Three winning traders’ guides

Largely unknown in the West two decades ago, Japanese candlestick charts are now the price-tracking method of choice for traders everywhere. However, a lot of us don’t exploit this ingenious, at-a-glance method of showing price relationships to its full potential.

Learning candlesticks from a specialist book – rather than from a chapter within a more general guide to charting – is one way of getting off on the right foot. I instantly warmed to Clive Lambert’s new, elementary guide to candlesticks. In fact, I probably prefer it to the authoritative Western tome on the subject, Steve Nison’s Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques.

The use of full colour really brings the amply-sized charts and diagrams to life, while the explanations are nicely sliced and diced into boxes and sub-sections that make the book easy to dip into casually.

Whereas some candlestick guides are quite dry and academic, Mr Lambert’s effort has a much more practical bent. Real-life examples are given throughout, with lively discussions of how these situations played out.

While the book covers 20 of the main candlestick patterns, that still ignores 50 or so others, albeit many of them fairly trivial. Given the author’s talent for straightforward communication, a future edition could easily include more patterns without unnecessarily complicating matters.