Brooks hasn't produced a shred of evidence that he actually trades since coming public and making good money pitching products for nearly a decade. He has increased his course's price 100% and now mentions variables like VX and breadth as pertains to trading, which he claimed were not relevant to price action previously. He has explained stop placement, position sizing per capital in account, or how he mysteriously makes his fortune scalping the ES on limit orders, nor has he mentioned how traders should profitably trade buy entering on stops, which he teaches but claims to actually scalp on limit orders.
IMHO if you're telling people to trade one way and then claiming to trade in a totally different way, everything you say is suspect. Although everything Brooks says should be suspect due to the lack of verifiable P&L statements and his now high-profile visits to the yearly for-profit Las Vegas Traders Expo and other such vendor-like behavior.
I find this post quite interesting for a few reasons.
First, NoDoji just said recently that she got lots of ideas from reading Brooks, and yet, I think she said something like she doesn't trade like him.
Likewise, when the discussion turns to DbPhoenix, some have said that they have learned lots from him, and yet, nobody trades like him, all those who do trade profitably say they just got ideas from him, and I am sure that if he does in fact trade, he does not do so in the way he outlines in his PDF by taking 1 min RET after trend line breaks. (It of course doesn't help to show a method that relies on lines and then be told you have to lose the lines! He goes on and on about how you have to stick to rules, but none of these rules are actually all that firm.)
So I'm left to wonder what is honestly and truly going on. In any other profession, the way that an expert would teach a student should be hugely similar to how this professional should do it. If you're an electrician, you better damn well wire up a house the way you are taught. If you're a dentist, you simply cannot get creative with how you choose to fix teeth. If you're an accountant, things gotta be done a certain way of else the books are all wrong. Perhaps when it comes to creative studies, painting in the complete opposite way you're taught can be a good thing, but I think we all know that getting creative while trading is a recipe for disaster.
Now I realize that in trading, there are a million ways to make money and its not structured like other vocations. But you would figure that if a method is presented that is said to be profitable, and if this expert trader does in fact trade this way, then there should be someone out there who could take this and make it work. If the method is lacking specifics, well then, this is a perfect excuse for why someone cannot make it work. But Brooks is incredibly detailed in his setups. DbPhoenix of course leaves the important bits like entry and stop up to the individual. But you would figure that at some point, someone could actually trade in a way that a so called expert suggests and be able to make it work.
I'm not sure why this doesn't appear to be so. Perhaps all the people who do make it work just as they are taught have gone silent, but its certainly compelling enough that it should not be overlooked.