Secrets of Successful Traders
Martha Stokes, Rahul Mohindar, John Bollinger, Larry McMillan, Price Headley, Steve Nison, Ken Calhoun, Martin Pring and Barry Burns (compiled by MetaStock) · 2013 · 64 pages
A 64 page giveaway MetaStock mails with its software, stitching together nine short essays from well known technical analysts. Each writer gets six or seven pages to summarize a piece of their own paid course, so nothing here goes deep enough to trade on.
The one idea
This is not a single author's method. It is a promotional sampler MetaStock assembles from nine contributors (Martha Stokes, Rahul Mohindar, John Bollinger, Larry McMillan, Price Headley, Steve Nison, Ken Calhoun, Martin Pring, and Barry Burns), each writing one short chapter that previews a fragment of their own book, course, or newsletter. The connective idea, stated in the two page introduction, is that successful traders share three traits: they keep emotion out of decisions, they accept that not every trade wins, and they work from a written plan with defined risk.
Past that framing there is no unified method. Stokes covers how to read price, time, and volume on a chart. Mohindar pitches MetaStock's own Rahul Mohindar Oscillator (RMO). Bollinger gives his 15 rules for Bollinger Bands. McMillan explains how VIX and VIX futures are priced. Headley covers trading psychology and position sizing. Nison gives a candlestick primer. Calhoun explains breakout entries. Pring introduces a momentum technique he calls Quadruple Trendline Setups. Burns describes five market cycles he trades. Each chapter is a trailer for a longer paid product, not the product itself.
The book's real audience is a reader who has never used charting software and wants a fast, name brand tour of the vocabulary (candlesticks, Bollinger Bands, VIX, moving averages, oscillators) before deciding whether to buy MetaStock or one of the contributors' courses.
What it actually teaches
The book has no single sequential method. These are the four most concrete, numbers-backed techniques buried across the nine chapters.
RMO 3D SETUP (MOHINDAR)
Mohindar's Rahul Mohindar Oscillator, built into MetaStock 10 in 2006, signals a buy when three things line up on the same chart: a buy arrow from the Swing Trend crossover, a blue bar (medium term strength), and RMO above zero. You trigger the trade above the high of the signal bar, not on the signal bar itself. He recommends the Exit Swing indicator only after a trade has already moved 5 to 10 bars in your favor, exiting longs when it drops below 75 and shorts when it rises above 25.
BOLLINGER BAND DEFAULTS (BOLLINGER)
The middle band is a 20 period simple moving average. The upper and lower bands sit two standard deviations above and below it. Bollinger's own rule 11 says the two settings move together: lengthen the average to 50 periods and the band width should widen to 2.1 standard deviations; shorten it to 10 periods and narrow the bands to 1.9. His rule 15 is a warning as much as a rule: touching a band is a tag, not a signal, and is not by itself a reason to buy or sell.
CUP BREAKOUT WITH SAFETY BUFFER (CALHOUN)
Calhoun's entry for a cup pattern breakout is the prior resistance high plus a buffer, not the resistance level itself, because price often stalls right at the old high. For stocks and ETFs he uses a 0.35 to 0.60 buffer above the cup's right side. For E-mini futures like the ES he uses 4 to 6 ticks above the cup high, and for forex, 20 to 30 pips. He also screens for stocks trading at least 1.5 million shares a day with a 1 point daily range, arguing false breakouts mostly come from overtrading low volume, choppy charts.
WRITTEN RISK PLAN (HEADLEY)
Headley caps portfolio risk at under 2 percent per trade. In his own accounts he sizes each position at roughly 10 percent of capital, so a 20 percent loss on a single position only costs the account 2 percent. He also caps himself at about seven open positions at once, on the reasoning that beyond that he starts missing exits because he cannot track that many charts closely.
What it looks like Monday morning
There isn't a system here to put on Monday morning. What a reader can actually take away is a checklist: write the trading plan down (entries, exits, order types, position size, and a journal), because Headley's chapter argues that step alone puts you ahead of most traders who never do it. If you already use Bollinger Bands, adopt rule 11 (band width should scale with the moving average length you pick) and rule 15 (a band tag is not a signal by itself).
If you trade breakouts, Calhoun's safety buffer (35 to 60 cents on stocks, a handful of ticks on E-minis, 20 to 30 pips on forex) is a specific, usable filter worth testing against your own instrument and timeframe rather than buying the exact high.
| Contract | Level |
|---|---|
| VIX | 13.45 |
| August VIX futures | 15.09 |
| September VIX futures | 18.17 |
| October VIX futures | 20.28 |
| November VIX futures | 21.92 |
| December VIX futures | 23.01 |
| January VIX futures | 24.94 |
| February VIX futures | 26.03 |
| March VIX futures | 26.70 |
McMillan notes a term structure sloping this steeply upward has historically pointed to an overbought market likely to flatten out, while a negative slope (futures priced below spot VIX) tends to show up during bear markets, as it did when VIX hit 48 in August 2011 while the front month future settled far lower at 36.55.
Perfectionism does not lead to higher performance or greater happiness.Price Headley, Secrets of Successful Traders
Where it fails
- It is a vendor giveaway, not an authored book. MetaStock owns the copyright and distributes this free to promote its software. The first four pages are a MetaStock ad, the last two pages are a MetaStock discount offer, and Mohindar's whole chapter promotes an indicator MetaStock built into its own platform in 2006. Judge it as marketing collateral with some real content mixed in, not as a standalone trading book.
- No chapter shows a track record. Not one of the nine contributors publishes a win rate, a drawdown, or an equity curve for the technique they describe. Calhoun's cup breakout, Pring's Quadruple Trendline Setups, and Burns' five cycle method are all described as reliable with no backtest attached, only single winning chart examples (QQQ, STX, PRU) selected to illustrate the idea.
- McMillan's VIX chapter is dated by its own examples. The chapter's newest case study is August 2011 (VIX spiking to 48 while VIX futures lagged), and it explains VIX products current to 2013: VXX (launched 2009), listed VIX options (2006), and the CBOE's post 2003 SPX based calculation. It does not cover anything that happened to volatility products after 2013, including later reverse splits and new leveraged variants of the same ETNs it describes.
- The psychology material is three pages, not a book's worth. Given the shelf category, a reader expecting a psychology focused book will find only Headley's chapter (about 5 pages) on perfectionism, fear, and confidence. It is a solid short read (his half position entry rule for perfectionists is a real, usable idea) but it is a fraction of a 64 page booklet, most of which is charting mechanics from the other eight contributors.
- Every worked example is a winner. Calhoun's QQQ cup, STX gap continuation, and PRU scale in trade are all shown after the fact as clean successes. None of the nine chapters walks through a losing trade using the author's own rules, so a reader has no idea how these setups look when the safety buffer, the RMO signal, or the QTS trendline break fails.
- It assumes access to MetaStock or equivalent charting software. The RMO chapter and the closing MetaStock advertisement both assume the reader already has, or is about to buy, MetaStock. Several techniques (RMO signals, the Exit Swing indicator, the FORECASTER mentioned on the closing pages) are built into that specific platform and are not simple to replicate freehand on a generic chart.
Who it is for
Buy it if
You are new to technical analysis and want a fast, free, one sitting tour of the vocabulary (candlesticks, Bollinger Bands, VIX, cup breakouts, moving average cycles) narrated by nine recognizable names, or you already use or are evaluating MetaStock and want a taste of what each contributor teaches in their paid material.
Skip it if
You want an actual tested trading system with performance data, a real psychology book, or content that has not since been superseded by each author's own longer work. Skip it too if vendor sponsored content bothers you: this is a MetaStock sales piece with essays attached, not the reverse.
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