One of those books that pretty much every trader should both have on his/her shelf and should read. Masters addresses techniques for ascertaining whether "here today, gone tomorrow, back the day after" results are an artifact of your system or market doldrums. If it is your system, some of his techniques could, possibly, cure the problem. Masters also uses several well known indicators such as RSI, MACD and On Balance Volume to demonstrate how at least one of the methods he provides does improve performance. This allows the reader to see how to use the math (C++ code provided) so that each of us can use the approach on our own inventions. Dr. Masters also provides sections on amalgamating two or more markets into systems, and the problems one can encounter as a result. I have not gone through these sections in detail in no small part because I am a day-trader in futures and have found no application for an amalgamation, at least not in the approaches I have been using. However, the math seems solid. Finally, the author provides a section on using selected portions of The Janus Theory which he personally uses and has found to be profitable. I have coded in several of his ideas. Some made no difference which was nice in that it implied statistical stability for that bit of code. One idea that I use idiosyncratically actually behave less well after the "standard stabilization fix" and a couple other were improved. I am not finished combining the author's ideas with my own, but, inasmuch as I posted a complaint against Amazon service, which Amazon quickly took down, under the aegis of a very negative score on this book, I thought it best to get my actual opinion of the book up quickly (now that I actually have it, only a little after the quick delivery I pay for -- he said grumpily) lest there be confusion as to my view of the importance (quite) and value (much) of this book. Read more

Top notch. Obviously no groundbreaking secrets are going to be revealed for the price. You will understand how to fine tune your own indicators. I did not know C++ but with some hours of reading C++ basics I was able to convert the FTI into python and C# so it shouldn’t be a major obstacle though this did end up taking me a day or too. Be sufficiently able in programming. It says algorithms in C++… the warning to other reviewers was in the title. Don’t purchase something that says it’s in C++ then complain it’s in C++. In further editions I would increase the price but add an extra chapter on PCA which would perhaps be useful. The use of copulas also seems to be a new field in pairs trading. Overall a good job by Tim. I do wish Tim would come out of the shadows and do more interviews. I will probably go through all Tims books at some point after finishing this one. Read more

Impossible to work with this book. Almost no trader should have it on their bookshelf. Very little is properly explained, certainly not demonstrated graphically. This is a coding book that doesn't resemble trading as you would know it. To set the stage, if applying the standard normal cumulative density function to a calculation means nothing to you, then don't buy this book. Read more

A great book that will teach you how to establish whether or not an indicator can be effective, and how to make your custom indicator effective with less trial-and-error efforts. Its first three chapters alone would be worth of the investment in this book, and there is much more after them. One star less because of the space occupied by C++ code. Most of the points made by this book have been developed as C++ code, that is also available for download (free and anonymous) at the author's website. Nowadays Python is de facto the preferred programming language for statistics and machine learning. For instance, you can calculate entropy in Python with two lines of code, when the author's code sprawls across one entire page of this book. To avoid being dependent by the programming language, it would be better to occupy the same space with numerical examples of calculation. Apart from C++, I recommend this book; it helped my automated trading efforts. Read more

Really good book. You can tell that the author knows what he is talking about, and that he is an experienced practitioner himself. Besides explanations of the indicators, there are valuable comments on what they’re good for and how choose parameters. Read more