Bollinger on Bollinger Bands

by John Bollinger

Book Overview

John Bollinger is a giant in today's trading community. His Bollinger Bands sharpen the sensitivity of fixed indicators, allowing them to more precisely reflect a market's volatility. By more... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0071373683
• Release Date: August 2001
• Publisher: McGraw Hill
• Length: 227 Pages
• Weight: 1.43 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.8" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Recommended reading!

Beeing a Bollinger Band enthusiast for many years, I found it very helpful to read from the creator of the bands how to interpret and use them. There are many ways to use BBs, but the book has helped me to understand and confirm some thoughts of my own. Mr Bollinger describes about M and W formations and how BBs can help you understand and foresee them better. He introduce a new concept to me, normalized indicators and also new indicators derived from the bands themselves. All these indicators come with complete formulas for you to create yourself in your preferred technical analysis program if you want to. He also explains three different strategies were you can use BBs and decribed indicators as systems for your trade. This book is now definately one of my favorites and I will read parts of it over and over again.

If history has taught us anything...

...is that it continually keeps repeating itself. And Bollinger Bands are one of the tools helping you notice it and profit from it. If you think you know everything about BB you'd better not say it too loud before you read this book. Being myself a mixture of day-swing trader I have to say it helps a lot, although I look at other tools before entering or exiting a trade. But if you are a position trader or a mid-long term investor, I think the BB are a valuable tool at your disposal. You're not going to make a killing only by using this tool, but if you combine the BB with other tools such as simple or exponential moving averages, volume, RSI and/or momentum and accumulation/distribution, you have much better chances of being financially more independent. The most part of day-swing-position trading and mid-long term investing book authors tend to make things seem much more complicated than they are (I suspect they do it on purpose-to make you feel foolish or to make you think they are geniuses?). Well, John Bollinger's book is very simple to understand, and it's exactly the simplicity in explaining somehow difficult tools and theories that I like the most.

Excellent...on an Absolute and a Relative Basis

I've been trading for a living for more than 5 years, and am now a frequent commentator on a major financial website. As a student of the market, I became familiar with Bollinger Bands very early in my career. I thought I knew how to use them, and ALWAYS looked at them as a reference before entering any trades. However, after reading this book, I realized that I was just barely skimming the surface of this important indicator. I've read it 3 times, and all the margins are now marked up with notes. The most striking revelation to me was the difference between "absolute" and "relative" readings -- in other words, how a stock could make a new high on an absolute level, but actually be a failure in reference to the upper Bollinger Band. This simple, yet elegant, idea has had a profound effect on how I view price action, and I find that my other technical indicators are much more revealing when viewed in this context. The book is infinitely readable for both novice and seasoned investors, and there is also enough math and statistical data to satisfy most geeks. Mr. Bollinger also discusses various other indicators that can (and should) be used in conjunction with Bollinger Bands. Remarkably, Mr. Bollinger also supports the content of his book with a free website .... You can use all the indicators he highlights inhis book, and customize them according to your own parameters. It's basicallyan "on-going continuing education" program. Nice to finally see somebody primarily concerned with teaching rather than self-promotion and profit.The bottom line is this: If you want to learn how to increase your performance in both trending and non-trending markets, this book is a "must-read." It is NOT a trading system; rather, it is an excellent and insightful dissertation on the proper usage of Bollinger Bands. In the current sideways market environment, Bollinger Bands are more useful than ever. No serious trader/investor should be without this book.

Probably the best book on trading stocks that I have read.

This is a thoroughly practical and readable book. I have read too many where one is encouraged to trade in a specific way and stellar results are guaranteed. Certainly I have found difficulty in extracting profits from some of the snake oil salesmen's ideas. Bollinger does not sell snake oil.This book is different. It is neither an ego trip nor is it filled with endless pages of tables which serve no useful purpose, other than to make the book seem better value. He makes plain, that one has to find a trading style to suit oneself, and is not overly proscriptive. All of his ideas are well laid out and easy to verify and equally applicable to stocks and commodities. He gives a number of formulae in the book, and these are easily translated into action, in say TradeStation, by seasoned professionals and beginners alike. In short, this book is excellent, and I hope it will take it's place on the traders best sellers list.

What The Doctor Ordered

A quiet, well paced, unassuming power house of history, insight, and trading experience all rolled into an easy flowing, unpretentious read. Bollinger manages to teach us about his indicator, and about the market itself without shameless self promotion or hype. Bollinger on Bollinger bands is what this market needed, a clear, concise and useful tool for investors to use to provide balance in a chaotic time. As a financial writer, and money manager, who uses Bollinger Bands on every trade, I found that the book gave me new ways to not just trade, but analyze the market and decide when not to trade, which is where the difference between success and failure is often deciced. The book is written in a fluid, easy to digest manner, which gives the reader room to sit back and ponder between chapters. There are clear, one sentence summary statements after each section, which pull the material together quite well and reinforce the main points. Other useful aids include a pull out reference card with statistical formulas and reference charts. The best thing is that Bollinger, a bona fide market guru, doesn't take himself too seriously. He humbly admits that trading has a great deal of uncertainty, and does not tout his own fortunes as a result of his indicator. The book can also be read as a nice historical piece, which begins with the nostalgic foreword by CNBC's Ron Insana about the old FNN news room, including a classic anecdote about the late Ed Hart, who for all of us who knew FNN could only bring a smile. Thanks John.