Malcolm Pryor - 7 Charting Tools for Spread Betting. A Practical Guide to Making Money from Spread Betting with Technical Analysis

After this preface there is a short introduction the main purpose of which is to explain the reasons for writing this book.

Then we get to the heart of the book. Each of the seven charting tools is explained in a separate chapter, all of which have the same structure:

1. Background and construction. Each chapter starts with a brief introduction, followed by a first look at the tool in action, illustrated most of the time with an annotated chart of the FTSE 100. This leads on to a detailed look at how the tool in constructed. In a number of cases the more complicated arithmetic can be found in the Appendices.
2. Overview of tool. In this section we look at the main purpose of the tool, its strengths and its weaknesses.
3. Settings. For each tool where the user has a choice of settings we look at both the standard settings and the ones used in this book.
4. How to use this tool. This section focuses on how the tool is used in this book.
5. Example. Each chapter contains a detailed worked example of the tool in action.
6. Alternatives. In some cases the user can get similar benefits from other tools, which are discussed here.
7. Conclusion. Each chapter finishes with a very brief final comment on the tool.

Following this there is a chapter on how the tools can be combined to build, or complement, a trading methodology.

Finally, the Appendix lists books and internet resources that I recommend as useful for spread bettors, and also provides further notes on the detailed calculations of the indicators.

I have many people to thank for providing support advice and encouragement while writing this book. I shall not be able to name them all but many thanks everyone!

I would like to thank Harriman House for their help in publishing this book; a really great team. In particular, Stephen Eckett, who provides unique editorial wisdom with a light touch.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Martin Stamp, the creator of the ShareScope software, and the entire ShareScope team, both for creating the software and for allowing me to reproduce charts from it in this book.

I would like to thank Dr Van Tharp, friend and mentor.

I would like to thank my parents, Maurice, who passed away in 2008, and Marjorie.

And most of all I would like to thank Karen, to whom this book is dedicated.