In the old days, traveling salesmen would sell snake oil to unsuspecting customers lauding the product as a cure-all for everything. Stage magicians at sideshows would fool audiences with smoke and mirrors. This is my impression of Toni Turner's book, A beginner's Guide to Day Trading Online. It is written in a juvenile and almost hysterical manner by which she punctuates every other sentence with an exclaimation mark. I found the book full of smoke and mirrors. She sets up phony examples to bolster her methods for day trading. The parts about reading charts and interpreting data are so skewed and confusing that anyone following her advice will be sure to lose money. The bottom line is that she has been lucky. Her methods for sucessful trading are standard *guideline* methods in day trading circles. She has elevated these rules of thumb to the status of sure-fire fact. I found her book insulting and condescending to her readers. [...]

The lessons of this book can be valuable, but will not make of you a wise investor. I have known people who theoretically knew about mathematics, but most of them knew only a poor few tricks to solve roughly some counts without any sense of the logics subjacent. Sometimes simply there are good luck, and the problem solves well, but when not- when real talent is necessary- the results are disastrous. In extrapolating that, if you belong to that class of professional, no matter if a trader, of lawyer, physician, chemist, etc, etc, this book only will serve you to fall in dire straits because in Stock Market you play for yourself, with your own money and nobody will protect you, who must know and understand at less some basic ideas about politics, economics in general and many other factors that go beyond the managing of the some computer graphics. No book in whole world can teach you common sense nor instinct.

Toni's book is a very good INTRODUCTION to the vast and complex world of daytrading; but please, take it from a full time trader who has lost many trades using her 'proven' methods, the book should only be that---an intro, or maybe simply a reference book for people who are simply interested in the subject. But I won't sit here and simply criticize the book; I'll give you some specifics.

For one thing, her discussion of volume bars as confirmation of strong intraday breakouts leaves alot to be desired. For example, she says that volume spikes generally presage a good breakout, but the fact is, ANY breakout---real or false---will generally show a volume spike. It's kind of like saying that wherever there's fire, there'll be smoke; therefore if you see smoke, you should be aware of fire. But remember: we're trying to find the fire BEFORE the smoke when it comes to trading. Turner deftly avoids that issue when she answers her own question ('how do you find stocks before they move') by quoting the usual and obvious (buy good liquid stocks above their moving averages, etc.). Problem is, good liquid stocks may have nothing to do with making good day trading candidates unless SOMETHING is propelling those stocks to move in the short and narrow time frame that is the daytrader's domain.

Another problem with her discussion of the all-important volume bars is poor and sometimes confusing illustrations and charts. For example, in some examples, volume bars are circled (the smoking guns that portend a breakout), but you can't really see a difference from other bars on the chart. In other cases, I found myself reading and re-reading through her chart examples, trying to interpret or make sense of what the author is seeing, but remained confused (if the reader is trying to make sense out of someone else's lack of clarity, something is wrong; the example should clearly speak for itself).

In still other examples, the author includes 'buy' signals on charts that show apparent downtrends (I would think beginners would be confused as heck at these notations!).

Try it for yourself. Go to a real time charting service and try to make sense of volume bars on an intraday chart, and you'd be better off looking at a Rubic's cube. There's just too many bars behaving too erratically to really show you anything with absolute clarity.

Another flaw is Turner's citing of moving averages (MA's), and the CCI (Commodity Channel Index) as 'crystal balls' which can predict trends-to-be. Please understand: stock charts' behavior with respect to MA's are simply not the way she describes them. So called bounces off of MA's often fail as much as they succeed, and more often fizzle and crash. Moreover, the CCI will typically show many confusing signals to all but the most highly trained and experienced day traders and even then, there is no unanimity as to its effectiveness. I can refer you to a number of daytrading message boards who've had frequent discussions on the CCI and no one has yet found it to be a one-beats-all indicator.

Turner, as other trading authors make the common sleight-of-hand mistake of laying out theories, AND THEN finding examples to support them by a kind of backward engineering. For example, if I were writing a book on how volume bars and the CCI DON'T WORK, I could also show you hundreds of failed breakouts betrayed by so-called bullish signals on the aforementioned indicators.

Trading is one of the most difficult professions on earth. In my opinion, books like Turners' who over simplify the process by presenting information that is erroneous and potentially very costly (in the form of lost trades) don't really do justice to this complex subject and those willing to take up the battle in the most serious context possible.

If you want some in depth understanding as a proper introduction into the difficulties and complexity of daytrading, I would recommend The Guts and Glory of DayTrading. THEN decide if it's right for you.

This is an outstanding introductory book for new traders. It starts with an overall picture of the markets, then teaches trading psychology, fundamental chart-reading, and Level II tactics. Traders who day trade (hold stocks for minutes to hours), swing trade (hold stocks days-to-weeks), and those who want to trade their IRA accounts long term, will learn how to make money in the stock market. Best of all, the book is written in a style that everyone can comprehend.

Another reviewer mentioned that it is beneficial for authors to have actual trading knowledge -- I totally agree! Toni Turner was one of Pristine.com's first students, and I have personally traded with Toni for over one year. She is not only extremely knowledgeable about the financial markets, but can consistently pull profits from the markets daily on all types of trades! As the title suggests, it is an awesome book to give interested traders a jump start into this exploding trading revolution. Then the traders can add to their ongoing education with many other excellent advanced books.

I received Toni Turner's book last week and have just finished my first reading. Toni has accomplished a great reader friendly introducation to day trading stocks online. I have traded commodity futures for twenty years and am just getting my feet wet with ONLINE stock trading.

I earned my M.B.A. and have been a successful investor in stocks for over 20 years. Toni Turner's book gave me a wealth of hard earned information in a format easy to read and understand. The subtle nuances that make a big difference in money earned or lost was handled with good examples, charts and analogies for everyone to understand.

One of the outstanding characteristics of Miss Turner's book is the manner in which she makes the difficult task of technical analysis understandable to those who have little or no experience investing. It does not bore you like so many technical books, and therefore, keeps you reading instead of laying it aside.

As noted in her book, the differences between time frames in the risk and reward equation of day trading are explained compared to longer term investment instruments.

Seems to me the action of imparting understanding is accomplished quite well. I applaud this new book as a welcome addition to any library.