My Goodness Tubbs! Then what DOES work?
I don't mean to be sarcastic, but surely most TA books must have some good points.
It's a great book. When people disregard a trading book because setups don't work or it's not new material, then you have to look at the book and decide for yourself if you find it useful. I've read most of the core books that everyone reads...edwards, douglas, elder, dalton, steidlmeyer, murphy..yada..yada...most traders will read them all, and they will keep reading till they quit the business.
In my opinion, Carter did a nice job of putting all the facets of an intraday and swing futures trader business life in one place. Very few of the trading classics do this. He mentions his site a couple of times in the book, usually along with other good sites, and basically tells you the rules for his indicators and setups so you can build them yourself vs go to his site. If I had a site, where I had more detail on all my material, I would probably mention it too. Not sure what the rationale would be to NOT do that.
In terms of setups - 90+% of them are going to be either price/volatility breakouts, retracements, or reversal trades..does that make his invalid??..dunno, but I always enjoy seeing how someone else is doing his or hers. There is not a whole lot of 'new' ways of doing anything in the markets so you have to decide what's useful to you in building your own strategies.
I'll tell you also what I really enjoyed about the book. I get so tired of hearing cop out answers around position sizing, risk management, etc., it was refreshing to see real numbers and examples posted. Judge for yourself but most of the time as a newbie you're going to hear very soft answers that basically just tell you to find a % risk you are comfortable with, then apply it to these topics, but as a newer trader, you are not really going to have any idea what that number should be. It was nice to see someone give actual numbers for a change, by trading vehicle.
Anyway, like every other post in this thread, this is just opinion, but in mine...John did a great job putting together a book that covered everything you should be thinking about as an intraday futures trader, and showing you real examples, not just academic guidelines.