Techniques of Tape Reading

[Soultrader 12]

One of the best tape reading books available. For any trader new to tape reading, this is a must read.

 

Covers the teachings of Wyckoff and Neill. The author shows various setups combining price and tape with the final section dedicated to charts. Alot of good information covered in this book from volume & price analysis, tape, trader pscyhology, etc...

 

Tape reading and volume analysis are pure information. Master these techniques and you will always be one step ahead of the crowd.

 

A must have for your trading library.

[tab321 10]

Thanks for the tip on this book

[Soultrader 12]

Hi tab321,

 

You are very welcome I personally found it to be a great book. I recommend it if you are interested in learning about tape reading.

 

Soultrader

[MrPaul 10]

Bought the book on Soul's reccomendation, and from skimming through it... A+ book! This one will get read many times over:)

[keymoo 10]

Well, I'm going to buck the trend here and say I was disappointed with this book. As I read through I kept waiting and waiting for the author to talk about tape reading, but he never did! The book starts off with an autobiography of how he started and leads on to various tech analysis setups which can be found in any good trading book and he talks about volume which is great. However, there were NO techniques on reading the tape (time and sales). None. There was not even one single screenshot in the whole book of Time and Sales.

 

If I wanted a general tech analysis book or a book on price and volume, I would have sought that out, I wanted a book on tape reading, and this book does not deliver even 1% of the topic of tape reading. A big disappointment. I am still wondering why the book was called Techniques of Tape Reading, I am amazed.

[ItalianSharp 10]

Well, I'm going to buck the trend here and say I was disappointed with this book. As I read through I kept waiting and waiting for the author to talk about tape reading, but he never did! The book starts off with an autobiography of how he started and leads on to various tech analysis setups which can be found in any good trading book and he talks about volume which is great. However, there were NO techniques on reading the tape (time and sales). None. There was not even one single screenshot in the whole book of Time and Sales.

 

If I wanted a general tech analysis book or a book on price and volume, I would have sought that out, I wanted a book on tape reading, and this book does not deliver even 1% of the topic of tape reading. A big disappointment. I am still wondering why the book was called Techniques of Tape Reading, I am amazed.

 

I must back you on everything you said. I read this book a few months ago and didn't find it helpful at all as far as Tape Reading is concerned.

[BlowFish 10]

I was a bit ambivalent towards this one. As others have said I was a little disapointed on the whole. It seems that Vlad is quite discretionary in his aproach, while he points odd reasons why there might be something he 'does not like' in a setup this side of trading is always hard to get across.

 

I thought as a beginner book it probably would not be enough to get you trading based on 'reading the tape'. A more experienced trader would probably be familiar with most concepts anyways.

 

Having said all that I still enjoyed the book as I like reading another traders take on things. It also is based on (what I believe) are solid market principles.

[luke24.5 10]

I like this book a lot. I don't understand the comments about not being about tape reading at all. Whether one uses MP, VSA, Delta, Candles, Patterns or whatever to read the market generated data (the tape), it all boils down to identifying support/resistance points and supply/demand shifts so one can plan his strategy and change on the fly if needed.

 

Graifer shows how he thinks and what he looks for to initiate a trade and what he looks for to stay in or get out of a trade. I would like to have seen more illustrations on the e-minis rather than stocks but the principles certainly apply. He apparently trades in greater quantities and must worry more about his fills than someone trading a few lots on the eminis. Therefore he must focus on the volume spikes. But whatever it is, it's reading the tape. Price + Volume + Time. What he looks for in those elements is in the book.

[jessechan 10]

I like this book as well. This is a beginner textbook for tape reading. After having a grasp over it, one should read the following books as well:

 

a. Tom Williams: Master the Market

b. Bryce Gilmore: Price Action Manual 2007

c. Suri Duddella: Trade Chart Patterns like the Pros

d. Linda Raschke: Street Smarts

 

To be more complete, one should spend more time on trading psychology as trading success is a 90% mental game.

[jperl 11]

I like this book a lot. I don't understand the comments about not being about tape reading at all.

 

I think the confusion has to do with the definition of "tape reading". Tape reading refers to the historical method of reading a ticker tape that came out of a ticker tape machine. There were no charts back in the early days. If you use this as the definition of tape reading, then Graifer's title of his book is misleading.

In today's terms, tape reading would then mean looking at "Time and Sales" data and nothing else.

If you want to learn about historical tape reading then look at the early works such as

 

"Studies In Tape Reading" by Rollo Tape (Richard Wycoff)

"Tape Reading & Market Tactics" by Humphrey B. Neill

"Ticker Technique" by Orline D. Foster

and the all time classic:

"Reminiscences of a Stock Operator" by Edwin Lefevre

[luke24.5 10]

I don't think any of those forementioned leaders of tapereading would be doing the same thing they did when all they had to watch was numbers rolling across the tape. However their principles are very consistent with Graifer's definition: "Principles of tapereading ... match price movement to crowd behavior in the form of a rate of volume" (P.92).

 

Thus the object of the book is not to give a history lesson or teach one to use only technology available decades or centuries ago. Graifer's methods are consistent with his definition and with what he promises on the book cover.

 

Definition then is a problem but Graifer delivers on what he promised in the title of the book. I prefer the term "market generated data" but the term tapereader has stuck and is used commonly. It's all about understanding Price + volume + time and what it's "telling" you in real time.

[jperl 11]

I don't think any of those forementioned leaders of tapereading would be doing the same thing they did when all they had to watch was numbers rolling across the tape.

I think you are wrong on that one. In fact I know quite a number of traders who trade using only time and sales, no charts.

Also do you think floor traders are looking at charts when they trade?

 

Thus the object of the book is not to give a history lesson or teach one to use only technology available decades or centuries ago. Graifer's methods are consistent with his definition and with what he promises on the book cover.

This doesn't change the fact that the book cover and title are misleading.

In fact if you look at the book cover, what do you see? You see a picture of a ticker tape machine with tape pouring out of it.

I was thus expecting that the book would be discussing how to read time and sales data in real time. There is in fact not a single discussion of time and sales.

[luke24.5 10]

The book and cover are not misleading because in the subtitle promises:

• 
  How to "read the tape" in any market.
  Seprarate market reality from market misperception
  Learn what price/volume action reveals.

 

Note that "read the tape" is in parenthesis. Agree or not, the term is commonly used to describe virtually any method that interpets market sentiment through real-time volume/price interaction.

 

I found this approach refreshing because I had studied mostly through a MP + filtered T&S and market delta approach. I find I can more easily recognize change in sentiment through candle shapes and VOL Profile. Guess I'm more visually oriented.

 

If you want to say T&S is the "only" form of "tapereading" have at it. It is closest to what early traders had. But to say it is the only way to interpret the principles taught by Wyckoff, Scabacher, etc. is wrong.

 

Therefore I continue to recommend this book, especially to traders new to reading market generated data in real time and trading without indicators, or those like myself, to whom a picture is worth a thousand numbers.

[jperl 11]

Note that "read the tape" is in parenthesis. Agree or not, the term is commonly used to describe virtually any method that interpets market sentiment through real-time volume/price interaction.

Well I guess we will have to agree to disagree. But I would think that the old pros (and some new pros) who just use time and sales would laugh if you told them you were "reading the tape" by drawing a chart. Once you introduce a chart into the analysis, you are doing a form of technical analysis.

 

In my "Trading with Market Statistics" threads, I only show price and volume in the analysis, but I would hardly call this tape reading. There are others discussion in these forums that use price and volume only, such as volume spread analysis, wide range body analysis, candle shape analysis. I don't think I have seen any description of these as "tape reading".

 

If you want to say T&S is the "only" form of "tapereading" have at it. It is closest to what early traders had. But to say it is the only way to interpret the principles taught by Wyckoff, Scabacher, etc. is wrong.

 

Schabacker (that's with an h and a k) as far as I can tell, never mentions the words tape reading in his books. In fact he is probably the father of modern technical analysis using charts.

[firewalker 10]

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, there are some absolute gems of information in it. Over time I've found myself reading chapters again, discovering more truths hidden in the chart, but well explained by Graifer. This is a book I would recommend to anyone who's interesting in doing the work themselves, but not to those who are looking for a book about what to do and how to do it. Graifer suggest several approaches, but fundamentally he proposes that you trade based on scenarios. If X happens, then you do A. If Y happens instead, you act by doing B.

 

As for 'tape reading', the best elements are contained on the least number of pages. Don't expect anything about Time & Sales, because that's not what this book is about. You don't need T&S imo, just plain P/V.

[Trader333 10]

I bought this book around 3 years ago when I was trading US stocks extensively and found it to be one of the best that I had read. The principles in the book have been discussed at length by others such as dbphoenix and were of real use at the time for me in understanding the phases involved in accumulation and distribution. In more recent times there is now a view that analysis of volume for trading of stocks is not as useful as it once was because of the way in which transactions are being conducted. I have not looked into this with any depth but it did come from a colleague who is the best trader of stocks that I have met.

 

 

Paul

[bingk6 10]

If the book does not go into any sort of detail about T & S, how much detail does it go into reading the information available in the DOM, eg bid price, bidsize, askprice asksize. As an example, does it tell you the strategies one should use if the bidask spread is wide ? what to do if a large at market sell order comes onto the market and takes out 3 levels of the bids and if you wish to enter long, what order types to use (market limit whtever) and the same for shorts. Basically, I am trying to ascertain how much useful information is in the book for people that are trying to scalp using DOM.

[MRW 10]

For those who think the T&S tape can be read consistantly to trade these days, with the advent of the NYSE Hybrid, I'd suggest you give it a try. If you've not done this before, and think the approaches used prior to the Hybrid will work on anything more than a random basis, you're in for an unpleasant surprise.

 

Yes, I'm sure there are a few people who did this before and managed to adjust, but a great many more have found this approach to not work anymore. Bids stepping up, offers stepping down, looking at Level II and OpenBook to view market depth, reading the specialist in a given stock - this is all misleading at best now with iceburg orders, and people breaking huge orders up and continually entering them. Most of the T&S tape readers have either switched to longer timeframes or been unable to trade. I traded prop in the days of T&S tape reading, and am still adjusting to longer timeframes.

 

Most of the complaints about Graifer's book seem to come from those with no perspective upon which to judge it. If you've traded for awhile, and especially if you've had to adjust to the big changes of the last few years, you'll appreciate what this book has to say.