful of books ever written that can give you a unique insight into the mind of the market. Most people won't get it and never will. Thanks for sharing Connie.



3. This is an absolute horrible book. Like one reviewer already said, The author promises to take you into the promise land, but then tells you that she will not give you her secret formula. The book does not lead you to figure it out for yourself either, it is filled with traditional technical analysis you can get anywhere else.
   
   What is the point of writing yet another T/A book if you don't have anything new to say? One reason, advertise her website!



4. In this book you will really find invaluable hints and informations. New uses for RSI, when the author teaches how to put indicators on indicators; indicator reversals(wiht RSI) to sum up with the indicator divergences; how to use oscilattors(RSI in particular) to assess Elliot Wave counts; new methods for price projections with reverse engineering RSI and with Fibonacci(sure!).
   Well, I tried to follow the market(real time and past charts) searching for RSI reversals and it really works, most of time. Also, price projection with RSI reverse engineering also works. Just export the prices and RSI from your vendor into an Excel spreadsheet and use the "forecast" formula, with price closes and RSI values. If at that time the correlation between RSI and prices are good(near 1), so the price projection will work(I tried myself many times, with a good rate of success).
   The concept that RSI can also be used to detect a trend, opens a new window in how to use this oscillator.
   Well, beside that, there are many, let's say, exotic points. The chapter about Gann is almost like a chapter of The Lord of Rings or Harry Poter(well, maybe because I didn't understand it!).
   Anyway, even many concepts are not clear offered by the author(composite index and the Gann's methodology, as already commented by a reviewer)the book is worth the money, and you will learn a lot(and earn more) if you read it. But, it is not easy. I suggest you to have a good grasp on the basic indicators and technical analysis before start this journey.
   And, take your time to read it. More, many more than once!
   Ah! Make sure you have your chart in front of you to practice the ideas and concepts.



5. There are books that teach you concepts of technical analysis, but none, except this, that tell you the nuances and how to acquire that razor sharp edge so essential for professional traders. This book touches on several concepts and explains how they can be interpreted / better analysed compared to the lay trader. The description on Elliott waves and how they can be combined with oscillators is perhaps the best analytical discourse on Elliott I have ever read. That single chapter is worth the cost.
   
   However, the book has two negatives. One is the lack of adequate coverage on Gann, purportedly for "reasons of confidentiality", despite Constance claiming it to be her primary method. Second being that of marketing herself. I guess the class of the book itself is sufficient marketing enough and obvious references to her skills only create a jarring effect.
   
   Overall its a book that you start as an apprentice (though a well versed apprentice, since its a book not for the beginners) and finish as a master.

5 comments about Complete Financial Guide for Young Couples: A Lifetime Approach to Spending, Saving and Investing.

1. Larry Burkett's advice cannot be highly stated enough. He has solid biblical direction, practical advice, and years of "field testing," making this a book which won't gather dust on your bookshelf.

   He explores many topics, such as being able to buy a car or house; as well as is it wrong to borrow large amounts of cash. He also explores credit cards and life insurance, as well as the standards, such as budgets, teaching your children about financial principles, and seeing ahead towards economic trends and dangers.

   For a good and practical read which can be applied to any situation, a great resource!!!




2. I noticed the reviews are either 5 stars or 1 star! This book definitely deserves more than 1 star as it does contain some very sound advice and is great for those who need good solid financial training.
   I am a Christian, but found many of his principles to be outdated and just a little too conservative. This book was first published in 1989 and SERIOUSLY needs a updated version. He implies throughout the book that the woman should not work and if she does her income should only be used for "extra purchases" not for basing a budget on. Why? Because she might get preganant, some terrible ill befall her, and no longer work to support the family. (I am a nurse and have found that this is the exception, not the rule)
   I also have a problem with the fact that he continually refers to the husband as the "wage-earner". I know plenty of families where the wife earns more money than the husband and they both share duties and expenses within the household. He also says that you should not spend your money on buying life insurance for the wife just to cover "funeral expenses" because of course all budget expenses should be based on the "wage-earner's" (the man's) salary. Therefore, life insurance is only truly necessary for the husband.
   I don't want to sound like I'm bashing the book because the sections on training children to use money wisely and how to save for your future and get out of debt include some really excellent advice.
   However, his theology and principles behind a lot of his advice are quite "old-school".



3. If you are not one to be led by Biblical values, then this book will not be very appealing to your sensibilities. Larry Burkett writes from a conservative, Christian based perspective. He gives Biblically-based practical guidance on budgeting, approaching debt, life insurance, retirement, teaching financial principals to your children, as well as several other financial issues. His assumption is that family is your priority and that when a married couple has children, the wife will stay home to care for the children -- thus he gives most guidance assuming that at some point a couple will have only one income. He also assumes that the husband takes his Biblical place as head of his home as leader, protector and provider. He uses the Bible to support his assertions.
   
   What has helped us most is the easy-to-implement envelope system. It has helped us get a handle on our spending. He has other publications that explain the envelope system more indepth, but the overview provided in this book gives enough info to get you started.
   
   In the end, this book helps you gain a Biblical approach to handling your finances. Some advice may seem contrary to worldly wisdom, but we know who we are to look to for guidance...



4. I like some of what Larry has to say, but I find much has changed since the book was first written. Some of the principles don't change, like developing a budget, but many things are difficult to work in a modern age. Most young couples are problably fall into the 'Dual Incomes No Kids' category. You generally don't go to the grocery store with your grocery envelope, or take the family check book and write them a check.
   
   My favorite quote from the book is 'Arthur Andersen and Company could not have balanced that checkbook'. In light of events at Enron, it seems they probably could have 'balanced' the checkbook.
   
   He makes many broad generalizations which may offend either the husband or the wife. For example: 'I find with most couples I counsel that the wife, given training, is usually the better bookkeeper. Normally she has more time and is a little more diligent.'
   
   The book has many stories of finances gone bad, which should at least make you feel that your finances are in a lot better shape than some peoples.



5. Marriage is tough enough without making it any harder. I'm sure our parents meant well when they tried to set the best examples possible. But, I don't know many people who's parents really laid out how money and marriage work. This book is a great tool to easy the frustration and aggravation that can accompany financial issues in marriage. It has worked wonders with my fiance and I.

No comments about Wiley CPA Exam Review 2009: Financial Accounting and Reporting (Wiley Cpa Examination Review Financial Accounting and Reporting).

5 comments about Dictionary of Accounting Terms.

1. This book arrived in perfect condition and within a few days. I am very pleased with my purchase.



2. I needed something at work to look up certain words as I come across them. of course this book was perfect. I enjoy having it by my side, just to make sure I know what I'm dealing with and have an understanding of what I am doing. I def. recommend for all you accountants/auditors out there.



3. This book is very intelligently written and organized. The definitions are skillfully worded to be precise, succinct and immediately comprehensible. It's actually a joy to meander through the book following the cross references to build up an expanding view of a topic. (Note: I'm fairly new to accounting). Very highly recommended, especially for the price.



4. I was very pleased with this item. Fast shipping. Product in excellent condition. Pleased with seller.



5. I will keep this brief and to the point. I just started taking some accounting/finance classes and was a bit overwhelmed by all the new vocabulary. Flipping to the glossary in the back of a heavy textbook was inconvenient.
   I bought this little, but exhaustive dictionary and now it sits next to me as I study. It makes the perfect companion to my texts. I am very happy I bought this (and others in the series) and will be even happier to put in on the shelf as an addition to my growing finance library.

5 comments about Financial & Managerial Accounting.

1. Thank you much. I started taking an accounting class & the book came just in time.



2. Received item just as promised. Thanks for the fast delivery. It came just in time for my class!



3. I am very pleased with the book I ordered. It was as described and on time.



4. It's an accounting textbook...far from interesting, but it gets the job done and has lots and lots of practice problems and examples to work from.



5. The textbook has been extremely useful thus far in my class. Unfortunately, the only issue I have found with it is the fact that the authors didn't apply any "real world" situations to it. My professor, who has 35 years experience as an accountant, has gone through and made changes to the book during the lessons; informing us of how things will actually appear when doing the ledgers, etc. Other than this small issue, the book is an excellent resource.

4 comments about Fundamentals of Contemporary Financial Management (with Thomson ONE, Business School Edition).

1. The concepts in this book are fantastic. For a general read, the book is fine and will leave you "feeling like" you learned a tremendous amount. HOWEVER, if you are using this book for a class -- give it up. The exercises at the end of each chapter will leave you feeling lost, confused, and ignorant. These feelings will quickly turn into anger. You must read EVERY WORD of the text VERY CAREFULLY and then think outside the box. The highlighted examples are of little use for the exercises. Reading carefully and setting aside about 40 hours a week for assignments will get you a decent grade in the class. For a truly good grade, plan on spending a great deal of time at the library, researching online, and purchasing other books to cover and explain everything this book fails to cover.
   
   By the 5th edition this should be a good book. Currently it is not.
   
   P.s. The study guide that you can buy separately to go with this book is a bigger waste of money. The study guide is riddled with typographical errors on just about EVERY page. Additionally, after going through a college finance course using this book, it also became apparent that the teacher's answer key is also riddled with errors. If you get something wrong, question it, you may actually be right.
   
   P.s.s. I had a 4.0 GPA (created with 17 courses) prior to taking this course. I did manage to pull an A- in this course dropping me to a 3.97 GPA but it took a tremendous amount of work to do that much! This is NOT an easy textbook to follow. The instructor will have to play a HUGE role in making it work. I took this class online and had zero instructor interaction. If you can avoid that do so!



2. This book is a requirement for FIN200 at University of Phoenix. The book is very vague, confusing, and almost speaks in circles. It gives you no help in setting up certain equations. I truly believe, if I do pass this course, that the book has no part in helping. I've learned more by googling terms to find information needed for our home work or class discussions. Beware!



3. PicOlio wrote almost exactly how I feel about this book. Read that review for a good indication of how terrible this book is.
   
   This is the worst textbook I have ever used. If you get assigned a class that uses this book, drop it and complain to the school.



4. In my finance class, we focus heavily on calculations and formulas. This textbooks isn't very "user friendly" when describing formulas and allocating the formulas to the associated tables within the text. I find myself flipping back and forth like crazy. Looking at the table then shuffling thru the text to find the formula. I'm used to using texts that have the table and formula being discussed all on one page or at least right next to each other. The text should show calculations, line by line instead of in paragraphs. I think that would clarify a lot of the sections.
   
   I'm going to end up buying a supplement book like "Finance for Dummies."

5 comments about Technical Analysis from A to Z, 2nd Edition.

1. Extremely pleased with the purchase and reading experience. The book covers everything I know about and much more that I didn't. I was able to make oscillators, from the explanations given, on excel and was able to make the charts. The Chande Momentum Oscillator is an added, and needed, tool for my analysis for investment. I bought this book because it was the one called out in the Yahoo charts trying to explain the Stoch Oscillator; which, I wanted to understand, and now do.



2. As the title says, this covers technical analysis (the analysis of securities based on price patterns) from A to Z, that is to say all the various approaches are covered alphabetically. Everything is covered but not in extensive detail. Each approach is covered in terms of an overview of the approach, an interpretation of the approach, and an example (generally with suitable graphs). No attempt is made to inject the author's preferences or any statistical analysis of the effectiveness of the approach. As such, this is more of a dictionary than a book on investment advice. This is not to say that dictionaries are useless, they are very useful, but they are not the same as a book on how to write. This book will tell you what the particular system is, not whether it is any good. Also, there are many variations of most of the systems and many different values for the parameters used by the systems, so other references will be required if you actually want to apply any of these approaches. The reader should be forewarned, however, that Technical Analysis is only one approach to the market. Many believe that this approach is little more than tealeaf reading and they rely on the analysis of the fundamentals of the balance sheet of the company and its prospects for future growth.



3. ... but also a well written understanding of the mathematical models that make them work. If you trade with indicators, you need this book along with "Pring".



4. Steven Achelis does a pretty decent job of showing what the stock market really is: just a big jumble of numbers completely determined by human emotion. And because pretty much anything involving human emotion is cyclical, it also becomes somewhat predictable.
   
   This book presents an excellent selection of technical indicators that do a number of different things. It also presents formulas for most of the indicators.



5. If you are looking for a technical tool reference book for your investing/trading library this is the one. This book covers (in alphabetical order) every trading tool I am aware of including the O' Neal CAN SLIM method, trend lines, volume, stochastics, Williams %R, every kind of moving average, candlestick charting, decline/advance, oscillators and just about everything else you will run across in trading stocks. The author gives an overview of the indicator, the interpretation, an example, then shows how to calculate it with the mathematical formulas used and a table for reference. I read this book from cover to cover and learned a great deal. I believe it is a must have for beginners if you are serious about using technical tools to time your trades correctly at proper buy points.

5 comments about Financial Accounting: An Introduction to Concepts, Methods and Uses.

1. The book is brand new. The price is fair for a new book. It was delivered within 2 to 3 days of purchase. Overall is very satisfied.



2. This is a real good book cos it has a lot of real life accounting problems and there are a lot of them in the book. Also the practice problems are varied, which help you to understand a lot about real world accounting



3. 
   It took long time to arrive, even it says 2-3 days, it took about 2 weeks to receive the book



4. This is a great introduction to accounting. It covers a tremendous amount of detail and is very thorough. My undergraduate work was done in Psychology and this book is helping to close the "gaps" that I have (in my MBA program).



5. Like some of the other reviewers, I was forced to use this text for my MBA program. STAY AWAY! This is easily the worst text book I have ever used. Reading and re-reading will not help you understand the material any better. I had to go to other texts to help me make it through the course.

5 comments about Performance Dashboards and Analysis for Value Creation (Wiley Finance).

1. I am a mid level manager in a Fortune 500 company. I found Jack's book to be an excellent resource for understanding Value Creation and how to quantify Value Creation to non-finance people within the organization. Jack does a great job of explaining the concepts in an easy-to-read style. It's a "must read" for lower and mid level managers in today's business environment.



2. I've used this book repeatedly since I purchased it a couple of months ago. It is both an excellent reference source and, more importantly, a mechanism for action for all managers that contribute to a company's performance.
   The dashboard concept provides easily understood and asimilated performance data for every level of management. The book provides a step by step approach that if implemented corporate wide, must increase awareness and forms the platform for sustained value creation.
   The spreadsheet examples on the attached disk are easy to customize to your own situation and take all the pain out of getting started.



3. Public Company CFO - I have made this a must read for each of my direct reports. This book takes what many have made overly complex and turns it into a real tool to use within the company in driving improved performance. Logically outlines the concepts in terms that are easily understood by both finance and non finance managers. The use of detailed examples, defining key terms and providing working/tailorable templates enables the reader to accelerate real value creation. For a public company it is a valuable enabler for the finance team and it allows functional managers to see the connections between their actions and building value for our shareholders



4. As a CPA in Public Practice, I found that the "Value Performance Framework" laid out in Alexander's book very adaptable to the small business perspective. It's a very good read and I often refer back to it during my small business engagements.



5. 
   All vehicles have dashboards and those manufactured in recent years have dashboards with gauges which measure more than engine temperature, miles driven, available fuel, etc. Those within the dashboard in my wife's Honda Pilot, for example, measure tire pressure, the temperature outside, and the current percentage of oil efficiency. It also has a built-in compass. I thought about all this as I recently read Wayne Eckerson's Performance Dashboards and Jack Alexander's Performance Dashboards and Analysis for Value Creation. If viewed as vehicles, all organizations need means by which to measure, accurately, performance at all levels and in all areas of operation. Burn rate is analogous with consumption of fuel, as are the costs of replacing customers and valued employees analogous with the costs of repairs necessitated by neglect of scheduled (preventive) vehicle maintenance. Comparisons can also be made in terms of alignment and torque. The performance of organizations as well as of vehicles can be measured accurately; only then is it possible to minimize or, better yet, eliminate waste of available resources.
   
   In Performance Dashboards and Analysis for Value Creation, Alexander does a brilliant job of introducing and then explaining what he calls the "Value Performance Framework" (VPF) which will enable those who execute it effectively to link and then drive both performance and value. Within his crisp and eloquent narrative, he focuses on performance dashboards and Excel models which are included in a companion CD-ROM. They are identified in the book with a CD-RM logo. As Alexander explains, the dashboards and spreadsheets are intended as working examples for use after appropriate modification to each reader's own circumstances (i.e. resources, needs, and objectives). I hasten to add that the VPF can be of substantial value to any organization, whatever its size and nature may be.
   
   After discussing "the single greatest challenge in creating an effective measurement system" in Chapter 1, Alexander carefully organizes his material as follows:
   
   Part One (Chapters 2-4): Creating Context and Covering the Basics
   
   Excerpt: "Typically, more can be learned by understanding why firms differ on key [valuation] measures than by selecting a peer group that shares common characteristics. A much richer picture is framed by comparing [and contrasting] your firm to market averages and several best-practice companies in addition to a peer group. Further, the use of a broad set of [valuation] measures, with appropriate benchmarks, would help to avoid the level of valuation errors that were made in the recent stock market bubble." (Page 58)
   
   Part Two (Chapters 5-10): Linking Performance and Value
   
   Excerpt: "There are hundreds of potential measures to choose from to measure different aspects of operating effectiveness. Great care must be exercised in selecting the measures that are most appropriate to a firm at a specific point in time. The performance dashboards must reflect key business priorities. The measures should be evaluated periodically and revised to reflect ever-changing priorities and conditions. It is also critical to provide balance to ensure that a focus on efficiency is not achieved at the expense of quality, customer satisfaction, or growth." (Page 142)
   
   Part Three (Chapters 11-13): Driving Performance and Value
   
   Excerpt: "The single most important factor for achieving success with a [Performance Measurement Framework] is to create context for the measurement system. This is achieved by creating linkage among strategy, performance management, process and quality initiatives, financial performance, and shareholder value. It is also critical to integrate and link operating measures to financial measures and then to shareholder value measures. The time spent in establishing this linkage will improve understanding and ultimately the effectiveness of the framework." (Page 232)
   
   Those who share my high regard for this brilliant book are urged to check out the aforementioned Performance Dashboards written by Wayne Eckerson as well as Joseph Bower and Clark Gilbert's From Resource Allocation to Strategy, Jeanne Ross's Enterprise Architecture as Strategy, Henry Chesbrough's Open Business Models, Dean Spitzer's Transforming Performance Measurement, and Ram Charan's Know-How.

5 comments about Understanding Financial Statements (8th Edition) (Pie).

1. exact product at an affordable price w a smooth transaction



2. I bought this book for school. It is an easy to read, comprehensive guide to understanding what goes into financial statements.



3. Great book for learning accounting for the novice. Easy to understand and the problems and discussion help the learning process.



4. I bought this for a university class, but it does not read like a textbook. It was very easy to understand to read and concepts are clearly explained. The supporting website contains a good template for beginning financial analysis.



5. This book, authored by the excellent M/s Fraser & published by StudentAid, will be useful both to the successful student and/or the less experienced practioner because it acts as a refresher for those whose student days are almost forgotten as well as a pathfinder for those who want to move on from the banal student text books offered by others. I teach financial analysis and unhesitatingly recommend this to all but the most experienced or competent as a welcome opportunity to learn. Each chapter culminates with a series of questions increasing in difficulty. There are useful hints as to where to find raw & comparative data & some good case studies. For the more experienced, perhaps this will be a little undemanding, in which case try "Financial Statement Analysis & Security Valuation" by Stephen Penman or one of the excellent books by Comiskey & Mulford.