How do you know that 99% of TA is crap if these books have zero performance data? This is one of those typical hater posts that has no basis in reality. I get something out of every TA book that I've read because my job is to figure out what everyone else is doing. For example, swing traders like to take trades around the previous day's highs and lows. Do you know how many times these traders get triggered and f***ed? Or take the opening range breakout... how many times does price typically traverse the opening range before actually breaking out (Crabel)? I love TA books because they allow me to apply technical analysis in the most misanthropic way, i.e., at which points will most traders get hurt? Traders who cut themselves off from this resource are shortchanging their profitability.
Because they've been tested by academia, clueless. And many have been tested by me as well. Hard of thinking, much?
A stradivarius in the hands of a hilljack doesn't mean the instrument is a piece of crap. TA is really not about testing an indicator. It's about quantifying the behaviour of buyers and sellers. Too many trader-wannabe's cannot get beyond the idea that trading involves hard work and risk. They are continually looking for the holy grail or the turnkey indicator that one can set and forget. That said, the author of this thread is asking for opinions about the best book... not opinions about the validity of TA. Perhaps we can respect the author enough to maintain the integrity of the thread by providing input specific to his question. I like the classic by Edwards and McGee.
Any TA method that works today, might not work tomorrow, and some TA books that look brilliant today, might look stupid tomorrow. Just read Nassim Taleb's Fooled By Randomness. My advice, read as many books as you can, but don't take them too seriously.
Go with what your prof suggests. He probably suggested to ship reading stuff that did not fit his mold as well. I wish your post were a sentence or two longer so I could have found out what the results are of following the admonission you gave me that he briefly put into your head. A diatribe for most of us is something negative. Naturally, a rambling one is less effective. actually what I wrote probalbly to you was so long that it failed to even be a diatribe. Oh well who knows. Please do not waste you time writing criticisms of my stuff which you say isn't of any value. Most people here (4 out of five) already know what you just found out. Go for the asymptote...nothing.
My nick name is Jack and my last name is Hershey. Since I once posted from two computers (I didn't know how to set up each with Jack Hershey) I used one of my cats names (Bubba7). I was thrown out of ET for not complying with the rules as a consequence of treating whiners and complainers how they treated me. So now my name is that of a glider model that I fly (grob109). There are many sites that use my stuff. I know some of those people who run them ; others I do not know especially the commercial ones. Several universities archive and process my stuff in this field. Many more do the same in an assortment of non financially oriented fields. I run an IBD Meetup group in Tucson, AZ. We have an information swap system there that is just starting up. On 08AUG05 I will be doing a handout on stops that is illustrated by a diverse set of strategies and the criteria that may be used to compare and contrast them logically. The swapping is done with hard copy and backed up with email attachments of the hardcopy.
Books Academia You How did you fall into your self built trap? Books are no good. Academia proved to you books are no good. You proved all by yourself books are no good and acadenia is correct. So you are an expert on waht is crap. Does being an expert crapologist make you an expert trader? Would it be worth slipping quietly into the presence of a few of the diverse group of people who walk the TA walk as real time expert traders. See if you can take the chance of finding a 100 or so and take notes. I chose 100 to get you to see that each person you meet and learn from will represent only 1% of the population using a particular winning strategy. Each differing successful method is only 1% of your 100% sample and their only commonality is that they are winners using what you think is crap.
Another of the hard-of-thinking chimes in. Yo, innie, for you and any others having trouble using simple deductive logic, what I said was that most TA books (not all, most -- sorry if that's too much nuance for you slow learners but that's life) aren't worth the paper they're written on. That's the fact, Jack. Deal with it. So I agree with those who say stick to the TA websites until you can find a really worthwhile (and therefore rare) TA book because at least the web stuff is (tada!) FREE. At least you don't pay for the privilege of chasing your tail for however long it takes to realize that Indicator X is a piece of crap, like 98% of its brethren. Nobody here is saying you should be able find the Holy Grail in a TA book but when a newbie can't even beat Buy&Hold with a typical TA book, he or she should be made aware of that. You got a problem with Caveat Emptor? Tough. Geez, it's like trying to teach algebra to a chimp around here sometimes.