Took me a while to realize all this stuff is BS. No one really knows where exhaustion of a move loses steam. I realized having a hard set of rules is the best way minimize the stress. My health always comes first.
Why isn't there a live trading DOM in Al brooks room ? why is he calling out trades when the price already moved substantially: "I just took that long there" and NEVER before the move happens. ...
Why don't you email and ask him? What's that got to do with this thread or his book. Can I ask how long you tried to trade using PA in Al Brooks style?
If you're a nobody with a bunch of friends in a chat room, sharing trades with each other in real-time before they trigger, who really cares? However, if you have a chat room full of strangers and you're the leader calling out your trades ahead of time and you're not a CTA or have a broker's license (guess they call it a Series 7), now you've just invited the SEC into your life when someone like you screams loud enough because that leader is breaking one of their regulations. Now, even if you watched a successful trader make every call in real-time with plenty of time for you to follow, guess what? You're going to find 1000's of creative ways to scrw your copy of that trade up because YOU CANNOT SUCCEED IN TRADING BY COPPERING OTHER PEOPLE'S TRADES. You can get some ideas upon which to build your own trading plan, but the trading act itself is not a team sport. You win alone and you lose alone. Your ego has a hard enough time dealing already with your more creative, go with the flow side (i.e., your subconscience) so it's no wonder that the introduction of a completely foreign ego/subconscience to yourself (Al Brooks or anyone else) is certainly going to be in conflict. That's why you hear that catch-phrase "make it your own" and Mark Douglas rambling for pages on-end about belief systems. Especially in trading, you can't internalize anything well unless you have a strong belief that what you're doing is in your own best interest. Money on the line has a nasty way of exposing what you really believe vs. what you think you do. If you have a background in music, art or something which requires a lot of creative thought, trading is going to come more easily to you than if you're an engineer, programmer or person who "wins" in the real world through force of personality. So, it makes sense to me to see someone like Donna (aka NoDoji) adapt so quickly to become a successful futures day trader. She has mentioned before that she has musical ability. She has a "leg up" so to speak whether she's ever realized it or not. She's predisposed to adaptation because, to paraphrase Mark Douglas, the act of creativity requires you to suspend your *current* belief systems in order to attain new ones or make current ones stronger or weaker. Al Brooks is a self-professed ego-maniac. He says so (in so many words) in his first book's introduction. Trader's hair, or whatever yor name is, do you understand NOW why he said he took over 10 years to be a successful trader while Donna was "there" within 2? My gut tells me Al is for real. Ironically, I give him credit for opening up my eyes on how to add to a winning trade on a CL 5 min chart even though that kind of thing is the farthest from his micro-scalping / high-size mindset. Go figure. Sometimes, you never really know how someone else can wind up triggering a creative thought which leads to your own monetary success. [I'm sure it was unintentional on his part]
A clue that these Al Brooks people (nodoji, swan noir, steveh, add your al brooks devotee here) are full of S@#! The above quote sounds like something Woodie would say. It shows a severe lack of understanding of basic statistics and probabilities. You can't apply normal distributions to something that is dynamic and constantly changing. Not to mention the fact that you just made the colossal mistake of trying to come to a conclusion based on a small sample size. Markets are constantly changing therefore statistics regarding the probability of this or that are totally meaningless. Any successful trader know this but the Al Brooks jellies don't.
I agree with you completely regarding the dynamic nature of the market etc. But I think that is precisely why price action is the best method to trade. It's not about "My woodies indicator has crossed the MA so buy!" its reconising patterns that occur in price over and over, like trends, pullbacks, reversals and ranges.
agree with Swan...this is very profound. I'm not an Al Brooks devotee (sp?) followed this thread because I followed nodoji's journal and path and was blown away when I read this. It made so much sense to me.....Thanks SteveH