Now if it is a tight range in grinding up tight bull channel that is a very strong trend even if just crawling up. You buy pb with limit orders on bear bars that pb towards the 20 ema. That is not a tight sideways range but a tight channel. There is a bit of difference. You can hold such a position for bigger profits and scale in on bear bars adding more as it grinds up.
Hey guys, I thought an even better analogy than the cook book: Who wants to buy my book, How to Fly with your Hands Only? Now the simple fact that I can not do that myself (for long) should be irrelevant to Brooks supporters, so the ebook version is only 99 cents. Here, I even give you the summary: 1. Stand on a cliff or a high raise about 200 feet off the ground. 2. Stretch your arms out sideways. 3. Close your eyes, imagine you are Icarus and leap forward. 4. While falling flying flap your arms quickly like a chicken does and scream: "I can fly!!" The best part is, everybody can fly with this method for at least 3 seconds... If you read the book, even longer...
The better way. The Brooks Way. Three things. 1) You gotta be hungry. To gain strenght and grow those wings for flight. If you ain't hungry you won't study Brooks. (Study, not just skim or read (like most instant grits or instant oatmeal people want). Open that mouth WIDE. Picture will explain the details. 2) You gotta pay attention and listen. Momma gonna tell you alot of things. Brooks will tell you many things. Things you will not capture if you cannot listen well. The picture will explain. Clean the wax out of those ears and if necessary get some hearing aids. 3) Momma's gonna kick your fat or skinny a$$ out of the nest so you can learn to fly. Brooks expects you to flap your wings and learn to fly. He teaches you the underlying principles but he expects you to "learn" by applying. You must learn on your own how to take advantage of the thermal currents and fine tune your glide. If you don't, too bad. Your problem. Picture will explain in deeper detail. Source of pictures: BU College of Engineering. Article Professor Lorena Barba, Article: Nature vs Nurture: How do baby birds learn to fly? ITS UP TO YOU! For more enlightment please read the full article. REALLY. http://blogs.bu.edu/bioaerial2012/2012/10/09/nature-vs-nurture-how-do-baby-birds-learn-how-to-fly/ ROFLMAO
I don't know Al Brook's teachings in depth, but I do recognize when someone's been putting alot of attention to price-data details, and from such people there's always something to learn IF one put the time and attention to it. Al is one of the very few who can explain bar by bar. Even if I can't always follow what is truly meant, years later I can watch a video that explains a missing piece in more detail. Does that mean he is for everyone? Definately not! But for the right person, or at the right time, when one is hungry enough, teachings like that can lead to powerful change. Even if you misunderstand: Whenever your logic is sound and in harmony with the markets, it can still work! Does it mean anyone can achieve success? Definately not! The statistics are still grim, even for those with excellent mentors, and you never know which one is good for you beforehand. So don't go bet the farm to make it, but hedge your bets. If you make it, it's because YOU are applying the correct actions in relationship with the markets. If you have a system that's making it, even better, as you can start automating it. Will the system be smarter than a really smart person? Probably not, unless you're one of the smartest people on the planet and leading ML practitioner.. Is it smart to dismiss what one doesn't know? I prefer not to answer this one!
I was really excited when I saw the title of this thread. Unfortunately, reading it top to bottom reveals that 90% of it has nothing to do with the question. Trading Records – the constant criticism regarding failure to provide trading records is quite tiresome, both here and in other threads. Even if Brooks did that it would only be a starting point because what you really need, as a minimum, is a calculated and audited daily NAV. Do the guys on this forum who make these criticisms know what that takes? I doubt it. It’s a huge headache to produce, costs tens of thousands of dollars every year and even when its produced it will be criticized for what’s been included and excluded. I’ve been there and done that. Unless you are a regulated fund and looking to raise hundreds of millions of AUM, you would never do it. But who wants to see an equity curve without an attribution? That’s what I look for and analyse before I make any hedge fund investment, otherwise I am blindly jumping onto a series of good monthly returns. And to produce a decent attribution is way more time-consuming for a fund manager than a daily NAV. And then how does our ‘private investor Brooks' explain to our 'forensic expert investor' why he did that XYZ Put Spread that has nothing to do with his trading style, but was a tip from a friend? Bottom line: if you’re not a fund with significant capital and aspirations, you WILL NOT produce what’s required, and anything less is frankly a waste of time. Black Box – without this audited track, if you buy/follow a vendor system it’s a black box. I have nothing against black boxes, as long as you know the risks. One of the risks being you don’t know all the risks. This falls under the category of passive investor, which doesn’t seem to really fit in with the ET ethos. Active Investing – so given we are hopefully all active investors here, why does it matter if something is a black box? We won’t be investing. So where is the value in these vendors? For me, its not following blindly, but rather keeping an open mind, trying to absorb all the information, and then deciding if it can make any contribution to what my trading is about, in terms of capital, markets, instruments, timeframes, risk, etc, etc. Some people find value in Brooks’ work and some people don’t. I am sure that applies to most vendors. That’s fine. But it does seem the fundamental dislike of Brooks’ approach is much higher than other vendors and I don’t know why? I am interested to find out more but hesitant to read the books given how many people here say they are a tough read, and my own bias to try to keep my trading simple. Does anyone else employ Brooks approach and care to elaborate, maybe in more simple terms, what they find most useful? Xela, would you be willing to share what you find most helpful, or provide a link where you have done so previously? In the meantime I will follow up on the suggestions regarding the information links and videos on youtube.
He's technically a "vendor", certainly. But not, I think it's fair to say, in the same category or style as others generally (quite correctly) labelled "vendors" in trading forums. But to answer your question, I believe that in the case of Al Brooks, there are three main reasons for it (these three perhaps overlap to some extent, and there may also be some other, subsidiary reasons, as well) ... 1. For someone about whom trading forums are full of so many long-established, independent members stating openly that his work was very valuable to them and they might not even be making a living at all without having studied it, his books are particularly badly edited and pretty heavy going: that clearly causes some resentment, because they're clearly "not for everyone" and there are undeniably buyers of them around who didn't find what they were looking for there (whether those people were ever likely to with the books of other "equivalent authors" is another matter altogether and not relevant to the point I'm making here) ... 2. He's not selling or promoting or describing anything even approaching a "ready-made system", by any stretch of the imagination, but rather something that really needs a great deal of hard work and study, and is therefore subject to some resentment from people who've bought his books really not quite appreciating that ... 3. He's a very highly educated, former professional guy with a notably successful career (as a professor and surgeon) and there really are some people in trading forums (and elsewhere, doubtless) who have some residual, often unspoken, maybe even subconscious antipathy to such people ... And actually another one, which I offer almost tongue-in-cheek! ... 4. It may even be that the people "proclaiming" Al Brooks as a "good educator" in trading forums (and I naturally admit to being one of them, myself, of course), because of the kind of traders we tend to be, have a way of posting which in itself can inadvertently provoke some resentment and hostility toward us, which may "thicken the plot" to some extent and result in more critical comment than would otherwise arise (actually, to be honest, the more I think about this possible reason, the more I feel there may be something in it! ). With many apologies, I find this terribly difficult to do, for a whole bunch of reasons, including the following ... (i) It's really difficult to summarise because to some extent it's a "whole new way of looking at what's going on in the markets" (some people will dispute or even perhaps ridicule this assertion - and that's ok, too ); (ii) I'm way too Aspergerish, myself, to be able to explain in a way that's likely to be helpful to others what I got out of it (especially as I originally approached it very much from my own perspective, having recently abandoned indicators and enthusiastically devoured almost the entire written output of Joe Ross, Bob Volman and Lance Beggs, and let me tell you that's a lot of "output"); (iii) Doing so would in any case kind of encroach on "details of my own trading" about which an NDA I've signed actually prohibits me, these days, from presenting any details in forums (this will also doubtless sound like a "feeble excuse" to some, who may even be quick to say so openly, but I'm afraid that doesn't change its reality from my own perspective ). In summary, on this subject, I can't really add anything helpful to what I said in posts #6, #19 and #25 above (which in some ways I now regret having made, albeit that they probably only repeated things I'd already mentioned elsewhere in the forum). Sorry!
Xela, -- Let's face it guys -- is a brilliant, content rich poster. Just what ET needs more of. Thanks, Xela!
After some consideration I decided to answer the OP, but first, I found this comment by Xela consistent with my thoughts regarding the course (or just the books). I don’t see Brook’s system as a strategy but as a series of observations explaining multiple possibilities to any combination(s) of bars, or price action. The way he describes trades in the books seems to me to be any number of personal strategies different traders (including institutions) might employ for their own reasons entering the same price action in either direction. To answer the OP: I have gained a much greater understanding of support and resistance as a result of studying his books and slides. His explanation of initial and actual risk has also been very useful to me. What I like best is the multitude of possibilities regarding where to enter, where to exit, when (or where) to scale in or out, where to place stops, etc. regarding various price actions. I use just a few, but the fact I decided on just a few made the course worth my while, given that there were so many options to choose from. I found what I needed from those many options to trade within my personality.