even when there has been a trendline break.......there should be prior strength in the direction of your trade. This is what i feel and is not Brooks exact words, though in this case it would be a second entry and these are safer, if anything is safe. and Brooks mentions many times that 'smart ' traders wait for second entries
it could be subjective. that's why traders should create their own dictionary. most of the terms used are created by the investors and hence not suitable / applicable to the day traders.
Exactly. That I call a PB reversal. As I have mentioned in my own journal. Take for instance, a bull trend that has a PB. First of all, the PB was caused by bulls taking profits or bears attempting to reverse the bull trend into a bear trend, or a combination of both (more likely). So, how do you decide if the PB will fail and the bull trend will resume or if a reversal of the bull trend is happening and the PB is just the first leg of the reversal? Like you said you need to see some counter trend strength. You want to see some sign that a reversal of a reversal is taking place. The first reversal being the PB. The second reversal being an attempt to reverse the PB. So, what do I look for? In a bull trend that has a PB, I want to see a bar in that PB closing above it’s midpoint and preferably a bull bar (a close higher than it’s open) but can be a bear bar…just a weaker attempt to reverse the PB, AND preferably with a tail on the bottom of the buy that is 1/3 to 1/2 or more of the bar range (or most of the bar body bullish) AND better if it is a decent size bar relative to the other bars in the PB. Going long on the next bar (first entry) has a high probability of making a profitable scalp of at least 1 point and often much more as the original bull trend continues after the PB reversal. If there is any doubt a trader can wait for a second attempt to reverse the PB, before going long. The problem with waiting is the second attempt may never come! The market can take off fast from the first attempt ….faster than crap through a goose. And the trader misses out on a reversal of the reversal. To help me determine if I will go with the first attempt or the second attempt to reverse the PB I will take note of the slope of the original bull trend. If it is fairly steep and the previous PB’s (f any) are minor PB’s AND there are no large exhaustion bars (indicating a possible ending of the original trend a a morphing into a TR or bear trend) then I am quite happy to go long on the first attempt to reverse the PB. With a SL in place LOL!
After studying Brooks for 2-3 years, I recently sold all of his books... Looking back, I think Brooks is a extremely smart and analytic guy. The problem is he doesn't teach you one trick, there are a lots of principles to consider at the same time. Add many years of experience and it becomes clear that not everybody is able to process this all in realtime. Volpri and Handle can, but don't ask Volpri to explain a trade in one sentence. I took me quite some time to realize I'm not that smart... I'm like an old computer, running on 2 Mb RAM (not a typo ) On the other hand his appraoch does appeal to impatient traders who like the 5 minute action. I bet a lot of his students get frustrated, because of the need to be right every 5 minute...
One sentence. Can do. I will reduce the trade in my post 974 to one sentence to humor you. Could be called a compound sentence but still one sentence! ROFLMAO. “High probability 1 point trade in the ES: In a steep bull trend that is in a PB go long on the first bar in the PB that closes above its midpoint especially if that bar is a bull bar and use a price action SL.” I give longer explanations to helps folks interested in the rationale for taking the trade and not just the specific instructions for making the trade. Over the long haul as the brain processes and connects dots here and there one becomes smarter in trading and is quicker to see the strength in a move, and who is winning, the bulls or the bears.
I am not very smart but I can tell you from my own experience 2 to 3 years of studying and understanding Brooks is not nearly enough. By that point one only has a few concepts but they are not really assimilated and cemented cognitively in the brain. Two or three years is only a plateful of ingredients that have yet to be mixed together in a pot and put on the fire to simmer in order to make a delightful soup. Two to three years, at 4 hours a day one has not yet even finished chopping up the vegetables, much less carving up the meat to go in the soup. The stove is still off. No fire. No soup.
this is easy stuff to learn Trading When a Market Is in a Bear Channel | Al Brooks - YouTube not all of his stuff is complicated