Currency Trading: How to Access and Trade the World's Biggest Market

In Currency Trading: How to Access and Trade the World's Biggest Market, expert trading veteran Philip Gotthelf provides a cutting-edge and comprehensive overview of the largest market in the world-where currency trading volume exceeds $1 trillion daily-and shows you how to take advantage of the fluctuations within currency markets to reap enormous rewards.

Currency Trading is filled with in-depth insights and valuable advice that any level of currency trader can appreciate. Numerous real-world examples and case studies help drive each point home in a straightforward, no-nonsense manner. Topics discussed include:

• The principle of "parity" and how to master it
• How currency markets such as futures, options, Interbank, and forwards work
• Events that affect currency value-from interest rates to a country's economic position
• Forecasting using fundamental and technical analysis
• Basic to advanced trading strategies for currency markets
• How to avoid scams and take advantage of legal manipulations within currency markets

The dynamics and rules of currency trading are constantly changing. There is no point in following the outdated advice of "experts." Currency Trading offers practical information which will allow you to cultivate your own views of currency trading, sharpen your skills, and ultimately, draw your own conclusions on where, when, and how to trade almost any currency-from U.S. Dollars to Euros.

To name but a few examples, Fig 6.5 caption says "Cash Currency trading screen" but it's actually a bar chart of Yen futures (p.124)

The data for Figure 8.11 (a perpetual contracts bar chart of Yen) is presented with the caption of Figure 8.10 ("Soybeans futures monthly chart"). No soybeans chart is presented at all; instead, a Nikkei futures chart mysteriously appears (p. 212)

Figure 8.41 is printed upside down! (p.236). Honestly. This is perhaps the ultimate insult to the reader and ought to be a source of acute embarrassment to the editor and author.

Academy Award nominee James Caan, with two a's, will be amused to read p. 89 which states "... has been depicted in fiction such as the movie Rollerball starring James Cann" with two n's.

Those who buy the book believing it may deliver on the dustjacket's promise "How to trade the world's biggest market" will receive a disappointment. The only trading strategy Gotthelf reveals is "Go Long when price crosses above a moving average, Go Short when price crosses below a moving average." Then he regurgitates standard methods of creating a synthetic position using options. There is absolutely nothing new here.

No review would be complete without mentioning Gotthelf's mysterious concept of Parity. First he tells you it's "a ratio that always equals one" (page 24). Next he tells you "there are no exact relationships" in FOREX (page 32), leaving you to wonder how Parity could always equal one if there are no exact relationships. Then he muddles through two hundred more pages and eventually you, the reader, decode the fact (which Gotthelf never bothers to state exactly) that his "Parity" actually means "Equilibrium". Great. But where's the insight?

I own several other Wiley Finance books and all of them have wonderful quotes from important figures in the trading world, in the form of testimonials and gushing recommendations on the rear dustjacket. Kaufman's "Trading Systems and Methods" has five, Hill and Pruitt's "The Ultimate Trading Guide" has four, Ryan Jones's "The Trading Game" has five, Sweeney's "Maximum Adverse Excursion" has three, et cetera ad nauseum. But this currency book by Gotthelf has exactly zero quotes on the dustjacket. No recommendations, no congratulations, no endorsements. I suggest you follow the advice of everyone who DIDN'T write a recommendation for Gotthelf's book: stay away.


Thanks Disappointed and Disgusted from Northern California   May 9, 2004
11 out of 11 found this review helpful

The author spends way too much time explaining basic economic indicators that should be basic knowledge for any investor. After I read another review that outlined the blundering editorial mistakes, I had to see for myself. All true! I cannot continue reading this text... How can anyone who makes this many conspicuous mistakes get a book deal much less be right about anything? Not worth the $70 price tag!


I wasted my money   January 25, 2003
Mila (Calgary, Canada)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful

I'm extremely disappoited in this heavily overpriced book! There is only some very vague general information, " something about...". Absolutely nothing useful, not a bit to learn from even for beginner. You could learn much more from the Internet for free, or, at least, read the books by Cornelius Luca!