Same here - I'm not sure I'd even be making a living at all, without his stuff. Or it would certainly have taken me very much longer. Absolutely. I agree entirely. I think, though, that there are some traders who've found his books pretty difficult to read (perhaps the kind of people who are always looking for short cuts, rather than genuine education, effort and lengthy practice?) and become disillusioned for that reason. I can't pretend they're the best-written trading books available, but their content is outstanding.
The books are marketed as educational trading material for serious traders, so they do have similarities with shortcuts. Brooks provides unreliable theories behind price behavior and unreliable heuristics for interpretation of price action and no instruction or explanation for executing the after-the-fact theory in realtime. From my experience, the books are loaded with unuseful after-the-fact retrospective analyses and outdated price action theory no longer relevant in the HFT futures markets, nothing resembling realtime analysis. One would be much better served just started an empirical education observing price behavior in realtime and avoiding all for-profit trading education.
Interesting perspective. Do you think all educational trading material for serious traders "has similarities with shortcuts"? You must, I suppose ...
What's your point? I put in more effort in developing my own read than following Brooks' derivative shortcuts, neither works consistently enough to make a living. Maybe if I started other businesses like for-profit trading educational projects I could trade for a living, like most tend to have to do. You said "Same here - I'm not sure I'd even be making a living at all, without his stuff. Or it would certainly have taken me very much longer. " You found some useful lessons from Brooks, i.e. information with similarities to shortcuts. Not sure what you mean by genuine education but Brooks is up there with the college industry for having very high prices for his useless books.
My point is that you said "The books are marketed as educational trading material for serious traders, so they have similarities with shortcuts", but to anyone who's read through Al Brooks' rather heavy tomes, it strike me that you couldn't get much further away from a "shortcut approach" than what he does. But if you consider that all educational trading material is by definition a "shortcut" of some kind, then I suppose according to your own definitions, you're right. LOL - his trading textbooks books are all $50 from Amazon, give or take a dollar. They're published by Wiley, who tend to charge that kind of money for textbooks of that kind. If that's your idea of being "right up there with the college industry for having very high prices" then once again, I'm sure you're quite right according to your own definitions. I don't instinctively think of buying textbooks as a "shortcut", myself, but to the extent that that could be said of any educational material, you probably have a point. One thing's self-evident: trading forums (including this one) are not short of people admitting openly that they've found them extremely helpful, and many attribute their successfully making a living from trading in no small part to Brooks. It's just surprising and disappointing that in this forum, apparently we can't say so without you putting in a special guest appearance to tell people they're "useless". This is the third or fourth thread in which I've seen you doing it recently, and I haven't even been here very long. I'm not suggesting that it isn't legitimate to give your opinion, of course, but the way you habitually do it is pretty close to trolling, really.
No, my definition of trolling would be affected negativity and dishonesty. Clearly this negativity is from my GENUINE EDUCATION over the years that Brooks' materials are useless for me, however they had a very negative use, so not useless literally, and that this sort of for profit-education while neglecting risk management, psychology, and HFT price action in a field where the odds are stacked against US worse than in a casino where the risk is always predefined, should be ILLEGAL!!!!
Sorry for taking this completely off topic OP. That doesn't really make any sense, it seems like you're calling for a book to be made 'illegal' because you didn't gain any value from it. In the books he talks in depth about HFT, risk management and to a lesser degree psychology. The value I gained was that al brooks helped me understand the context of the market and provide me with a franework. This is a simplified off the top of my head version. Is it trending, ranging or reversing? Markets that trend usually like to keep trending, in an uptrend you should buy any spike up, it's 'always in long'. Bulls are buying and bears are stopping out. You buy at the high of a breakout bar and have a stop a tick below with a profit target equal to the height of the breakout bar, a measured move. This has an edge, why?.. because probability is in favour of the market to continue its trend and bulls will defend their breakout bar, they are now in control. It's simple stuff and it works. Markets that range usually keep ranging, buy low, sell high and scalp. If there's a quick spike to the top/bottom of the range then that's a higher probability fade setup, al brooks calls this a magnet or a vacuum. If however price grinds up or down and stays at that price for a relatively long time then its more likely to breakout. He goes into massive detail about 'why'. Markets don't like to reverse, a good reversal setup is generally at best a 50/50 trade but comes with a higher reward to risk compared to ranges and trends. ----- The books are filled with edges. In the books you have to mine for a few golden nuggets of info (that apply to you) in a sea of incoherent writing. But you know what, that sounds alot like trading to me, you have to look for edges in a sea of random noise. We're used to reading well written books that make complete sense, however the markets on the surface are chaotic and don't make sense. Maybe by reading Brooks and trying to find those nuggets you're actually practising the same skills you need to find overlooked edges in the markets. Combining that work ethic and persistence with the framework he provides to make sense of the markets might go some way to explain why so many traders talk about al brooks as a turning point. This is a book you want to be made illegal?
Yes, trading marketing should be illegal for any non-chartered market technician. Those high-priced books are chock-full of unreliable and bad info when applied in realtime, useful seeming labels that a lot of writers could use to produce a descriptive theory of past price on a chart with hindsight and no time restraints, as Brooks had when he wrote them. Almost no one talks about this stuff as a turning point to consistent profitability, it's a starting point for new traders mostly who end up finding something that actually works, not his 5-minute-bar-filters-out-the-noise theory. Notice Brooks supporter Xela isn't a discretionary trader.
"Almost no one talks about this stuff as a turning point to consistent profitability" Perhaps we're both more susceptible to a bit of confirmation bias than we thought. It was a turning point for me. I use Brooks for a basic framework to understand context, probabilities and edge, not for 5 min Emini trading. It's a model of thinking that allows me to determine what kind of market I'm looking at, trending, ranging or reversing; and then use that information along with a few insights from Brooks to look for edge. I trade spreads, FLYs, Condors, boxes etc etc... usually on the 60 min or daily time frame. Along with lots of tape reading, time of day patterns and the structure of the markets around daily settlements and monthly expiries. So very different to Brooks. It's a model, a way of thinking, not something to follow 100%. As a discretionary trader my job (in my head) is to refine and execute my current edges and develop new edges into strategies. With my interpretation of Brooks' framework in place I can flick though 100+ different charts per day and in a few seconds decide if I think there's an edge. Then focus on the charts that stand out to me most. Again, very different to Brooks, but fueled by his explanations of context.