For those complaining that his writing style is cryptic, you write a book where the words bar, high, and low appear in almost every sentence multiple times and make it read like Hemingway, I dare you. Its a redundant subject matter, its not meant to read like a novel. Read a sentence, look at the spot on the chart he is referencing, read another sentence, look at the chart. Its not that hard people.
Actually CrazyA has, except they aren't for sale. I assure you, they are not cryptic, just golden. Joe
haven't read the book,watched his video,no doubt he's trading with the system and making money,so no need for the oft requested p/l statement,aside from that redundant theme,the other 2 are whether the book is worth it and its hard to read,well the hard to read part seems to be in unanimous agreement,so there's another one that need not be brought up for the next 20 pages,last ,the it works part,you've tried it proven it to yourself,i trust that your honest as your posts reflect,the question i have doj,is how much of your trading is al brooks and how much have you tweaked it to be nodoji's
And I condensed everything I extracted from my study of price action (via Brooks' first book) into 12 pages of material that constitutes my written trading plan. The plan makes it simple for me, but the course I took via Brooks' book gave me the tools I needed to do the R & D to develop my own plan. If anyone posting here is making their profit off the following strategies, then you're trading price action all of which is covered in great detail and fully illustrated by Brooks: With-trend entries on pullbacks With-trend entries on breakouts With-trend entries on successful tests of trend line S/R or moving average S/R Trading from one range/channel extreme to the other Counter-trend scalping during channeling trends Bear trap/bull trap setups If anyone posting here is using these strategies and failing, please post your annotated charts and let the successful PA traders help you. If anyone posting here is profiting from any of the following strategies and is telling us that Brooks is crap, there's no need to waste any more of your time because Brooks doesn't discuss these strategies and since you're profitable, just accept that there's more than one way to make money in the markets, your way isn't the only way or necessarily the best way, and enjoy your success: Arb strategies Pairs trading Derivatives/Complex Options strategies Counter-trend fading with negative risk:reward ratios If you're so altruistic that you're losing sleep over the fact that noobies might lose $50 buying Brooks' book or lose $99 a month to learn PA from him firsthand, then why not start a thread explaining your simple profitable methods in just a few pages?
Ammo, only one of the setups I trade is not Brooks; it's a pure counter-trend play that works quite well under certain conditions on the instrument I trade and I always use a tight stop and tight risk management with it. The other five setups I trade are pure Brooks. That said, I've come to believe that no successful trader can hand someone else their methods and expect similar results. There's too much psychology involved, too many conflicting belief systems among people, and a helluva lot of ego. In an effort to pay forward the immense help that experienced traders here attempted to provide to me as a beginner, I spent much time over the past year and a half working with a variety of traders who were struggling to become consistently profitable. I offered many of them a complete description of my own trading strategies and trade management processes, and even tried to help them overcome the emotional pitfalls that destroy the best of plans. I ended up baffled by the fact that so many people with a solid understanding of these consistently profitable methods were having such difficulty simply trading them. By the time I had done the months of work necessary to make a set of price action strategies my own and come to trust them, I had totally forgotten that when I was struggling to find my way and experienced traders gave me everything I needed to be successful (one of them even called every trade in advance with stops and targets for the better part of a year), I never followed along either! I didnât trust the methods because they werenât mine. I was still looking for certainty in an environment of constant uncertainty; therefore, to me, any system that could potentially produce three losses in a row (gasp!) was extremely suspect. When I later encountered the same thing from others as I handed them profitable strategies on a silver platter, it was frustrating. I had a plan that worked, so why canât they just take it and trade it? Why so many questions, why so much drama? I had moved on from my past, filled with excitement about having found the Holy Grail, and didnât recognize my previous self in these struggling traders. During the latter part of the year, it became clear to me that itâs critical for a trader to do ample study and research, develop a concise trading plan that's their own even if it uses the tactics of others, test the plan thoroughly and master trading it with faith and discipline, preferably in a simulated environment. These are the most important steps an aspiring trader can take, and itâs difficult to fail once they're completed. My own trading plan is based on a few standard price action strategies covered comprehensively by Brooks. However, there are many other solid time-tested trading strategies you can borrow and adapt, or you can come up with your own through careful study if you want to re-invent the wheel. Before finalizing my written trading plan, I spent a couple hours at the end of each day logging a complete analysis of the dayâs price action including descriptions of each of my chosen setups and the result of each one under various styles of trade management (risk management and profit-taking). I had around 100 days of spreadsheets with this sort of detailed data before I began to truly trust my plan-in-progress, and I had been logging my notes in bits and pieces. Finally, I put the plan in into a full written format which included screen shots from the hard right edge where it looks a lot more uncertain than it does on a static chart at the end of the day. My educational recommendations for those who are just beginning to explore short term trading opportunities or who have tried various strategies that failed: An excellent primer on reading price action: http://www.daytradingcoach.com/daytrading-candlestick-course.htm And an excellent primer on common chart patterns: http://www.daytradingcoach.com/daytrading-technicalanalysis-course.htm My favorite books Iâve found to be superb sources of ideas for studying and developing trading strategies: Al Brooksâ âReading Price Charts Bar By Barâ Alan Farleyâs âThe Master Swing Traderâ Jack Schwagerâs âGetting Started in Technical Analysisâ The finest trading plan is worthless without the discipline to follow it. The bible of trading psychology for those who already have a proven trading plan but are struggling to follow it: Mark Douglasâ âTrading in the Zoneâ Confidence is important in trading, but confidence does not mean having a big ego. In my opinion, trading is best done by checking your ego at the door. The majority of the population are constantly living in the past and the future, are highly ego-driven and often engaged in proving themselves right and proving others wrong. This has a negative influence on most aspects of our lives. Itâs especially dangerous in the already difficult and risky world of trading for a living. Here are my favorite books for ego reduction and emotional centeredness: Don Miguel Ruizâ âThe Four Agreements: A Practical Guide To Personal Freedomâ Eckhardt Tolleâs âThe Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightementâ Eckhardt Tolleâs âPracticing the Power of Now: Essential Teachings, Meditations, and Exercises From The Power of Nowâ Ammo, thanks for all the help you gave me! That old offer of mine to totally confuse you with Brooks price action as applied to CL still stands
Have you provided concrete examples of strategies out of Brook's book that work more than they fail? Perhaps you have - I started looking at your post history, but you post a lot so it would be hard to find. Can you link to some of those examples? Thanks in advance.
Of course not. However the liquidity offered at a given time is finite and can be overwhelmed by a sudden imbalance in aggressively priced orders. This increases the cost of execution (slippage) and can make some strategies inefficient beyond a certain size. I like how you are framing this. Claims are made for a strategy and the burden of proof is alleged to lie with the audience rather than the vendor. Lets turn this on its head. You say that the strategy isn't market affecting because "retail traders" only trade small size. You don't address the fact that a successful strategy leads to increase in betting size and that if it were successful by now hundreds of "retail traders" would have experimented with it and be trading the signals with increased betting size. Why has not an institution, hedge fund, or high net worth individual appropriated the strategy and deployed sufficient capital to hammer out the edge? Al Brooks is published in futures magazine and several "big boys" read this very site from time to time (if only for amusement). Why is it still a viable methodology for a Johnny-come-lately? If it is truly a golden egg and spilling a small fortune into your pocket, why would you wish to advocate for others to use the strategy and risk it becoming so high profile as to stop working? The only logical possibilities are: 1) the strategy does not do what is claimed 2) the book does not give a methodology to create objective, testable, buy or sell indications which can be replicated by readers and result in net profits if traded according to plan 3) there are no traders capable of exploiting the edge away or the markets have infinite liquidity (not logical and flies in the face of everything we understand about trading) This critique is not directly about Brooks. It would apply to any published trading methodology in the public domain which has low barriers to entry. Despite what people may wish to believe, it is not realistic to expect that sustainable trading profits can be achieved by following a specific published strategy whether price action or indicator based. note: #2 above is the catch all excuse that even if the complete methodology was published people wouldn't have the discipline to follow it. If this is true there is no point in publishing, and if it is not true publishing is a risk to the viability of the method.
It's not a signal system!!!, and it requires a fair amount of focus, work, practice and experience to become proficient. That alone will be a barrier for 99% of new traders.
there is nothing wrong with this method,watch his vid,you still need to learn how to trade,how to disengage mentally/emotionally and trade what's in front of you ,if brooks or anyone else's method worked flawlessly,that person would be retired buying the islands of his/her choice,you still have to trade it and take the losses when it's not flawless,anyone that has been at this for a long time can tell you that that responsibility never disappears,and there is no system without that flaw,this comes down to the trader and which of the many ways to trade he/she has learned to be best at so far http://www.bigmiketrading.com/webinars/june21_2010/al_brooks_price_action/
I found this thread to be quite excellent and posted some price action tactics here and others did as well: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=220303&perpage=10&pagenumber=2 I think maybe you don't understand what price action is. It's not a specific "thing" someone invented that can stop working. Al Brooks did not invent price action; he simply provided an intensive study of it in book format. It's not a single strategy in and of itself. It's a set of tools for using the action of price around key levels (previous pivot support and resistance levels as well as trend/channel line support and resistance zones) to trade along with the majority that's in control at a particular point in time within the framework of a particular time frame (scalping, intraday, daily, or weekly). The majority in control can change at any time, and a study of price action patterns helps you recognize signs that a move is weakening and is more likely than not to reverse, so you can take profits without letting them evaporate. Learning to interpret price footprints is similar to a predator learning to track its prey by following a visual or olfactory trail. I want to track my way to profitable price swings, price swings that are robust enough to allow me to extract a certain minimum profit. I study many types of tracks until I learn to recognize the ones that appear to lead to easy pickings more often than not. I wait patiently for the right moment and let the movement of price trigger my entry into a position (buy or sell stop entry) or let the reaction of price to a key level convince me to take a position right then and there (limit order entry). Occasionally I let my anticipated reaction of price to level convince me to place a limit order at a price that's likely to trap traders (who don't understand the nuances of price action) the wrong way, and I use a very tight stop. I've looked at charts in many time frames throughout history and I've never seen price action stop working because as long as there's an auction market with enough participants, there is always price movement based on supply/demand imbalances.