Book excerpt: Hands-on tools to identify and profit from the market's recent patterns Trading is all about managing probabilities. In Trading with the Odds, Anthony Trongone explains that the quest for developing a perfect system, which drives most traders, is fruitless. Instead, traders should focus on developing the analytic and trading skills necessary to stay in tune with the constant evolution of the financial markets. In this book, Trongone emphasizes the importance of testing and monitoring trading strategies and raw market data as a means of developing an edge over other traders who are unwilling to get their hands dirty and dig into the data on a continuing basis. Importantly, he shows that Excel, a program almost all traders are familiar with, can be utilized to measure virtually every important aspect of trading system performance and to search for tradable market patterns. In addition, the book includes several applications that will allow you to calculate current market conditions and market patterns based on time of day, intermarket relationships, and other factors. Advocates an analytical approach which evolves in concert with changing market conditions Explains why it's hard to make money from off-the-shelf systems and indicators Provides in-depth analysis of other major industries generating worthwhile IPOs Includes applications that allow users to calculate recent market patterns Underlying Trongone's approach is the conviction that traders must constantly innovate in response to the market, and those that rely on static analysis, will fail to achieve the results they expect.