Stikky Stock Charts (Stikky Series) [Paperback]

They are clearly relying to some degree, and for good reason, on the work of Andrew Lo, from MIT, who has written very technical, mathematical papers on various chart patterns and found several of them to be valid. They build very nicely from one concept to another with lots of charts to illustrate their points. Don't be throw off by the listing of 200 pages. Due to the size of the pages and the high number of charts, it reads as a much shorter book. But for a first book, I see this as a real positive. They just get right to the point.

Some people never accept the idea that charts might give a glimpse into the behavior of market participants, and that's fine. But for those who are not sure, this is a perfect book to start with. You'll get most of the many principles for drawing trend lines and for recognizing the important patterns, and then you can apply what you learn to charts going forward, and decide for yourself whether reading charts is for you or not. Much better than spending 2x or 3x more for many other books that you'll never get through.

Everything it teaches is fundamental and straightforward, the same introduction information you can find through hours of web searches, but here it is at a very low cost all in one place and all organized and easy to understand.

Of course it's a simple text, no deep analysis on the included material, and only a small amount of key material out of all that's out there in other resources, but the way it's presented, you keep finding new questions in your mind that make you want to go and research further. The book, being simple, doesn't leave you feeling short changed, it leaves you with a confidence as a newcomer to stocks and inspired to learn further.

If you start with this book and are meant to get involved in this stuff, you'll be fully prepared to get started and you'll know what your next steps are after this book - another book with more details on certain things you were introduced to here, or dive right into trading.

The one thing I'll point out that's specific about the text is that it is geared to medium term trades, those occurring over a few months span or longer, as opposed to a few days. They guide you to observe charts that establish patterns through more than a month of chart history, and then make your evaluation. I'm not sure if this can be applied to shorter term trades, but either way it's a good start.

I have 3 other books I bought all at once, I expect to learn everything I can. Being a beginner, I discovered this book by searching Amazon and reading people's reviews to find out what texts I should use to get started. By linking around from people's other recommendations within book reviews, I chose this book along with Toni Turner - Short term trading in the new stock market, Bruce Kamich - How Technical Analysis Works, and John Murphy - Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets.