Rating: - Badly needs updating & poorly executed
This book is old (1991) and does not cover the important
facet of sector rotation or how to intrepret this book into a meaningful stock play. Murphy in this book does not even hint at it, thus allot of this information is not truly useful. The concept is superb but the execution quite flawed.

Instead get the other Murphy book:Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets: A Comprehensive Guide to Trading Methods and Applications OR Martin Pring's new edition to his updated Complete Technical Analysis. Which one you get really depends on how much you already know or your personal preference. Funnily his video on this topic DOES update the book and cover Sector Rotation so Murphy obviously is aware of the oversight.

This book is boring with no payoff. Murphy writes better elsewhere and this topic is covered better elsewhere too.

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Rating: - Just buy it.
Forget about all the talking heads on the news channels about which way the market will trend. Read this book. Don't waste your time listening to those self-proclaimed "experts."
If I'm asked to name two books that have completely changed the way I looked at the markets and trading, they are Steve Nison's "Beyond Candlesticks" and this one.

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Rating: - An in-depth look at market sectors and how they interact
In this book John Murphy explains the interactions of the four major market sectors mentioned in the book's title. He structures his analyses around the concept of the business cycle, the recurring boom and bust loop which the economy has gone through over the past two centuries. Showing how the four major sectors (as well as other economic factors) interact in feedback loops to drive the business cycle, he gives us the information we need to see what stage of the cycle we're currently experiencing and where we're headed. Knowing this we can better decide where to park our assets in the short and medium-term future. His outline of the various stages of the business cycle is very helpful, even though it's a rough guide. For instance, although gold does not seem to have played its assigned role in this scheme, it is clear that commodities did bottom in the third quarter of last year, signaling that a market top would follow in the not-too-distant future. Thus, even though the stock market is a dynamic system and cannot be exactly predicted, there are patterns that take a huge amount of guesswork out of charting one's way through it. This book thoroughly explores those patterns and provides the investor/trader a solid support for making financial decisions.

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Rating: - A true technical analysis classic
There is very little information out there on Intermarket analysis (see Martin Pring's "All Season Investor" and Murray Ruggiero "Cybernetic Trading Strategies" among the few to offer info in this niche). Turns out the Intermarket form of technical analysis is among the most important in analyzing the economy and the various links between financial sectors. It's a key to deciphering the intermediate and longer term trends (& with Ruggiero, possibly short term trends). Amazingly, nearly all high paid economists and many financial market analysts get it wrong, but the markets collectively don't by definition. (You can't trade an economist, there is no "economic futures index", and the economists generally aren't traders since they don't know how.) Once you have the basics of technical analysis under your belt, this book is a pivotal and necessary step forward in an education towards deciphering the increasingly interrelated worldwide financial markets. A must read, but only for the serious investor. Too complicated and difficult to use for the dilettante. I wish John would do a "year 2000" update just to freshen up the charts, but the basic relationships haven't changed much and the lessons are still totally valid.

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Rating: - THIS BOOK WILL EXPLAIN YOU HOW MARKETS REALLY WORK
This is the best book you can find in advanced technical analisys. Together with John's book "Technical analisys of futures markets" and the Schwager on Futures series is a "must" for whoever wants to start in Futures Trading. This book is so logical that it is incredible! Reading it and testing its theory you will discover the way the markets work. As a Futures trader is the book that has helped more than any other one my way of trading (That seems quite succesfully at the moment!). As a Member of IFTA (International Federation of Technical Analisys) is the book that I find more logical, because IT HAS A REAL LINK WITH THE MACROECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT, AND EXPLAIN IT IN A SIMPLER AND FUNNIER WAY! The book is not supereasy to understand, even if it has been written in a very good way. Buon Trading!