Trading with the Odds: Using the Power of Statistics to Profit in the Futures Market

by Cynthia Kase

Book Overview

Every trader will appreciate this reliable, realistic, and systematic approach to trading financial and commodity markets. In a step-by-step manner, the author applies a rigorous mathematical... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 155738911X
• ISBN13: 9781557389114
• Release Date: March 1996
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill
• Length: 149 Pages
• Weight: 1.22 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 7.3" x 10.2"

Customer Reviews

Original and real work to read

Cynthia Kase thinks about trading in a different way from most people. She's terrific but you need both brains and some conceptual understanding of statistics to "get" this book. Just to take an example, I have never heard anyone else explain that risk is proportional to the square root of time (or tick) interval: lower your time span, lower your risk. If that kind of thinking excites you, you're at the right place.

A Serious Professional - Excellent Work!

For any trader looking for real concrete answers and positive direction in technical analysis, this is the book to read! Ms. Kase is able to break down the main elements of the markets into easy to understand terms and logically explains how and why her approach and methods work.Her impressive successful background and experience cannot be disputed; this shows in her work. There are many weak "black box" systems for sale out there - this is not one of them. The Kase indicators and methods to trading in the markets are not limited to specific periods in time, nor are they limited to specific markets; this is the fundamental basis for their solidity and amazing accuracy.Her "Dev-Stop" and "PeakOscillator" are excellent tools! I highly recommend this book and the fine work of Ms. Kase to any trader serious about trading using technical indicators.

Statistics approach to the markets - Excellent

I ordered this book and then devoured it twice. I disagree with other inputs that the book does not provide details for the indicators. Ms. Kase is extremely open in disclosing the math and logic behind her technical indicators and her overall approach to the markets via statistics. With little study, one can easily derive her mathematical approach. The chapter explaining standard deviations was worth the price of the book alone. Having taken a post-graduate level statistics class, I found her explanation of standard deviations and statistics to be the best I've ever read to explain the math. You do not need to be a math whiz to understand her approach because of the easy-to-understand explanations. If you trade using standard deviations, this is a "must-read" book.

TIME TRAVEL FOR TECHNICAL ANALYSTS

Trading With the Odds exemplifies one of Larry Williams' observations about text books on technical analysis and trading in general: thinner is better. Cynthia Kase delivers a spare 150 pages crammed full of fresh ideas about technical analysis and profitable trading, written in the rigorous voice of a professional engineer and corporate trader. The narrative style compares to other technical books the way espresso compares to coffee: highly concentrated and correspondingly brief, but rich in explanatory sidebars, chart illustrations and appended tutorials.Definitely not a quick read or a quick solution, and certainly not a How To book in the sense of giving you TradeStation or UltiManager printouts to try to replicate at home. Instead, Trading With the Odds is an idea book, almost terse in its highly focused thesis. It is a make-you-think book, not for whiners or week-end warriors but for serious players who will do any amount of work to develop an edge in trading.Probability is both a narrative thesis and working paradigm in Trading With the Odds: it is an interpretive approach for ordering the uncertainty at the right-hand side of the chart. If you know the pain of seeing weeks of careful system-building dissolve during walk-forward testing as parameters shift over time, you will be receptive to Ms. Kase's message. Her goal is a self-adapting method.Expect to see familiar topics from a fresh point of view: volatility, range, filters, set-up and entry criteria, oscillators. Add to that some intellectual property from Ms. Kase's proprietary systems: a practical guide for using Elliott Wave Theory in forecasting; screening trades in a different time-frame from actual trading, then fine-tuning entries in yet another time-frame, all part of a concept of time diversification in a single market; synthetic bars; and ideas about the skew of volatility and the applications of stochastic processes and random walk theory.Trading With the Odds is not recommended as a beginner's book, because beginners need small steps with lots of nurturing along the way. Ms. Kase takes big strides down a narrow path with scarcely a backward glance (save for the handy tutorials and sidebars), which is sure to leave many students out-of-breath and far behind. The challenge is well worth it, however, and certainly worth the price of the book. The best traders make their own decisions, solve their own problems and develop their own strategies, so it follows that the best text books for some students are those that help them ask better questions. Trading With the Odds is one of those books.