At the end of the day Brooks just offers a way to look at very classic technical trades: pullbacks, divergence trades, breakouts, etc. There are no secrets nor magic. It's classic market behavior. And yes, he doesn't take 'directional accountability', he just throws out ideas. And ideas aren't all that bad to have, you need them to help you build a methodology which is why I'm not all down on Brooks. But he is essentially just a chartist with his own brand of charting (e.g. microchannels, spike-and-channel, 'major trend reversal' etc). Technical traders have to go from theory to practice, and that latter part is what you need to work on yourself. Nobody can do that for you. I remember when I started trading I badly wanted to get into a prop firm. One prop trader told me that 'nobody is going to really teach you how to do this'. He was right. They can show you ideas but it's up to you to put theory together with practice. To that point if you go on Brooks' forum there are a few people who post trading journals. I remember there was one guy Jsyn if I recall, who shared a lot of trades. He seemed to be pretty good. Scalped off the tick chart using Al's ideas. But he made Al's ideas his own.
I did not buy the book with the expectation to be taught how to trade. I had hoped that I might pick up some pointers to improve my own trading. All I got were some ZZZs. I know all of the essential TA stuff, having read several books on the subject years ago. And I discarded most of it. He doesn’t add to it; he just regurgitates it in pedantic fashion with a penchant for neologism.
I downloaded all three of his books and his entire course. It offered some ideas on how to trade for me, and it was also helpful that he focused on the ES. But indeed, nothing earthshattering. And that's what the vendors do, they repackage classical technical analysis and put their own labels on stuff. That's fine, because sometimes the way someone presents an idea can offer you a better way to understand and implement it. There was this guy Sam Seiden who would always talk about fading classical technical patterns. He was in fact just repackaging certain other technical concepts in a way that sounded cool, like you were "fading the retail crowd". The problem starts when you look at Brooks or anyone else as a turnkey solution: "Hey I want to start trading and here's this awesome course that's going to tell me everything I need to know! I can just scalp two points a day on 10 contracts and compound my way to being rich, yay!" I remember there was one guy on YouTube who was a total disaster. He tried to trade Brooks' ideas but it was very clear he was just trying to scalp intraday noise, risking 2 points to make 1. He posted videos for months at a time. I'd watch it just to amuse myself. He'd give all these motivational speeches to himself meanwhile he was just drawing trendlines all over the place, getting stopped out left and right. Then like many desperate souls back then he'd be trying out TopStep trader and so on. And boy did he put a lot of time into it. Guy ultimately took off all his videos, what a shame though I got a kick watching them. Too many people like that around.
Hello Georgii, Correct. Al Brooks can not teach everything. He is just apart of the puzzle just like all other trading teachers and trading books.
LMFAO HAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAAH That is FUNNNNYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY Motivation speeches does not work. LMFAO HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA Good Laughs please share more trader failures story. I like them.
The only thing I learned about Brooks, is that his 5 minute trendline break is fairly reliable. However, if we are in chop mode, YOU are in chop mode. So again. everything must be taken in context.
I could write a book. Perhaps my favorite was at the only Trader's Expo I ever attended, ages ago. There was this one vendor, Scott Andrews, "Master the Gap". He was addressing a large crowd and discussing his strategy. As he was making his presentation people would interrupt with questions, some more decent, and some outright stupid. Well... One old lady (must have been in her seventies) was not having any of it. She felt that these interruptions were preventing her from learning the secret that Andrews was belaying to all of us. So she started yelling in a thick Jewish accent "Stop asking questions I want to listen!!". People ignored her. She finally really got angry, stood up and made a fuss. Andrews then said "How about I do the presentation first, and then I'll take questions at the end? Fair?" People seemed to agree. So he continues. Then sure enough a minute hardly passes and a question comes. And then another. And then another and another. And Andrews duly answers them anyway. The lady totally gave up in frustration. This illustrated an important point. The vendors are there to sell. They are not giving away any big secrets that will teach you to make money. Yet this lady, who was there with her husband, thought he was giving the keys to the kingdom away. Those interrupting with questions likewise thought it was their one chance to glean some secret. It was quite a sight to behold. I also remember one guy in his forties, very clean cut, who looked eagerly at Andrews and goes "Do you also offer a signal service?", with this serious look like this was going to get him rich. You learn a lot when you attend these events...
People say we’re trading against the brightest minds in the universe. But my take is that trading is instead a very primitive endeavor. Even the smartest ones will blow up all the money they’ve raised from other smart dumb ass. As a retail trader, I believe it’s better to be dumb and convex than smart and concave. See ? It has nothing to do with intelligence. I’d rather learn trading from a wild animal that needs to thrive within an hostile environment than to learn it from an Harvard or LSE graduate. Trading is more akin to street fighting. It’s do or die and everyone is willing to cheat to bring money home, get bonus or a reputation. We might compete against the smartest but I don’t believe that, in the end, they’re the winners.
LMFAO HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHHAH I love it I love it LMFAO HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH One funny story I have is a friend of mine who is very Agorant and cocky. He did not like the fact I was not a millionaire yet trading the ES. He said whats so freak hard about this ES crap. Well he went straight live with $20K and made money quick. He kept saying stop losses is stupid. And he hated getting stop out. He removed the stop loss and made like $3k, started bragging to me, saying how good he was and trading was easy. Well one day, he got stuck in a bad trade. He went long early morning and ES dropped. It was one of those slow bear trending days. He sweated the entire day. He average in. Margin call, lost about $17,000 cash in one day. LOL HAHAHAHAHAH
Retail traders are trading against themselves. Nobody cares about our tiny positions, nobody is out to get us. Most don't even realise it but 99,99% of the time it's their own wrong doing and psychological fuckups that cause them to lose everything, they just tend to blame everything and everyone else except themselves.