Exup.... explained it well in his aircraft related definition. Therefore, PA trading will never be elegant. You all probably know when PA became a buzz word in recent years. To measure the path to elegance in expert trading could be done. It would be best done in terms of using principles carved in stone as milestones. None of the priniciples are trading or finance specific. An alternative would be to use specific skill acquisitions as milestones. Books are on many levels. My elucidation choice is as I write my five books is to go from level to level with regard to the mind of the reader. A status report on the webb's current content with respect to milestones, is that less than half have been covered and more than half are yet to be articulated. Most people can recognize the dicsussion levels like: Trade, Dick, trade, etc..... It is rarer to see disuccion levels that describe the next several trades in terms of specific data sets and the order in which they will be appearing and where and when (their locus). Look at the list of 10 or 12 of the Greatest Traders You Have Never Heard of. Google the list and find that there are no PA traders. Make a chart that goes from left to right across the top by labelling it with the skills levels you have heard of. Go from least to best. Vertically list the five possible decisions a trader could be making at any time. Fill in the cells with the frequency of each decision over a trading session. Second. fill in the cells by ranking the order of importance of each of the types of decisions from 1 to5 where 1 is most important. For a third time, fill in the cells ranking the ease of the decision from easiest (1) the hardest (5) for each skill level column. On the fourth pass, fill in the more impotant milestone used for a given skill level for each of the 5 rows of types of decisions. For the 30 milestones, go through connecting the dots from milestone 1 to milestone 30. Put small checks on the ones you are using. Put them on separate pages and cut and paste from the webb the pertinent guidance you will be using to: assess, assimilate, gain facility in, learn to discuss with others, and learn to train others to use successfully. Do the cut and pasting by these five heading for your convenience. William J O'Neill notes in LTMMIS, in the last chapter, 18 common mistakes made by traders. They are the opposites of the associated milestones. You have listed 30 milestones. Which miletones have the most common mistakes associated with them? What are the common mistakes made with the other milestones? Markets have variables. Is it a mistake to leave out a variable? NB: Volume leads price. Here's a shortcut: Ignore that volume leads price and skip doing the charts and filling in the cells and making up 30 pages of milestones. NB: What you learn by doing the charts is that you can't do the charts as yet.
For every woman with a curve, there are several men with angles. No wonder you can't think straight, being the only hen in a cockhouse. Re-read what you wrote; the market participants ARE PRICE in that they are not personally talking to you, rather it is THEIR collective footprint that IS PRICE.
I'll tell you why I did not like it. It is not in English, nor in any other readily recognizable language.
If it was easy then everyone would read it and make money. There ain't no " wait for this set-up; take it ; go to the bank" Holy grail. Ya gotta figure it out yourself. Brooks might help. I don't think Jack will.
Regarding Al Brooks book, to avoid large amount of frustration, its best to start with his futures mag articles. They I believe offer an excellent introduction to his work. There is also a website put together by followers of Al's methods, which lists everthing one needs to get started. The book, I believe is a culmination of his 10 year focus and effort into reading PA. Think of it as a graduate level text book, one first needs to ramp up.
Thanks for the comments. Are there some links for the futures magazine articles and also link for website ? This can really help as I find the book too difficult to read and understand. Thanks if you can give some more information.
Trading may not be easy, but reading a book about it should not be even harder. The "ya gotta figure it out yourself" part is an excellent argument -- to not buy the book.
. Yes, same here. I received my copy of the book this past weekend and despite following deaddog and nodoji's suggestion of starting with the glossary, preface and the guideline chapters, I just wasn't making any progress with the other chapters. brookspriceaction is the website put togehter by followers of his methods. Going back to 2007, al brooks has written about a dozen articles. http://www.futuresmag.com/Pages/Futures-Magazine-Author.aspx?key=AL BROOKS
The fact that it is unreadable has nothing whatsoever to do with the material, which is quite simple. Think of it as an introductory text in PA written in jibberish. There is simply no excuse for publishing that kind of poorly written, poorly edited, and poorly printed crap. I blame Brooks and his publisher, John Wiley, equally.