Markets in Profile: Profiting from the Auction Process

[MadMarketScientist 11]

From the Inside Flap

Fifteen years since publishing Mind over Markets—their seminal work on markets and investor behavior—Dalton, Jones, and Dalton have greatly expanded their scope, delving deeply into the ways in which the auction process reveals the actions of all investor time frames. They believe that by understanding timeframe behavior through developing market structure, it is possible to identify asymmetric opportunities that can ameliorate risk and help ensure financial dominance.

This book is a bold call to action for all investors—from day traders through the longest-term individual investors, to traditional asset managers and hedge funds that control trillions of dollars. It challenges serious traders, investors, and researchers to reach beyond price-based market analysis and traditional fundamental research for a more contextual approach . . . an approach that translates the principles of behavioral finance into actionable reality by examining the relationship between price, time, and volume.

 

The authors take a profoundly different approach toward the traditional separation between day, short-, intermediate-, and long-term investors, pointing out that even the longest-term professional investor is a day trader on the day they enter, exit, trim, or add to a position. Lead author Jim Dalton and coauthor Eric Jones—having been heavily involved in selecting hedge funds and traditional managers for a leading Wall Street financial services firm—can attest to the importance of each basis point of performance in a world where one quarter's results can trigger financial triumph or a quick exodus.

 

In May of 2006, two months before the book was to be delivered to the publisher, the U.S. stock market broke eight percent in a matter of days—sending investors and the media into a tailspin. The authors saw this as an opportunity to demonstrate their theories in real-time, as opposed to cherry-picking historical events that supported their claims. The event unfolds in Chapter 6 and the authors offer sound advice and strategies on how to navigate market activity yet to unfold. The results are summarized in the Appendix, which was written after the book was submitted to the publisher. You be the judge.

 

Filled with in-depth insight and expert advice, Markets in Profile teaches you the market's basic auction process, redefines how to view and conduct research, separates the markets into different time frames, illustrates the importance of inventory imbalances, and, in sum, demystifies market behavior by showing you how to organize the market's auction process in a scientific, systematic way.

[TheNegotiator 13]

Although 'Mind Over Markets' is a classic and goes into depth about MP, Dalton himself says that 'Markets in Profile' is the really important one. I would have to agree! The book does go into some MP basics to give a base level for the reader to understand what is being discussed, but there is nothing too heavy.

 

The core of the book is understanding the context of what the market has been doing in order to best judge the probabilities of what the market may then do. This is not a book of do this, do that and you'll make a fortune, but one to open your eyes somewhat to the inner workings of the market.

 

A must read whether you use MP or not.