The critical drawback is, unless you subscribe with a fee to the author's research material or become his client (MBF is the largest clearing firm in the Nymex), you dont know what those time, trading period and vehicle specific inputs for the ACD system are, and everything written in the book becomes sales talk alike.
Nevertheless, with respect to Tudor Jones, I do agree with his compliment of Chapter 7 (The ACD version of Ripley's Believe it or Not) that it "presents incredible, real stories from the trading pit. Experienced traders will see themselves and their flaws in these stories, while novices can learn from these professional traders' mistakes". However, how can one single chapter compensate the cost of the whole 8 chapter book?
p.s.
1. Suprisingly, the domain mentioned in the book ...is registered but not in operation yet.
2. The "meat" of Chapter 7 include:
- Good News/Bad Action: When the news is good and the market just does not rise correspondly, sell.
- I have no clue: When a market goes up or down for no apparent reason, it tends to go a lot further int hat direction than people can imagine.
- Be the house: The more time you spend at the tabls, the more bets you are going to place, and the greater the probability that you will eventually walk out of the casino as a loser. The casino would rather not have someone make a single large wager and, win or lose, immediately walk away.
- Next!: An important rule of trading is that time is much more important than price. If the market doesnt move your way within a short time of putting on a trade, just get out.
This is an excellent book. One of the other reviewer's pointed out that as the biggest energy trader on NYMEX and as someone who built a very successful clearing firm, Mark Fisher is a "Michael Jordon" of his field. His bona fides cannot be questioned.
The fact that Paul Tudor Jones' recommends this book to his traders as a must read (as PTJ points out in the foreword) should also be noted.
Mark Fisher describes in great detail his approach to trading - the ACD System. This is a very robust system that works across markets and time frames. It has also held up well for > 20 yrs.
As Fisher points out in the book most of his traders adapt the ACD approach to their own styles. This is something I have done as well. I have tested this methodology and it unquestionably has merit.
The main question one should ask is - does one have the discipline to follow the system without hesitation? Discipline (or execution or psychology - whatever one calls it) is a huge determinant of investment returns. Some people cannot make $ even if they are presented with a high expectancy system because they are constantly second guessing the signals. The importance of discipline is magnified when one is dealing with an intra day system.
Bottom line, this is an excellent book from a market master whose methods have been proven across many markets by 100s of people over decades. If you have the discipline to follow a pretty active system (mutiple times per week) w/o hesitation and stick with it through drawdowns then you can profitably use the ACD system.
So much for the authors "messianic willings" to share his system with the public for $60, as Paul Jones claims on the back of the book. Basically, for $60 you get a puff piece making you ask "where's the beef". If you care to waste your time, I suggest you read some of the junk you probably already receive in the mail regarding "secret" systems rather than spending $60 on this promotional piece of work.