it appears to me that trying to trade like Brooks for 13 years has made me notice some things that are helping me to trade like ...,well, myself. what @maxinger was talking about.....finding your own holy grail
yes to many gold may look that way.....but it has it's small trends and in 5 min can you expect more.....? if trend means going up one way for 2-3 hours...is there any point in looking at 5min? the minute you look at 5 min you have to understand that 3 bar pattern in 5 min is not going to result in a 10 day move or even a 20 bar one way move, without retracements. that is why Brooks looks at 5 min, not for long trends, but for more trading opportunities. this could be called scalping and is the most difficult to do, according to the majority of all experienced traders But it could also be just called 'trading the 5 min' no wonder most people get confused with Brooks, a few hate him , a few understand him, and a small number demand his head on a stake I have never heard anyone advice a trader that he scalp !. that trader may do so anyway because of some personal reasons...like trying to make breakfast and lunch money.....or because he is impatient and does not want to hold doing nothing for hours and days. 'A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains'-Dutch Proverb...obviously those Nobel prize winners that blew up LCTM did not appreciate this. that said it is difficult to be patient when your stomach is growling for food. so this is the trader's dilemma: swing and be hungry or scalp and sleep with full stomach
Brooks always says look at the size of bars ,how they form, size of retracements....three pushes ,structure of the 3 pushes....and many other things...that is why his books are so long and then look for a set up to control risk. He is obsessed about that one thing ..quite correctly, i might add, to control risk. Traders new to Brooks trade his set ups as a reason for the trade. this is wrong. doing wrong things and then saying someone must be flogged is a bit unreasonable. but being unreasonable is not yet illegal
closed i had opened one more position but did not post it.....it is tiring enough to post relevant things
i am still trading demo because having money on line does interfere with your thought process if you are not sure about your system or your market read... in my case it is reading market, which takes a lot of years to learn and Brooks is all about market reading.....i am not surprised it taking me 13 years... once i start getting trades correct and get a win rate of above 70% ,which is necessary if you are doing a large number of transactions, which is why 5 min is used to enable just that, then i will go live