Forex Price Action Scalping: an in-depth look into the field of professional scalping Paperback – October 11, 2011

If you're looking for ideas on how to day trade that don't include fibonaccis, MACDs, market profile, tape reading, correlated markets, or having to parse news reports in the flash of a second, this is it. A somewhat similar but more technically complex approach is professed by Al Brooks, albeit his work is much less accessible than Volman's. Volman provides both trend and ranging strategies, including range breaks and range reversals which gives you plenty of ideas to work from. There is also much to be said about Volman's thoroughness: he discusses the psychology of the setups, spends time analyzing faulty setups, and has a whole chapter on trade management talking about multiple scenarios, in a way that I have yet to come across in a trading book.The one disadvantage of Volman's approach is that it is based on a 70 tick chart, and one that displays candles in only whole pip increments (using pipettes can throw you off strategy wise, you will have a tough time setting clean entries and managing the trade). That means you're out $50-60 a month for a data feed, taking away one of Forex's advantages of having no fixed costs. You can approximate the 70 tick with a 30 second chart during the liquid NY and London sessions, or find a broker that offers a tick chart. In the case of the latter you might have to adjust the tick chart to a different value than 70, because Volman relies on ProRealTime's feed (the target setting for the chart is 120 candles per hour).Be prepared to study this book a number of times, this is not a cookie cutter system based approach and requires developing a sense of discretion, even though the author gives you some very solid ideas and guidelines for the setups. A high value book offered at a price that is way below most of the trash that is offered as trading education.Edit: Bob's new book, Understanding Price Action, is also a good read. You may even want to read it before this book as it offers a slightly broader perspective and operates primarily off the 5 minute timeframe.

I am discretionary, electronic trader who trades in the crude oil market. Since the title and description of this book relates to how I scalp CL futures, I decided to get a copy to read and see how it compares to my methods. Will post an update to this review once I've gotten sufficiently far into the book to make some meaningful comments.UPDATE #2 1/26/2013. On further thought, I'm taking away two stars. Let me explain. In my experience as a discretionary trader, I have never used fixed stops. I will go a step further and say that I have doubts as to whether any fixed stop system actually will work over the long term. I don't know for sure, which is why I can't say that it "won't," but I have enough doubts. When I first read Volman's book, I was impressed by his writing style and clear-headed, no-nonsense approach ... to the point where I didn't pay much attention to the fact that he's advocating a fixed-stop system. But in my experience with reviewing mechanical systems and with backtesting some of those, I have never seen a fixed-stop system to work. Inevitably you have enough of a series of fixed losses, that it either destroys the entire profit or results in an unsustainably large drawdown.Now Volman is not a system trader, he is a discretionary trader. Sometimes it is difficult to translate discretionary methods into a mechanical method, which means it cannot be backtested. ... Which means the only way to know whether it works is by looking at actual trading results over a long period of time.I should have paid more attention to this in my initial review. Basically at this point, I would recommend this book in order to learn some good, solid concepts of price behavior, but not to take the trading strategies at face value unless the author can actually prove that he has consistently made money using fixed stops. By "fixed stop" I mean your stop is always 10 ticks (or some constant number) below your entry point.UPDATE 1/17/2013.Okay I've read the first 80 pages carefully and I feel like I can make an accurate review, assuming the rest of the book maintains the same quality as the first 80 pages.A very well written and excellent, detailed description for various techniques of getting into and out of trade using different setups, breakouts, etc. The author uses a short time frame and the Forex market, but these methods apply equally on any timeframe and on any market with similar volatility and fluidity. In addition to the trading methods, there are general words of wisdom sprinkled throughout, which should be helpful to newbies or traders having difficulties with hesitation, emotional trading, etc.My personal reason for picking up this book was to see how it compares to my own techniques for trading CL futures. Most of what I know about price behavior is self-taught, taken from my observations. Basically I'm seeing very similar things discussed in this book. There's many ways to slice an orange, sometimes they end up being variations of the same theme. Probably any two individuals who spend enough time observing price behavior are going to end up drawing the same conclusions. So the similarities between different approaches should come as no surprise.I don't see any reason why someone should not make money consistently over the long term by implementing one or two of the author's strategies either as an automated system or on a discretionary basis. These type of strategies are similar to what I do in that they initiate a series of trades, some losses and some wins, that are based on probable setups such that over the long term the wins are greater than the losses. I can bear it out from personal experience in the crude oil futures market that this type of strategy works. It also works in gold and should work in S&P in a similar fashion.The key here is the consistent implementation of the strategy. This is going to be a very difficult thing for most if not all newbies and even some experienced traders to understand and accept. They have a tendency to think that the results of 2, 5 or 10 trades is a good indication of what can be expected going forward. Which is not the case.Basically with strategies like what the author gives, you are working in terms of probabilities that give you an edge over time, which is really to say over many number of trades. Individual losses or wins don't matter too much - it's the cumulative effect that counts.In conclusion, I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn principles of price behavior and who wants to see how to use those principles to construct a long-term strategy based on short-term trades.

As a trader, broker and a lover of speculation in general, I have had the opportunity to review thousands of books, videos, magazines, brochures and other media concerning speculation over my life. Forex Price Action Scalping has been placed at the pinnacle of my library for the following reasons. 1. The book is written by a trader who has through rigorous empirical experience found sound repeatable patterns with a historical statistical edge. 2. The author does not have a rigid rote system in place to trade these setups. He understands as would any person who trades, that you must apply your judgement or sixth sense if you will, to the formula on every trade. The genius part of the book however, is that while your not given a turnkey trading system(which would not work for long anyway), you are given the authors years of experience as he does an exhaustive overview of the setups for each trade. Which brings me to my final point. 3. This book has the potential to turn the right person into a real trader. You would have to come to the table with the right mental abilities and would have to have self control and courage, but you could walk away from this book and in a few months be an honest to goodness independent professional trader. Very few books could ever really do that for anyone. The reason this book has the potential to do this, lies in it's ability to at least in the proverbial sense, teach you to fish rather than give you a fish.