I was reading a review of both Al Brooks and Steve Nison on https://www.tradingschools.org I was laughing so much and I think that if I don't share it , it would not be great Few words about both : Exhibition of palm reading, fortune cookie wisdom, crystal ball divination, modernist voodoo, cult leader fanaticism, and Harry Potter magical thinking. Sucker the newbie into believing that an actual wizard is behind the curtain.(for Al Brooks) Plenty of fancy stuff about how Steve lectured lots of big players: the Fed, the World Bank, Goldman SachsIt but it tells us nothing and it means absolutely nothing, a distraction to divert our attention to whether Steve Nison actually trades. Does he eat his own cooking? Your verdict ? (there are meme for help you to decide)
The only thing about Al Brooks' books I can say for sure is that his books are almost unreadable. I tried a couple of times but soon gave up. But the way he writes shows that he definetely has a solid practical experience in trading. As for Nison, and I read his books long time ago - his materials are mainly for noobies with all pros and cons.
Is this the Steve Nison who is the candlestick guy? If he is, I love Steve Nison. He was my Pei Mei for introducing me and training me on candlestick. Candlestick patterns I find are still very useful provided you 1) use it on higher timeframe like daily and 2) use the 3-candle patterns not the 2-candle ones which doesn't have confirmation candles and 3) confirm it with other technical indicators. Candlestick is lot more informative and easier to spot and visualize than those flag or triangle patterns I find.
I certainly enjoy some of the stuff from trading schools it’s hilarious. Indeed many of the vendors deserve the bashing they get. The guy that does the reviews(Emmett Moore) takes about 5% factual stuff and adds 95% satire to make it appealing. Funny it is and yeah I enjoy reading his stuff, but his intent is to ridicule and he’s set in that intent. I’ve read the reviews of both Nison and Brooks also. I’ve also seen plenty of Nison’s work and some of Brooks work, and I don’t think either of them are perfect. I see hindsight bias in both works which would be a deep discussion, perhaps with Brooks I haven’t got far enough into his work to understand his whole system yet. I can say the way emmett back tested Nison’s work had no context to the movement around candles, which Nison says is important. I think that learning the candle set ups whether from Nison or not is worth learning, however I do think Nison has taken it a bit too far with his quest to capitalize on it. I could also say the same of Brooks seems like he’s finding a way to capitlize on the teaching more so than trading, but hasn’t gone as far as Nison. Of course this doesn’t mean they don’t have anything to offer, if you dig deep enough a lot of what they have to offer can be found for free. Then if it suits you perhaps it’s worth reading or watching more of their material. Of course I’d recommend passing on anything too ridiculous priced such as subscriptions etc. Books for $50ish are starting to get to that point but most people risk more than that on a single trade. So hey maybe their stuff works for you and it was a winner great and if not just chalk it up to a loss.
I remember Al saying early on that in coming out with his trading methodology, his goal was to get hired as a consultant to hedge funds. Guess there were no takers yet found a feeding frenzy amongst the at-homers. On Nison, I remember around 2004 or so he was a guest in some chat room I was in at the time and said (paraphrased from memory), "If you read my first two candle books but haven't bought my new workshop series than you will get absolutely killed in the markets". Nice, huh? Self-admission of fraudism even way back then. A thing about Al always got me. Why would an opthalmologist quit practice to go into the markets? Made no sense to me. It's such a noble pursuit compared to the slimy world of trading education.
His wife, who was a lawyer left he and his small daughters and he wanted to earn a living from home so he could raise the girls. You can't practice ophthalmology from home but you can trade. This was years before he wrote the first book.
If they could get Larry Williams to join them, then maybe they could form a musical trio to delight their students.
I'll go search more about Larry Williams later and see what's amaizing with him , but this picture made my day thanks
If you look carefully, you'll find good things and some very bad things. He's a great marketer and vendor, certainly. There are some details in William Gallacher's book Winner Take All: the NFA fined Larry Williams for not reporting to potential clients that, while his personal account in a promotional 1987 contest was very profitable (a gain of nearly $1 Million), his managed accounts for clients lost substantial funds (over $6 Million); this was held to constitute "deceptive and unbalanced promotional material and disclosure statements." Even after that, there was more: in July 1988 the "Larry Williams Financial Strategy Fund" was launched, followed in March 1989 by the World Cup Championship Fund, managed by Larry Williams, Jake Bernstein and two others; the 1988 fund lost more than 50% of its clients' equity in barely a year (as reported in the October 1989 issue of Futures magazine), and the 1989 fund also lost more than half of its original equity by May 1990.