First thing that comes to my mind is hedging his writing. At what point do we say your idea didn't work.
You know as much as at times I look down on Trader Vic for blowing up twice? atleast he has to show his statement. I used to believe Al Brooks but then I realized no proof of sucess then someone shows his mediocre house ( fine I live below my means too but I am not claiming guru status ) and it starts to smell.
his bio says he trades emini futures. why would he trade that if he's wealthy and not undercapitalized? Gotta be better markets to trade.
sometimes you need to go with the Trend knowing when you are wrong and stopping is huge !!! i agree with Peter --don't go against the grain
a lot of people see what they want to see in gurus..... take the ninetrans blog guy, disciple of Al who has many ardent followers who worship him he's often held out as the go-to source for proof of Al Brooks methods (for a while, he started a subscription section of his blog with exclusive content but seems to have now discontinued that) just went to his site and he showed a graph of his pnl for the year...... he's up 5k to 6k for the year so an annualized 20k - 24k a year..... (no wonder he was looking for subscribers) he's profitable, that is a huge accomplishment for any retail daytrader, and he's honest but I bet most of his followers were imagining he was pulling 100k a year hey the guy never lied about it, so am not attacking him, just using an example because many think he's a supertrader another example of where trader expecations are not at all in line with reality
its amazing that ninetrans guy isnt worth 20 mill by now. you read some of his older posts and day in day out he is making 4-8 pts. i found that interesting then i realized it was using ninja playback. so another question would be how to go about finding out if al brooks is a fraud? is there any legal way to find out? cftc? nfa? how do the trader education guys get held accountable? you know what, i wonder if the new consumer financial protection bureau would fall under that umbrella. probably not but worth a phone call i would think. or possibly the ftc as these 'educators' are sort of like infomercials that are selling hype. http://www.uspirgedfund.org/topics/consumer-protection
I dont think you can sue them or anything they have all those disclaimers on their stuff "not a registered advisor" "we are not responsible for losses incurred" "trading involves substantial risk" and most of them dont make any claims of profitability, just general comments like "you can make a lot of money on a move like that" or "hope some of you got some of that one" or "trading is the passion of my life, I love it so much" etc but no where in there are they claiming to be successful
What exactly would the fraud be? And what would a trading educator be accountable for? He's not telling anyone what and when to buy or sell. He's not managing anyone's money but his own. He wrote a book that no person or organization requires you to read prior to trading. He has a web site that no person or organization requires you to visit prior to trading. He has a cheap on-line trading room that you can visit for free and decide if it provides any value to you before paying a penny for it. His education consists of the same stuff that's been written about for decades, adapted to offer people ideas for intraday price action scalping concepts. He presents ideas. You decide if any of them are useful to your trading. If they are, you can create a trading plan around them; if they're not, then don't use them.