Al Brooks Net Worth

My number one peev on this Forum is SML. Anyone who befriends him or encourages him I block. It's just a subconscious responce. The list grows lol. Apologies.

He's alright. A little crazy sometimes, but he seems honest.

I normally dont like blocking personally just because I like to hear all perspectives, no matter how dumb it sounds.
 
I haven't alleged that Brooks sells snake oil, or doesn't trade. I was just annoyed. Too little up front (didn't respect my time and attention) with an apparent deliberate drive to pull me in to a backend that was not clearly defined, leaving me to think I had just received his wisdom for free, which I hadn't.

Roberts built a huge empire on just those two simple, recycled patterns available for $5 at used book stores. So it's possible Brooks has too. We will never know how much comes from cowboy trading (eyes on the screen, shoot from the hip decision making) or from information sales.

My copy of Edwards and Magee came free from a library giveaway section. The interesting thing about it are all the handwritten margin notes and yellow highlighter that some serious student had added in a quest to master the material. He probably ended up repackaging his own synthesis into a $199 "course".

The 1-2-3 reversal and the Turtle, or Darvas trend following systems are valid if systemized with statistics. I'm sure Brooks has something to offer as well that he synthesized, but which you may need to synthesize further. He just annoyed me in his up front marketing, constantly flexing on me.

Another professional talker and snake oil salesman.

1) Provided all your accusations are legit, name one educator/vendor/author in the trading arena who is NOT a snakeoil salesman.

2) Moreover, I assume you yourselves are wildly successful traders already. Just where did you learn how to trade if you're so suspicious of everyone and everything? If you were taught by another trader (which is highly doubtful considering your paranoia, but nonetheless), just where did they get their education from? Or did you happen to learn everything on your own from click-click-click, as SML advises everyone to do?

3) Lastly, when was the last time you ever provided any audit of your own trades? Have you ever posted any real time trades for the rest of us to verify, or uploaded any broker statements? If you're not a successful trader yourself, why should we believe anything you say (no different from your criticism of Al Brooks)?
 
1) Provided all your accusations are legit, name one educator/vendor/author in the trading arena who is NOT a snakeoil salesman.

2) Moreover, I assume you yourselves are wildly successful traders already. Just where did you learn how to trade if you're so suspicious of everyone and everything? If you were taught by another trader (which is highly doubtful considering your paranoia, but nonetheless), just where did they get their education from? Or did you happen to learn everything on your own from click-click-click, as SML advises everyone to do?

3) Lastly, when was the last time you ever provided any audit of your own trades? Have you ever posted any real time trades for the rest of us to verify, or uploaded any broker statements? If you're not a successful trader yourself, why should we believe anything you say (no different from your criticism of Al Brooks)?

Well I didn't say Brooks doesn't trade sometimes. Part of my annoyance is the absence of any kind of record in proportion to his fame as both trader and vendor. Especially if the info I'm getting is vague, immeasurable , hard to grasp, or subjective and I'm just supposed to believe all his flexing instead.

I'm not a vendor so ... And I have not flexed as a trader. I have merely developed a method the results of which I have posted along with a very good, but not exact description of how it is achieved. My comments are based on my status as a damned good researcher, most of which has been manually done, but has also been upheld by automation tests of the algorithms in code.

I simply will not trade anything manually. I will not be the cowboy who watches a screen for patterns all day. This is 2023. So my live record has to wait till I'm finished fully automating an actual robot that I've been working on in VBA/Excel. I've lost a month with all the damned news coming out of middle hell, I mean the middle east.

Would you like to see more of automation results when they become available, both test and live? In offering this im probably offering more than Brooks ever did.

Yes I've studied other traders alot. I've listened to YouTuber influencers while multitasking on other things I have to do. I learned to appreciate the kind of influencer that offers, say, 100 manually curated samples of some supposed method he found on the internet, display statistics, and rank the method in a spreadsheet. Really this should be prerequisite for influencer licenses. Some kind of effort to show statistics. Everybody else should be banned by Gary Gensler.

Larry Williams got his influencers licence by winning a trading contest in 1987. His credibility increased when he helped his daughter win it some years later. Out of curiosity I attempted to compare as many apples to apples my method against Larry's 1987 finish line results and was pleased to see I could keep up with him using the standard leverage available in futures of about 10x. And without his big drawdown. Should I post that?

I don't know from whom, ultimately I developed my method. It was some kind of synthesis born of frustration with people like Brooks.
 
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This looks a lot like the 1-2-3 reversal that Ken Roberts made popular with his incredible marketing back in the 90's.

View attachment 327053 View attachment 327054

Like Brooks, Roberts never showed personal performance results, and probably never used a computer to examine loads of data to come up with statistics to back up his advice. This too was a MTR for Roberts, a major trend reversal, the #1 point needing to be an annual high or low. Then, Roberts advised a measured move from the reversal to some point at 50% of some other leg using the #3 point as a stop loss.

Roberts claims to have gotten this from a really old book that was out of print (in his marketing narrative) which, though never admitted, was probably Magees book (or possibly Darvas) available for $5 at any used book store. An idea which he then resold for $199 with money back guarantee with $2000 in-person seminars on the backend.

Sounds like Brooks recycles this, adding more technical jargon, as if to make it his own. Like Roberts, Brooks is/was a bar chart cowboy, watching charts (on paper or on screen) making trading decisions without the aid of computer analysis statistics, retaining all the golden gems of wisdom in his amazing brain full of pattern recognition .

Roberts also recycled a version of the Turtles trend following system, (a valid concept) and sold just these two patterns for just $199. At least Larry Williams, who also sold a $199 "course" in the same era, included several patterns, most of which were backed up with computer analysis for statistics.

The 1-2-3 reversal, if you just look at it, is simply the failure to make a higher high, and then drops lower than the last significant low, breaking the pattern of higher high, higher low....which is what a trend ... is. You can make money just from this much information but if anyone wants to kick me $199 I'll expand on that for you.

Btw, Roberts (and Williams marketing company) used to send out little booklets, fold over, very colorful for free. My marketing gurus suggested that should/could be sold for $29 if it included substantive information. But the $29 "lead" would lead to a $199+ "backend" which leads to another backend. I was taught to fulfill any substantive promises within the $29 product, making the $199 backend technically not necessary.

I remember those booklets. He was a great marketer.
 
Anyway, back on topic. You don't mind Al Brooks, what are your thoughts.

I have a positive opinion of Al Brook's video trading course.

If you are a student of his course, then you would be able to look at this chart, and using Al's vocabulary, identify the long set up, and also explain why the long would be liquidated as noted, and again, using Al Brooks's vocabulary as he teaches in the course.



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Very simple concepts easily understood and easily applied. I do not understand why he has so many critics here. I can only assume most of ET are either functional imbeciles, or just too lazy to do the work. After all, to study and learn all of the ideas and concepts in his course and develop a level of proficiency using them is no mean feat. You won't get there in a day. And, in his course, very near the beginning, Brooks tells you as much.

Lazy people likely won't devote the several hours a day over the course of six months to a year (or more for some) that it would take an apt pupil to become adept at Brooks's trading methodology. A famous quote from Ed Seykota's interview in market wizards has just come to mind. "A losing trader can do little to transform himself into a winning trader. A losing trader is not going to want to transform. That's the kind of thing winning traders do." The same might be said about the subject at hand: "A losing trader will not devote the hours and days and weeks and months it takes to become a truly proficient and profitable price action trader. A losing trader isn't going to study and do the work. That's the kind of thing winning traders do."

Very simple concepts, easily understood, and wholly derived from others. The value of Brooks's course is that he brings price action, price behavior, and market context together in a way that is very often lacking in those other sources. The hard part is devoting the hours necessary to be comfortable and confident in identifying such set ups in real time, and having studied enough of them in real time to have the faith and confidence to take the position and see it through until you get the reversal signal.

His video course is only $399 and well worth it. I lost many times that learning to trade (many, many times that amount).

I do not recommend his books. My positive view of Brooks's methodology and educational materials is solely based on my experience with and opinion of his video trading course.

I do not care if he trades, or if he did at one time trade, or what his net worth is, or any of that because I know that I myself have used his ideas on a daily basis for quite some time. While he is known for his use of the 5-minute chart, that is no five-minute chart above. I use his method on all time charts, including weekly and monthly charts.

Brooks Concepts used in the trade above:

1) Higher Low Major Trend Reversal
2) H2 Bull flag
3) Wedge reversal
 
This is like becoming a pilot taught by somebody who saw flying on TV (e.g. Narcos) and think they know pretty well how it works.


I am trading for a living. I am managing month on month profit. Now, tell me, what's wrong with buying a book and incorporating those ideas if they work for you? Are you a real trader? If so how did you learn trading? Or was it some divine art that came to you at birth?

Why should I give more importance to your views over those of the book's author? Passing some nasty comment is surely not a way to convince others around here that you know better than others in the group.

Now that you have taken a side, let us know your enlightened views on what is factually or conceptually wrong in the books written by Al Brooks. If you are unable to do it, then you are just a troll.
 
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Lazy people likely won't devote the several hours a day over the course of six months to a year (or more for some) that it would take an apt pupil to become adept at Brooks's trading methodology.

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Al Brooks education course.

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Modern day methods
 
This looks a lot like the 1-2-3 reversal that Ken Roberts made popular with his incredible marketing back in the 90's.
Btw, Roberts (and Williams marketing company) used to send out little booklets, fold over, very colorful for free.
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This brings back memories...

I had never heard of technical analysis or chart trading until I received one of Ken Roberts' booklets in the mail somewhere around the year 2000. Reading his stuff led me to read trading books by Jack Schwager and others and to begin trading a few years later.

It seemed apparent early on that he was a better marketer than trading instructor, but am grateful to him for the introduction to the field. It led to a transition from reading about and playing a lot of chess to reading about and doing a lot of swing trading outside of work.

I used to own over 100 chess books, now I own over 200 trading books. I suspect that a lot of guys who have spent time studying and learning chess strategies also enjoy the challenges associated with developing and testing trading systems.
 
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