I didn't say it was, Pete. I said that being accused in public of not disclosing trading records because he has none to disclose (i.e. of lying to people about being a trader) is defamatory. I don't know him at all, and I have no interest in automation, myself - but I've formed a pretty good impression, from what I've seen. He certainly seems to me to be probably another of the "good guys". There are a few, you know?
I'm not sure what the obsession is with track records? Recently, I bought a book written by a self-proclaimed "expert on baking bread"....I studied the book, followed the recipe, and lo and behold the bread that I baked came out better than anything I produced over the last two years prior reading the book....the thought of emailing the author and asking him to record a video of himself baking bread in order to "provide a track-record" that he actually knew how to bake bread never once crossed my mind. I let my own experience following the author's direction speak for itself. Similarly, I read a book a few years ago about how to fly Cessna aircraft written by man who claimed to be be a pilot that knew how to fly Cessna aircraft. There were pictures of him in the book sitting in an aircraft in flight, but maybe he was lying and someone else was landing the plane and sitting next to him? The material he wrote in the book helped me tremendously when I attempted to learn how to fly, but how do I know he wasn't a charlatan? Why didn't he provide his pilot's license to me and record himself actually landing the aircraft? See how ridiculous it sounds in a different context?
Everything you say is right, of course ... But it does all depend on context, I think. And the context being applied to Al Brooks, sadly, is probably the same context as the one much more reasonably applied to the outright, blatant scammers charging $5,000 for a two-day "trading course" teaching moving average crossovers. Obviously, to a rational person, being the author of three respected, acclaimed textbooks published by Wiley and retailing to their comparatively small audience at about $50 each, and earning an author's royalty of 10% (maybe 12.5%) on that cover price, doesn't even begin to put someone in the same league as that, as "a vendor". But to people who don't distinguish one context from another and simply lump everyone together as "trading vendors", it can come across that way, I guess ... and regarding "trading vendors" in general, I suppose it's fair enough to have some healthy skepticism, in principle. The reality, though, in the case of the good Dr Brooks, is that there also plenty of people around who found that what he's teaching didn't work for them (typically, I suspect, because they didn't want to put in "all that effort" to understand it - and it really is an effort!), and rather than blaming themselves for that in any way, or realising that they perhaps bought the books expecting them to be something they never pretended to be, some of them just blame the author instead. That's human nature, to some extent ... but it also means that there's a bunch of people badmouthing the guy and seizing on any opportunity - however irrelevant and farfetched - to besmirch his reputation. As we see, time and again, when he's mentioned here at ET. Which is a shame, of course, but what can you do? And to answer my own semi-rhetorical question, all I can do is keep mentioning the undeniable, independently verifiable fact that there are also impressively large numbers of long-established members in many trading forums happily mentioning that Al Brooks' teaching was highly influential in their developing the ability to become consistently profitable in their own trading, and that fortunately for us, none of us ever has to pay back to anyone the money we've made by following his teaching, whether the author chooses to publish his own trading records or not.
Because there's numerous charlantans out there, some *very* convincing. And the best way for the new trader to avoid all of these frauds is simply to insist on a properly verified track record. Absent of that, you can make your best educated guess, but you never really know...
Someone could be a profitable trader and a lousy communicator or worse, communicate deceptively. Someone could be non-profitable trader and communicate valuable ideas and strategies very well. As traders, we have to be able to distinguish signal from noise, the same dynamic holds true for reference and educational sources.
Xela, SteveM, speedo, others all make good points but be warned, now the owner of trading schools and his alleged very large collection of fake profiles are in this thread, you are wasting your breaths. Everything will be will be redirected to some variation of why not just have Al Brooks surrender his trading records to the owner of tradingschools, if he is not hiding something. There will be a response to this post which acts all innocent and bla bla bla. Naming no names. You will see for yourself.
You joined ET 10 days ago and yet you know all this. Which are the fake profiles of the tradingschools owner in this thread?