Technical Analysis: Power Tools for Active Investors

Author: Gerald Appel

Publisher: Pearson Education (Upper Saddle River, NJ)

ISBN: 0-13-147902-4

Technical Analysis: Power Tools for Active Investors is a 241 page, hardbound book, comprised of 10 chapters.  It includes a foreword (by another financial expert/author, Alexander Elder) and acknowledgements sections, as well as an introduction and, at the end, an index.  Gerald Appel, the author, is famous, among technicians and followers of technical analysis (TA), as the inventor/creator of the Moving Average Convergence-Divergence (MACD).

            This book could be characterized as (1) a comprehensive introductory- or (2) intermediate-level book for would be, serious technicians/traders.  It is also possible that this book might represent the appropriate choice for the trader looking for the first and last (only) book to purchase on TA.  This might be the case for those already “tooled up” and preferring to trade based on (the alternative) fundamental analysis (FA), but looking for a quick reference guide for their permanent library on investing.

This book is well-written, well organized, and I particularly enjoyed the author’s inclusion of some introductory, calendar-based cycles (e.g., day of the month; p. 90-).  For those who enjoy reading Raging Bull, Yahoo! Finance, and other stock chat message boards, from time to time, either to gain insights into sentiment and test their predictions or to compare their opinions to those developed by others, this book provides a more than adequate indoctrination into the TA jargon that will better enable them to communicate with other traders on these boards.

            The cost of this book, at less than $50, is not prohibitive, especially for a work so rich with content.  The active investor, the target audience for this book, is likely to be able to read and digest the content in a single day, referring to it, from time to time, as the need or desire arises.

 The above review was contributed by: Anthony (A.J.) Cataldo II.    Dr. Cataldo holds a PhD from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University , MAc ( University of Arizona)  unofficial minor in Marketing , BSBA  (University of Arizona). He is a Certified Management Accountant and a Certified Public Accountant:  Click Here to view Anthony's Reviews