I go under the knife this week all going well, being treated very well under a surgeon who specializes in this type procedure. The hardest part is laying in bed all wired up for a few days, can hardly move while they monitor your heart, blood etc.
Wish you the best Mickey. I have had irregular heart beat for years. You mentioned the dangers of irregular heartbeat and surgery. Mine is genetic. Mom has it. I have been operated on and had no problems. Hope all turns out well for you.
Unfortunately most threads I have seen argue the futility of Brooks and proceed to rail about him making money selling books and videos course. I doubt that. Most people are too lazy, mentally, and otherwise, to work their way through his written works. Most would never wade through all his videos much less practice over and over what he teaches in order to become proficient. I really doubt he make much money at all selling his written works and video courses. That said, posts by speedo are good. No doji used to post some brooks concepts and record her experiences here on ET and someone got her mad and she left in a huff, never to return. Xela I think was a brooks fan. Left too. Pissed about something if I remember correctly but I don't remember what it was. Erin in her thread on ET "Understanding Price Action" I thought was posting some interesting concepts on Price Action but apparently got pissed too and left too. Faster than crap goes through a goose. Padutrader is a follower of brooks too and actually sets forth some brooks concepts, but a lot of the time it seems he is provoked to outbursts by the scallywags that rail on him. I get railed on some as does Padutrader. I personally don't care and find it somewhat amusing and a bit entertaining but who knows one day some scallywag may press the wrong button and I will stomp off in a huff too. You can tell when Padutrader is striking back. Letters get bigger and bigger and in red in his posts. ROFLMAO All I can say is you may want buy Brooks books and his BIG video course or you could start off with a smaller cheaper video course at daytradinginsight dot com It is called Best Trades Course and is mostly Al Brooks teaching it. In my opinion it is a good foundation to then later build on with his books and larger video course. And you may want to work your way through my journal. I apply many of his concepts to my own way to scalping. I do recommend the Best Trades course. PS you may want to contact simplemelike here on ET. He bought brooks BIG course I believe and came to the conclusion it is BS. He might sell you his course access for 1/2 price???? I don't agree with him on the BS part but a trader has to do whatever "floats his boat" He may be willing to sell it. Why not, if he considers it BS?
Successful Trading can been seen as a four pronged approach to the markets. 1) Learning concepts and ideas (Orthodoxy) 2) Practicing those concepts and ideas (Orthopraxy) 3) Proper psychological preparation 4) Appropriate performance and execution. Lets’s examine prong 1 (Two Parts): Part A prong 1 Repetition is a key learning aid because it helps transition a skill from the conscious to the subconscious. Through repetition, a skill is practiced and rehearsed over time and gradually becomes easier. ... Another important factor in learning is the ability to make connections to previously learned knowledge. (source AplNext.com) Repetition is an important literary device because it allows a writer or speaker to place emphasis on things they choose as significant. It tells the reader or audience that the words being used are central enough to be repeated, and lets them know when to pay special attention to the language. (Source: Literary terms) Repetition works well because it helps your brain solidify connections that are used to recall memories. When you learn something new, your brain instantly attempts to associate it with something that you already know through a process of assimilation. (Source: noocube.com) First, you needed to learn the essential skills. ... It's good because repetitionprovides the practice that children need to master new skills. Repetitionhelps to improve speed, increases confidence, and strengthens the connections in the brain that help children learn. (Source readingbrightstart.org) Repetition is the mother of all learning. ... Learning is simple when you repeat. So don't tell yourself that you can't learn a new language, and don't blame it on your old brain. You can, and science keeps finding evidence saying that your brain can too. (Source: brainscape.com) Words and thoughts that are repeated often get stronger by the repetitions, sink into the subconscious mind and affect the behavior, actions and reactions of the person involved. ... If you consciously choose the thoughts, phrases and words that you repeat in your mind, your life will start to change. (Source: successconciousness.com) It strengthens and consolidates memories of things it encounters regularly and frequently. So spaced repetition – revisiting information regularly at set intervals over time – makes a lot of sense. Spaced repetition is simple, but highly effective because it deliberately hacks the way your brain works. (Source:theguardian.com) One of the biggest mistakes a teacher can make is to forego the return or repetition. The learning process is one of slow engagement with ideas; gradually the ...(Source:etbn.org.uk) Hence Brooks use of repetition. I would imagine. Part B prong 1 “Learning that’s easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow.” Rereading is usually cognitively easy. Highlighting key terms/concepts is cognitively easy. These practices repeated several times are not very efficient or effective for increasing retention of material. Instead, students should create a much healthier habit of studying using retrieval practice. This learning strategy is much more cognitively effortful. Quizzing/testing/assessing one’s knowledge via answering recognition or recall questions, for example, is more difficult than simply rereading notes. A plethora of studies have shown evidence that this increased cognitive effort led to greater gains in retention of material long-term. (Source:theeffortfuleducator.com) Have I volpri repeated enough the importance of repetition? However, that in itself while an important part of the learning process is still not enough. You need to combine it with RETRIEVAL PRACTICE. FOR DEEP LEARNING. That is, invent and use recognition techniques or recall questions that require mental effort. However, Repetition and Deep learning are still not enough. Together those two create the orthodoxy leg of learning. That is, the learning of correct ideas and concepts. They are the first step in skill development. Prong 2 The second and necessary step of skill development is orthopraxy. That is, correct practice. However, you need orthodoxy to be able to orthopraxy. You have to know “what” to practice. Brooks gives, IMO, all the orthodoxy that a trader needs to trade successfully. His training is the most comprehensive and detailed treatment of price action that I know of. Sadly, most traders will never expend the effort to complete the orthodoxy leg or prong of trading presented by Brooks in his videos and books. They don’t like the repetition. They don’t like the detailed analysis. They won’t do the deep learning. Therefore, they never give themselves a chance to learn price action trading orthodoxy, Brooks style. They give up and declare it incomprehensible, double talk, or mumbo jumbo or something of that nature. The real problem is they are mentally lazy. If you want to find the gold nuggets you have to expend the effort and dig for them. Brooks is not going to cater to mental laziness and that is a good thing IMO. Orthopraxy (correct practice of correct concepts) comes after a trader has orthodoxied the Brooks concepts (so to speak). A live trading Simulator facilitates the orthopraxy leg or prong of skill development. Nowadays there exist no excuse to not practice until a skill is learned, and it becomes second nature, and to do so without any monetary risk, whatsoever. If a trader does not orthopraxy then it is just being plain lazy. Prong 3 There is a third leg or prong to skill development when learning and practicing trading Brooks, or any other methodolgy, for that matter. That third leg is the psychological or mental aspect of it. A trader can have orthodoxy, orthopraxis, and still fail and lose their savings. A trader can know what to do and how to do it and when to do it and cannot psychologically do it. That failure comes to light qlaringly when a real account with real money is traded. So, some learning and practice in the psychological aspect or third leg/third step in trading is imperative. Lack of psychological preparation is probably the single biggest failure in the trading world and without doubt the undoing of most traders. The good news is to some degree (though not 100%) a trader can learn and practice the psychological aspect on a SIM thus training himself for real money trading. Like an airline pilot that is trained on a sim and learns how to respond and execute, in a myriad of circumstances. I have heard (not sure if it is true) that when an airplane transport pilot actually flies the jet for the first time it is with passengers on board. I know when I took private pilot training that the first time I crawled in the pilots seat the instructor had me fly the plane. Taking off was easy. Flying was relatively easy. Landing was a booger though. I needed more orthopraxy to land successfully. The orthodoxy in flight ground school was not enough..LOL Prong 4 Correct performance/execution is what is going to make a trader consistently profitable. Which by default is our goal. We know we can’t win every time, nor make money on every trade, but we must train ourselves to win enough times, and big enough, to offset any losses when we do experience them. And to still stay ahead money wise. Said in simple terms, our win rate and average win, should, ideally, be greater than our losing rate and average loss. Trading is one of the highest performance activities that a human can engage in. It requires an incredible amount of learning, practice, mental strength, and execution than most other activities, because the variables are many and can be huge. It takes a myriad of procedures and tactics, executed properly and at the right time, to be successful at trading, in any conditions. Like flying in the fog. Flying in the rain. Flying in strong wind conditions. Flying in mountainous conditions. There are many procedures to learn IF you want to trade the markets in “any conditions.” Now, if you are satisfied watching a computer for a single setup all day then that is your prerogative. I personally, had rather learn how to trade in all market conditions, make my money fast and go on to living life doing other things...like fishing and traveling. I train myself to trade all market conditions. When I finally crawl my carcass out of bed it is usually after the market open (because of some health issues not laziness …well maybe a tad big of laziness) and I crank up the laptop, launch my trading platform, it takes me about 5 minutes to get an overnight view of what the markets did, and are doing since the open. Then I am ready to look for trading opportunities. I don’t have to spent hours in preparation and research before the open. I don’t care one iota about the news. The chart tells me all I need to know. So if you buy his course or read his books stay awake as you learn Brook’s orthodoxy! Lol “You snooze you lose”
The question always crosses my mind as to whether or not what you've written is achievable by the average person. In other words - can consistent profitability via these methods be achieved through hard work and due diligence? Or does it take a little something extra on the cognitive end? Admittedly it's a tough path to attempt to traverse knowing the endgame has no guarantee vs. say a degree at university for example (granted a degree doesnt guarantee you work). Just curious what your thoughts are on this. Magnificent write up regardless.
The core concepts are: Successful Trading can been seen as a four pronged approach to the markets. 1) Learning concepts and ideas (Orthodoxy) 2) Practicing those concepts and ideas (Orthopraxy) 3) Proper psychological preparation 4) Appropriate performance and execution. I think those 4 things are certainly achievable by the average person. The rest in my post #1575 above are examples of how orthodoxy and orthopraxy take place to cement learning and skills. The orthodoxy may come from brooks (who does employ repetition in his teaching) or any other mentor or course that has proven successful. The practice is simply doing the process of doing the teaching over and over on a SIM until one does it by second nature. The psychological end is something every trader has to work on almost continually but there is an initial preparation. There are many mentors or books …courses…that deal with these issues. One of my favorites is Yvan Byeajee works in this area. Real money trading will highlight the issues in these areas for a trader, showing him his weaknesses and strengths. For a personal example: I loathe losing. All my life. From a youngster until the present day October 6, 2021. I remember, when very young hating to lose at monopoly or checkers. Hating to lose at volleyball. Even today hating to watch my favorite football team lose. It gnaws on me. Eats on me. So what do I do when it comes to trading? Two options: 1) I could find a way to eradicate that loathing of losing by learning to lose. 2) Or I could devise a system of trading that would render me a high win rate. I chose the latter as this weakness was so engrained in me since my youth that to eliminate it seems monumental. So, I did the latter and scalping provided the mechanism whereby I could develop a system with a high win rate. Now imagine, for someone who espouses averaging down, I had better do it for a reason other than avoiding a loss. I do it because it renders me a high win rate, when done properly. Trading of course, is about making money but you also have to enjoy what you do to make it sustainable long-term. I could not be happy with a system that renders me loss after loss before a win even if it makes me more money. Trading is a passion to me but if I had to endure loss after loss to make some money the fun and enjoyment of trading would fizzle out, at least for me. This is just one example of a psychological issue and devising a means to work around it. There are many more. The appropriate performance and execution comes first with practice and journaling as one develops the skills, then really come into play when there is some skin in the game. Take Sunday's game Patriots vs Tampa Bay Bucs. Look at the quarterbacks. Brady 44 years old..way more experienced but for some reason or another he could not perform in that one game at his peak and with what he is capable of doing. I thought Mac Jones did a better job of executing and almost won the game were it not for that 56 yard field goal attempt that hit the goal post and went out. Practice makes performance better and Brady has had plenty of practice. But he still had some performance issues in that one game. However, had he not had the colosal amount of practice put in, his performance would have likely been even worse. We practice so that we can execute and perform well or at least better when the event happens, whether that event be a football game or a trading session. Yes, any average person can embrace these 4 concepts in their trading. Now whether they can learn Brooks or not, or even what I show in my journal, is a horse of a different color. Much of it is contingent upon their willingness to study, do the practice, and develop the skills.
Successful trading just requires you to have enough capital to average down in a market that always goes up as the primary trend. Sure you can pick better spots to average but that is about it. Everything else is just overfitting
You are welcome. My pleasure to type it up. It is probably very timely at this point in my journal to type this up as my journal could get too much information overload and actually have a de-motivating effect on the readers, something I would wish to avoid. Thanks for bringing the issue up! People don’t have to learn and practice everything I write about. They can take one technique and practice it over and over until they get really good at it. For instance, trading the outer edges of ranges. Or trading probing gaps in broad ranges. They can practice those things. Or trading implied PB’s. I am just showing techniques I use in trading. By no means does that mean a trader has to learn all I write about or become skillful in ALL of it to become profitable. They can pick and which techniques they want to use on their SIM ROFL. Some may want larger profits. They can go with measured moves. I think I have mentioned some things on MM’s but one day may explore them more in depth in this journal. They can render bigger profits but they are not my favorite technique. However, I present a great number of techniques which gives a trader more options and several tools in the tool box for trading in different contexts. A 5 minute chart of ES has 81 bars. Money can be made on most any of them. One just has to have, know, understand, and have practiced the techniques to do so. There is no noise in the markets. Only buyers and sellers. Who has the upper hand at the moment is key to employing the correct technique.