Quote from gmst:
Useful information. Thanks. The way you have put it - it seems it all depends on the kind of approach one takes towards studying his material. One can't be laidback, rather has to work his way through his material.
Let me ask you these:
1) Is Brook's material similar in toughness to Crabel's material?
2) How your trading would have been had you not been exposed to Brook's idea? I want to assess through this question - how much actual impact Brook's ideas have made on your trading performance and results. Because it is clear that reading his stuff is serious work. Thanks for the tips. 
1. I have never read Crabel, so can't comment.
2. I don't have hard numbers (maybe I should). However, a few specific things made an important difference:
a. Focusing on a 5 minute period has helped me crystallize the implied risk of a trade. It is no longer subjective and that has been very important to me.
b. A 5 minute period is very useful to identify a headfake or a signal failure of some kind as general signal stability is significantly better (assuming sufficient liquidity) than that on the lower time frame. Additionally, 5 minute bars are still fast enough to offer plenty of intraday opportunities.
c. Certain Brooks setups have shown me another way to look at things that I already knew and found to work. I.e., I understood *why* they work better.
d. Range trading. His work on this subject is excellent. No holy grail there but if you choose to trade in a maker (as opposed to taker) style, you will gain a lot of insight.
e. Many other things - really just about any type of trading, be it reversals, trends, etc. Every chapter has something that makes you go "aha", assuming you are willing to re-read the page.
f. Copious examples throughout his texts really solidified the building blocks of his methods and how he thinks - all of which let me formulate/augment my own strategies. Again, as I said earlier, Brooks shows you in concrete terms how markets operate and why they operate in certain ways. What to do with that is up to you.
I do strongly believe that no matter what you learn, read or accept as gospel, there is a standing requirement for you to create your own method of trading. That takes a lot of focused, relentless effort. I remember reading something Lescor posted a long while ago: it was something along the lines of "I kept on losing money for years until I decided that if I was going to make this work I had to really apply myself". I doubt it was something he read that made him finally tick. It was the elbow grease he decided to put into his trading.
So, bottom line is, you can study Brooks or anyone else who shows depth in understanding markets. Regardless, it is still very hard work and there are no shortcuts to making whatever you learn your own.
/Wulfrede
