Whether you know it or not, you have been trading commodities all your life. Sure, you may have never traded a contract of Pork Bellies, but you have almost certainly traded a possession like a car, house, or antique for someone else's money or possession. If you have never done that, for sure you have traded time for money. You have traded your time as a teacher, lawyer, pipe fitter, or ditchdigger for someone else's money. So, you are halfway there.

Of necessity, our text has evolved along with the financial markets. In the Fifth Edition, we address many of the changes in the investment environment.
At the same time, many basic principles remain important. We believe that attention to these few important principles can simplify the study of otherwise difficult material and that fundamental principles should organize and motivate all study. These principles are crucial to understanding the securities already traded in financial markets and in understanding new securities that will be introduced in the future.

After we have set out the objectives for an investment, considered the challenges to reaching them, developed a strategy with the optimal chance of
meeting our goals, allocated assets to asset classes and managers, and purchased the securities to build our portfolios, the next step is to check the
results. Investment performance measurement is the quantification of the
results achieved by an investment program.

As investors, you have all been on the receiving end of sales pitches from brokers, friends and investment advisors about stocks that they claim will deliver spectacular returns. These stories not only sound persuasive and reasonable but are also backed up by evidence - anecdotal, in some cases, and statistical, in others - that the strategies work. When you try to implement them for your investments, though, you seldom can match their success on paper.

This publication is for short-term traders, i.e. for traders who hold stocks for one to eight days. Short-term trading assumes buying and selling stocks often. After two to four months a trader will have good statistics and he or she can start an analysis of trading results. What are the main questions, which should be answered from this analysis? Consider two hypothetical trading strategies. Suppose you use half of your trading capital to buy stocks selected by your secret system and sell them on the next day. The other half of your capital you use to sell short some specific stocks and close positions on the next day.

It was in the issue of May 25, 1959, that Time Magazine devoted almost a full page in its Business Section to the extraordinary stock-market story of a dancer— Nicolas Darvas. Time told how this complete non-professional, ". . . who ignores tips, financial stories and brokers' letters," was able to make himself a millionaire several times over through the investment methods he developed. This article raised a lot of eyebrows among Wall Streeters who were shocked by Mr.

You are about to begin a journey into the science of investment analysis. Many of you may think that using the word science to describe the activities of Wall Street is a misnomer. Luck, chance, or voodoo are probably closer to your explanation of investment activity. I hope to convince you otherwise. As you make this journey, it should become obvious that investment analysis and its related extensions are rigorous enough to be taken as an actual science.

In 1901 pharmacist Charles Walgreen bought the drugstore in which he worked on the South Side of Chicago. Today Walgreen’s is the largest drugstore chain in the United States. If, like Charles Walgreen, you start on your own, with no partners or stockholders, you are said to be a sole proprietor. You bear all the costs and keep all the profits after the Internal Revenue Service has taken its cut.

My unique position in the financial community has allowed me the rare opportunity to talk to and question thousands of traders, brokers, and trading advisors since 1979. I am not a broker or a letter writer. I am the chief executive officer of CompuTrac, a company that supplies technical analysis to stock and futures traders. I perceive my position as being neutral, one that allows people to open up and talk to me freely.

This book is based on a series of seminars delivered over a period of many years to people working in the global financial markets. The material has expanded and evolved over that time. Participation on the seminars has covered the widest possible spectrum in terms of age, background and seniority, ranging all the way from new graduate entrants to the financial services industry up to very senior managing directors.