Al Brooks - Al Crooks, Charlatan

[NoDoji]

Fuck it. I'm just gonna summon @NoDoji - she's much better at this. Does anyone know the summoning ritual?

Summoning ritual is put "Brooks" in the title of a thread, LOL! His first book is the calculus textbook of intraday price action trading.

 

[mangolassi]

Al's definition of scalping is not correct.

The definition of scalping was long defined prior to Al becoming a trader. Simply, just because Al has "changed" the definition (this fact is true)...doesn't imply its the correct definition."

There are many different styles of scalping. You can find definitions of these methods all over the web. There isn't "one definition". Comparing the name of a candlestick chart (which is pretty much the same thing between all traders) to the various methods people use to "scalp" (literally limitless) isn't that strong of an argument.

You can even see this definition on popular sites like Investopedia:

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/trading/05/scalping.asp

"The third type of scalping is the closest to the traditional methods of trading. A trader enters an amount of shares on any setup or signal from his or her system, and closes the position as soon as the first exit signal is generated near the 1:1 risk/reward ratio, calculated as described earlier."

 

[justrading]

Al's definition of scalping is not correct.

The definition of scalping was long defined prior to Al becoming a trader. Simply, just because Al has "changed" the definition (this fact is true)...doesn't imply its the correct definition.

Just the same, Al calls himself a price action trader. That too is incorrect because Al uses indicators. Once again, the definition of "price action trading" was long defined before Al became a trader. Thus, just because he calls himself a price action trader doesn't imply its correct.

It only implies he has changed the definition for his own purposes.

Hey, look at it this way. I use to call Japanese Candlesticks as "Sushi Mama". I used that term for many years. It doesn't imply its correct because Japanese Candlesticks was long defined before I became a trader...actually back in the 1600's.

Regardless, its rumored these incorrect definitions will be corrected...stay tune for that channel.

P.S. I specifically asked him once if he used indicators. His reply was YES.

Are you being serious about the indicators? That's completely contrary to all he preaches.

 

[mangolassi]

I could list numerous problems with Brooks' teachings. He claims swing trades(ES trades where one looks for 4 points with approximately a stop of 1.75pts or slightly less) are good because you're probably going to be right 40% of the time and lose 60% but the math in the risk:reward ratio makes sense. I call that glib and dangerous advice, unless you're taking those trades on a daily basis and can identify them to your customers and the public on a daily basis you have no business telling the public or your customers that such trades are sound strategies.

Q3D: You simply aren't ever going to make it as a trader. Give up now. You have a terrible attitude, a terrible personality, and you cannot take the blame for any of your own mistakes. You also don't even understand the things you are trying to write about. You simply don't have basic knowledge of the things you are discussing. It's time to quit, my friend.

 

[londonkid]

If someone's going to be called a crook and a charlatan s/he should at least be deceptively attempting to induce people to part with significant sums of money. I mean, come on, Madoff's a crook and a charlatan, but Al Brooks...seriously???

Who do you despise the most?

a) a common thief who steals $500 of your property when you are not looking.
b) a conman who deceives you out of $500 by making you believe he can help you when he cant.
c) Justin Beiber

I despise (c) the most followed by (b). I don't like (a) but realise he is probably just doing it to feed his habit or family, he is not giving false hope.

PS - I am not saying Al Brooks is a conman, i don't know nor care.

 

[marketsurfer]

His book is a minor investment and being familiar with the publishing/author industry, I doubt he gets more than a few dollars from the sale of it. A few years ago he had a trading room you could subscribe to for $99 a month, but there was a free trial so you didn't have to risk any money to find out if there might be benefit from the room.

If someone's going to be called a crook and a charlatan s/he should at least be deceptively attempting to induce people to part with significant sums of money. I mean, come on, Madoff's a crook and a charlatan, but Al Brooks...seriously???

I never called him anything. I never heard of him outside of elite, im not on those kinds of mailing lists.

Appears to be just another dream seller-- nothing wrong with that-- i just prefer to ONLY take advice from proven succesful folks. But others can do whatever they want.

Just wanted to clarify.

surf

 

[mangolassi]

I never called him anything. I never heard of him outside of elite, im not on those kinds of mailing lists.

Appears to be just another dream seller-- nothing wrong with that-- i just prefer to ONLY take advice from proven succesful folks. But others can do whatever they want.

Just wanted to clarify.

surf

Would you listen to people who have seen improvement in their trading with his material?

 

[Q3D]

Not only are you a liar, you also have no clue what I'm talking about. "Higher time frame contextual awareness"? When did I mention that? I'm talking about the same time frame in which you are going to be placing trades, such as the 5 minute chart. Read my previous post again. I gave you an example of context, and a setup that will fail in that context. Al Brooks' material is full of context-based rules and setups depending on those contexts.

Just from reading your post above, I can tell that your problem is a complete and devastating inability to read market context while you are trading. You think setups, no matter when and where they occur, are the answer to trading, and you also think that Al Brooks advocates blindly trading these setups. You are wrong.

Brooks says institutions buy the close of bull bars that close on their high ticks because those bars close on their high ticks. Context is determined by the bars prior, often prior in the days before, why else does Brooks refer to the 15 min and 60 min charts to predict 5 min patterns beforehand? I'm willing to wager I know more about price action than you do, thanks to Edwards and Magee...or Brooks I mean, put your money where your fingers are and start trading more than 1 lot on the ES, if you even do that, we'll see how long you last.

 

[wrbtrader]

Are you being serious about the indicators? That's completely contrary to all he preaches.

I'm very serious. The issue is that the indicators he uses...he doesn't consider them to be indicators (e.g. moving averages). In simple terms, if you don't consider an indicator to be an indicator...its not an indicator.

Therefore, via his own definition...he's not using indicators even though he admits that moving averages are listed traditionally as an indicator...its long defined prior to him becoming a trader. I didn't try to corner him any more after that...it was clear to me then about how he views stuff.

By the way, there was a guy here at ET that uses RSI indicator but because he studies "price action" (from Al Brooks)...he too considers himself a price action trader. Ok...whatever.

Regardless, folks can change definitions any way they want to make it look "modern" or "new". At least they should acknowledge the original definition and then specifically state they are using a new definition.

My next task is to convince that guy in the trade journal section over at BigMikes that AL did not discover "price action trading". Yeah, he too is a newbie.

P.S. I've been trading since the late 80s. Guess whom coin the term "scalping" ?

Hint: It wasn't a retail trader and there was no Emini Futures back then.

 

[wjk]

Its possible his (Q3D) issue is not with price action. Instead, he may have an issue with how Al Brooks himself and and with Al Brooks perspective of price action.

I remember awhile back here at ET there were other threads like this that eventually got to the above conclusion...there's a problem with his writing and the lack of proof reading prior to publication. Then in the next editions, there was proof reading but the person that did it didn't know anything about the markets. Therefore, several of the errors remained. Yet, only one of those threads eventually became useful. It was a thread where members showed up to make "corrections" to many of Al's statements (I think about 5 - 7 corrections) so that the statements made sense because there's an apparent misinformation in his books and some of his webinars.

I doubt that he does such intentional...I think its a doctor thing. Some of his info is just a little mixed up and traders not use to price action concepts...they will not catch the errors and it will be very confusing to them. In contrast, those use to the concepts, most likely seen the key concepts before prior to Al Brooks or being taught clearer by someone else. Thus, while reading his stuff, they were able to make the appropriate corrections so that it all made sense.

Regardless, it does seem odd that Q3D is not being specific about particular price action concepts he was using that he learned from Al Brooks. Thus, its possible he may have read some of the info that others identified as incorrect and thereby Q3D is completely unaware of the corrections that have been made here at ET in that one particular thread that became productive.

For example, scalping by the 5min chart. Geeesh....scalpers don't use 5min charts. Therefore, to someone that's a newbie and reading Al's comments...they will think that scalpers use 5min charts. Thus, they will also attempt to scalp via the 5min chart while not knowing its not going to work like that until its too late. To properly scalp...you need special commission rates, time frames less than 1min, most likely not using charts and instead using DOM, looking for ticks and not points for each trade while taking +100 trades per day with some automation involved to ensure those ticks are locked in when reached.

Only scalpers I know all have seats on the exchange and they only use DOM. A newbie trader wouldn't know that and will then attempt to scalp via the 5min chart...big mistake.

In his video series (and his new editions 1 - 3), he refers to "scalps" as trades with a 1 to 1 risk/reward ratio. He refers to 1 minute or shorter time frame scalping as "extreme scalping". 2 to 1 or higher RR is considered a swing. He prefers the 5 minute, but tracks the 20ma on the 15 and 60. He often mentions that his system is effective on any time frame, and I agree, though naturally you will have larger stops on bigger frames, thus lower size.

I find his approach to be extremely cold and logical, a necessity now in the HFT world of institutions trading against each other on the smallest of time frames. He often states in his new books that if you trade with emotion, you will lose...period...because computer have no emotion and don't care. If the OP had read all three books, I don't believe he would be stating that Al is lost on the HFT factor. In fact, in his books, he indicates that you will often see the perfection he speaks of, which he believes to be the evidence the markets been primarily traded by computers. I've seen such perfection routinely, even on large frames, and will occasionally fade such areas with money stops, providing they are not being tested by news events.

There are times when the 5 minute is very tradable and times when other frames might be more so, and Brooks indicates to trade the frame you are most comfortable with. He is not fixated on the 5, but simply prefers it for himself. Bigger frames give you more time to think, smaller more chances to make or lose money, but also more stress, which is his reason for the 5. I also disagree with OP that the EURUSD is more predictable than the ES. I don't think any market is any more predictable than any other.