It's funny that you mention that. It was my second trading book right after "How to Make Money in Stocks" by William O'Neil. I was totally lost. I studied some basic stuff while watching charts for a year and then re-read it. I was completely hooked and re-read it for a third time and it finally made sense. What surprises me are some of the negative reviews on Amazon.
I don't agree with the books on Al Brooks. They are hugely overrated. I even don't think Al Brooks is a profitable trader. There is only 1 way to become a profitable trader: Blow up several accounts, cry, feel pain, urge to give up 10x, the ones who overcome become profitable. The others fail. There is practical no profitable trader who never faced the above items. There is no shortcut, even not if you're a millionaire. Without enough cash on your hands don't even start. Get a job, enjoy your life.
I'd give you some advise,beginner's advice.You shoul remove price from your display and start trading indicators first.you dont need the price at all,all you need is the indicators and DOM.But to trade indicators only you should know what settings are and the particular time frames these settings belong to.And THAT is what requires 10000 hours to be spent.To improvise you need experience.The price is like a grain of sand on a road.Do you need tool at every grain when you drive?You look on your dashboard instead.By trading indicators only you'd make the progress much faster.
Quite a coincidence. The O'Neill book was also the first trading book I read, after my first couple trades. It was the only investing book in our house; my husband had picked it up over a decade earlier prior to investing our retirement accounts. I found out that the short term trades I did were known as "swing trades" and a scan of my local library database uncovered the Farley book, making it my second trading book. I had no clue what he was talking about and returned the book after slogging through a few chapters. I then checked it out again after about a year of screen time and it was like someone had handed me a translator. I bought the book, realizing it was brilliant and timeless. Similar experience with Al Brooks. Bought his book on a recommendation from a long-time trader (my informal mentor), could hardly get through 3 pages at a time, began a period of meticulous price action study with notes, and detailed spreadsheets, started to see the light, picked up the Brooks book again not all that long ago, and again had the "translator" experience. It was clear as a bell. Did Al Brooks or Alan Farley tell me anything that my mentor hadn't been trying to drill into me for nearly two years? Not really. Which is why my advice to this OP is to do the hard work, read the book(s), study the patterns, document everything with hard numbers (because the brain is easily seduced by hindsight bias and survivor bias), write out a plan, and come to trust the plan by trading it in a demo account. Do you have to blow out accounts to be successful? Not if you do the hard work first. What percentage of aspiring traders do the hard work first? I don't know the numbers on that, but I know that out of a few dozen ET-ers with whom I've had detailed conversations, only a couple had a detailed trading plan and followed it (they were both consistently profitable). Maybe these two traders blew accounts or took heavy losses earlier in their careers. It's quite possible the number of traders who do the hard work in advance of trading real money is 0.
This is horrible advice. I used to think that I could get away with this, but it puts you behind the crowd. The OP must learn price action and market mechanics, and it will take some time (and possibly money) for things to sink in. It is very hard to see how the market does it's dance without watching price. Indicators do have their place though.