Joe Ross has done it again…he produced another outstanding trading manual for futures traders. This book has become affectionately known as the “Hook Book”, and those who practice its precepts, “Hookers”. For those who have lived in a cave for the past three years and don’t know about the Joe Ross Phenomenon, let me explain. He is a long-time, successful professional futures trader (for more than 35 years) who only recently began teaching his trading methods and ideas. They are set forth in (to date) four books and taught privately in seminars. Joe’s decision to share his trading knowledge with others was brought about by a severe medical problem, which resulted in a near-death experience and months in a hospital.
During all the years I have been reading, reviewing and discussing with others books on trading, I have never seen the degree of enthusiasm that Joe’s books have generated. Unique in style of writing and presentation, they teach, in very specific terms, his own way of analyzing and trading markets. He writes in a way that virtually every trader can relate to.
Trading the Ross Hook shows how Ross employs a chart pattern he terms the Ross Hook, which can only exist, by definition, in a trending market. It shows how he “discovered” it and, in great detail, how he uses this pattern in his own trading.
Ross characterizes this method as “an approach that raises avoidance of loss to the highest pinnacle of decision making”. Its chief characteristic is avoidance of overtrading and an almost fanatical avoidance of loss of capital. He advises that his method is unusually profitable year in and year out (without offering specific results or proof).
The reader is shown, in specific detail, various methods that you can use to “filter” trades, so you can choose those with a higher chance of success. Various filtering techniques include the use of Stochastics, Commodity Channel Index, Bollinger Bands and MA envelopes.
Computerless traders can take heart from the chapter entitled “Vanilla Hooks”, which Ross shows how to trade the pattern without the use of any oscillator or study, using nothing more sophisticated than a daily newspaper. He specifies this as his own preferred method of trading the Hook!
The book shows how to:
- Manage Hook trades once initiated
- Manage risk
- Place a variety of stops
- Set profit objectives
This method may be used with virtually any market (including stocks and indices), in virtually any time frame. The book is profusely illustrated with numerous chart examples, which range from a 1-minute S&P chart to a monthly gold chart.
As in his other books, Ross leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination, getting right to specifics and staying there. Also, as usual, he occasionally takes a break to digress and poke fun at other methods he feels are not as worthwhile as his own: “When I presented the simplicity of the Ross Hook to one of the great Fibonacci luminaries of our time, he snickered. He patronizingly told me about the magic of Fibonacci retracements.”
Ross has great confidence in his trading methods, as presented here and in his other books: “I have seen markets come and go. I have seen traders come and go, and yet the methods that have consistently made me money are still there...the nature of the markets (has changed), but my way of trading...still works…if you detest complicated trading as I do, you are in for a treat."
As with all of Ross’s books, this one carries a steep price tag ($175). Also as with the others, it is well worth the price, in my opinion. Edward Dobson, President
Traders Press, Inc.
Greenville, SC
More information and a detailed Table of Contents may be viewed at http://www.traderspress.com/detail.php?PKey=410
