BAR BY BAR -- Al Brooks

Being a visual learner, as most, I got more from his trial in room and videos than books. Points like strong close on a candle with no wick at top/bottom on first pb to 20 ema. As many said his book was a bit too stream of consciousness.

 

Maybe to become "immortal" ...

 

There can be only one!

 

I had no idea there was this long-running Al Brooks thread!

Gabfly, you are reading those quotes without having experienced what's being described.

Brooks is brilliant, but you don't realize it until you experience what he describes, until you're the trapped trader, until you chop yourself up in "barb wire", until you erase back to back losses and take home fantastic profit by by jumping back in when a failed failure fails.

I read his book bit-by-bit, tediously trying to internalize what I was reading. But it wasn't until I spent a year in the trenches that I finally grasped, and then mastered, his concepts.

I'm glad Brooks is arcane and difficult to understand. Trading has no barriers to entry; but profitable trading has many barriers to entry. As with any career that has the potential to produce great wealth, trading requires 99% perspiration.

 

I always wondered why I never saw you here, ND. I assumed you were simply too tied up with the CL thread and it never occurred to me you did not know this thread existed.

Welcome!

 

I bought his book about one and a half years ago. After reading about 150 pages or so, I returned it to Amazon. I bought a lot of books from Amazon over the years. Brooks's book is the only one I ever returned.

Please stop. You're making my head spin.

I can only imagine how delighted you would have been had he written it in hieroglyphics.

 

He makes everyone's head spin but there is a great deal of valuable information in the book. The problem is it is written in hieroglyphics and there is no Rosetta Stone!

 

I'm glad you found value in it. Personally, I did not. I found it just a bit too discretionary for my taste. Although I have no doubt there are many profitable traders who trade discretionarily, the problem I have with people trying to teach a highly discretionary approach is that it is just a little too easy to fall into the habit of creating a narrative after the fact to support a premise ("failed failures that fail"). Essentially, you're just playing with tight stops waiting for the big pull. That's the sum and substance of it. (Or, in the alternative, you could play with next to no stops, in which case you'll regularly be profitable until you lose your home and they take away your credit cards and air miles.)

The thing is, that the only way you can benefit from his "approach," given all of his many qualifiers, is by developing judgment that can only come from screen time. However, if you have really put in that screen time, then you really don't need Big Al and his merry band of qualifiers. Just my opinion, of course.

 

Gabfly, try to put an entry stop at one tick beyond NoDoji's stop loss for her "failed failure that fails" trade. If her trade fails, it's a high probability trade. If your failed failure that fails failure fails, then its barb wire and Al told you not to trade that anyway. Savy?

My Al Brooks book is right next to the toilet. I don't (attempt to) read it any longer, but I take pleasure in knowing that it gets splashed with urine every now and then.

 

I just received this.


As many of you know, Wiley will soon release three more of Al's books on price action trading:

Price Action Trading: Trends
Price Action Trading: Trading Ranges
Price Action Trading: Reversals

Al's comments: "I tried to answer all of the questions that I have been asked over the past couple of years (and I have answered thousands), and have paid particular attention to making the books clearer, easier to read, and much more specific about trading compared to Reading Price Charts Bar By Bar. There are many lists about the major topics (the longest has more than 30 buy setups and 30 sell setups for entering on limits), followed by detailed discussions and examples."

Wiley is currently working on the first two books and the first should be out in May. A trader is proof reading the third manuscript, and the books should follow at about one month intervals. Reading Price Charts Bar By Bar was about 120,000 words. The new books are 144,000, 152,000, and 126,000 words.

Here are the tables of contents of the three books:

Table of Contents of Book 1: Trends
Price Action Part 1: Trends and Basics
Reading Price Charts Bar By Bar: The Technical Analysis of Price Action for the Serious Trader

Dedication
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Basics for All Three Books
· Table of Contents for the Three Books
· Signs of Strength: Reversal Bars, Trends, Breakouts
· Bar Counting Basics: High 1, High 2, Low 1, Low 2
· Definitions
Price Action
· The Spectrum of Price Action: Extreme Trends to Extreme Trading Ranges
· Trend Bars and Doji Bars
· Breakouts, Trading Ranges, and Tests
· Bar Basics: Signal Bars, Entry Bars, Setups, and Candle Patterns
· Signal Bars: Reversal Bars
· Signal Bars: Other Types
· Outside Bars
· The Importance of the Close of the Bar
· Exchange Traded Funds and Inverse Charts
· Second Entries
· Late and Missed Entries
· Pattern Evolution
Trend Lines and Channels
· Trend Lines
· Trend channel Lines
· Channels
· Micro Channels
· Horizontal Lines: Swing Points and Other Key Price Levels
Trends
· Example of How to Trade a Trend
. Signs of Strength in a Trend
· Two Legs
· Common Trend Patterns
· Spike and Channel Trend
· Trending Trading Range Days
· Trend from the Open
· Reversal Day
· Trend Resumption day
· Stairs: Broad Channel Trend


Table of Contents of Book 2: Trading Ranges
Price Action Part 2: Trading Ranges and Placing Orders
Reading Price Charts Bar By Bar: The Technical Analysis of Price Action for the Serious Trader

Dedication
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Basics for All Three Books
· Table of Contents for the Three Books
· Signs of Strength: Reversal Bars, Trends, Breakouts
· Bar Counting Basics: High 1, High 2, Low 1, Low 2
· Definitions
Breakouts: Transitioning into a new Trend
· Example of How to Trade a Breakout
· Signs of Strength in a Breakout
· Initial Breakout
· Breakout Entries in Existing Strong Trends
· Failed Breakouts, Breakout Pullbacks, and Breakout Tests
Gaps
Magnets: Support and Resistance
· Measured Moves Based on the Size of the First Leg
· Measured Moves Based on Gaps and Trading Ranges
· Reversals Often End at Signal Bars from Prior Failed Reversals
· Other Magnets
Pullbacks: Trends Converting to Trading Ranges
· First Pullback Sequence: Bar, Minor Trend Line, moving average, moving average Gap, Major Trend Line
· Double Top Bear Flags and Double Bottom Bull Flags
· Twenty Gap Bars
· Moving average gap Bars
· Key Inflection Times of the Day that Set Up Breakouts and Reversals
· Counting the legs of Trends and Trading Ranges
· High and Low 1, 2, 3, and 4 Patterns and ABC Corrections
· Wedge and Other Three Push Pullbacks
· Dueling Lines: Wedge Pullback to the Trend Line
· “Reversal” Patterns: Double Tops and Bottoms and Head and Shoulders Tops and Bottoms
Trading Ranges
. Example of How to Trade a Trading Range
· Tight Trading Ranges
· Triangles
Orders and Trade Management
· Scalping, Swinging, Trading, and Investing
· Mathematics of Trading and Directional Probability: The Odds of Making X Points Before Losing Y Points
· Need Two Reasons to Take a Trade
· Entering on Stops
· Entering on Limits
· Protective and Trailing Stops
· Profit Targets
· Scaling into and out of a Trade
· Getting Trapped In or Out of a Trade


Table of Contents of Book 3: Reversals
Price Action Part 3: Reversals, Day Trading, Daily Charts, and Options
Reading Price Charts Bar By Bar: The Technical Analysis of Price Action for the Serious Trader

Dedication
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Basics for All Three Books
· Table of Contents for the Three Books
· Signs of Strength: Reversal Bars, Trends, Breakouts
· Bar Counting Basics: High 1, High 2, Low 1, Low 2
· Definitions
Trend Reversals: A Trend Becoming an Opposite Trend
· Example of How to Trade a Reversal
· Signs of Strength in a Reversal
· “Reversal” Patterns: Double Tops and Bottoms and Head and Shoulders Tops and Bottoms
· Major Trend Reversal: Trend Line Break Followed by a Test of the Extreme
· Climactic Reversals: A Spike Followed by a Spike in the Opposite Direction
· Wedges and other Three Push Reversal Patterns
· Expanding Triangles
· Final Flags
· Double Top and Bottom Pullbacks
· Failures
· Huge Volume Reversals on Daily Charts
Day Trading
· Key Times of the Day
· Markets
· Time Frames and Chart Types
· Globex, Pre-Market, Post-Market, and Overnight Market
· Always In
· Extreme Scalping
The 1st Hour
· Patterns Related to the Premarket
· Patterns Related to Yesterday: Breakouts, Breakout Pullbacks, and Failed Breakouts
· Example of How to Trade a Breakout
. Opening Patterns and Reversals
· Gap Openings: Reversals and Continuations
Detailed Daytrading Examples
Daily, Weekly, and Monthly Charts
Options
Best Trades
Trading Guidelines