I would be happy to answer any questions regarding Al Brook's website. I am the sole owner and operator of the current site.
The night before the previous thread in question was deleted I had done a rather lengthy post explaining both my and Al's involvement. I will attempt to repeat that information here. My purpose in doing this is to give the facts. How others interpret the facts is up to them and not my concern. BTW, I'm sure this is a private board and the owners are free to delete any post or thread they want, for any reason at all. I have not read the TOS, and I had nothing to do with the thread being deleted, but I suspect it also contains the usual stuff about individuals not making potentially libelous statements that could place ET in a position of liability. I have been on ET for over eight years and what was posted on that thread, for better or worse, was nothing new for this board.
Al had created a website on July 30th as an experiment to see what would develop from it. From my understanding, there were a number of reasons for him doing this. First of all, he expressed a desire to be involved in the area of trader education. He has written a number of articles in Futures Magazine, done a few live presentations and written a book on trading with price action. Second, he realized there were some things which were not clear in his book that could be clarified on the website. Third, he wanted to see if there were opportunities to generate income to offset the time he put into creating and posting on a website.
Al had done a daily commentary since the first day and on August 7th, he had posted his perspective on what was happening in the markets dozens of times throughout the day. At the end of the day he realized how much it had negatively affected his concentration on his own trading. On August 13th, two weeks after the creation of the website, he decided that it was not worth the effort and announced that it would be shut down in one week.
Since I felt I had learned things from Al's posts and his articles, I decided to contact him to see if there was a way to continue the website and to have at least some occasional input from him. He was originally opposed to the idea and said he didn't want to do anything that would interfere with his own trading. I encouraged him to put his trading first and not do anything to cause him to lose money.
After about a dozen e-mails back and forth we agreed to a new trial website under the following conditions: Al would keep control of the domain name, keep ownership of his own content, have moderation control over new content, and post new content as he felt led to do. He committed to posting at least an end-of-day commentary "for a few weeks". That was the extent of Alâs commitment. I committed to volunteering my time to creating a new website with the purpose of developing a community of traders interested in strictly price action trading - geared towards Alâs approach. I would be the owner of the website space, responsible for all expenses, develop any new features, porting his old content over to the new site, and handle the day-to-day operation. Al also reserved the right to take over the website at any time if he desired to do that since his name was on it. On August 20th, the day the old website closed, the new website opened.
The extent of my contact with Al has been through e-mail, alone. I have never talked to him on the phone, we have never met in person, we have no official contract regarding the website and, as he has said, he doesnât even know my last name. I canât even speak to his character outside of the scope that he has done as he said he would up to this point. Al has been perfectly clear from the very beginning that he would consider the possibility of a subscription service to help compensate him for his time posting on the website. This fact has been stated on both his old website and the current one. I donât find it to be unreasonable for him to want some compensation for his time if people are benefiting from it. Up to this point, neither of us have felt it would be worth his time to do that. He has also stated that he makes so little off of his book that no one should feel compelled to buy it.
Regarding the âdonationsâ, this came about after a couple of people requested a way to help share in the expenses for the board. No âdonationâ option had existed prior to that. Since I was paying the costs myself I decided to accept the generous offer from others. My feeling was that this would help foster a sense of community amongst the members. Al was not consulted before I added the donations button and has no expectation of receiving any of the money. Up to this point, I have received $100.39 (after PayPalâs fees). This is almost enough to pay the web host fee for one year. I am open to looking for other ways to add value to the website if people want to chip in on that. We already have a chat room hosted for free on IRC so I'm not sure what else I would add. I appreciate those that have donated and I anticipate that the website will continue at my own expense even if no other donations come in. My involvement up to now has been completely voluntary and I have well over 50 hours of work in the website and received no pay for doing it. It is just something I enjoy doing, in addition to trading.
I hope this helps to clarify the misinformation that had been put out there by others.
The night before the previous thread in question was deleted I had done a rather lengthy post explaining both my and Al's involvement. I will attempt to repeat that information here. My purpose in doing this is to give the facts. How others interpret the facts is up to them and not my concern. BTW, I'm sure this is a private board and the owners are free to delete any post or thread they want, for any reason at all. I have not read the TOS, and I had nothing to do with the thread being deleted, but I suspect it also contains the usual stuff about individuals not making potentially libelous statements that could place ET in a position of liability. I have been on ET for over eight years and what was posted on that thread, for better or worse, was nothing new for this board.
Al had created a website on July 30th as an experiment to see what would develop from it. From my understanding, there were a number of reasons for him doing this. First of all, he expressed a desire to be involved in the area of trader education. He has written a number of articles in Futures Magazine, done a few live presentations and written a book on trading with price action. Second, he realized there were some things which were not clear in his book that could be clarified on the website. Third, he wanted to see if there were opportunities to generate income to offset the time he put into creating and posting on a website.
Al had done a daily commentary since the first day and on August 7th, he had posted his perspective on what was happening in the markets dozens of times throughout the day. At the end of the day he realized how much it had negatively affected his concentration on his own trading. On August 13th, two weeks after the creation of the website, he decided that it was not worth the effort and announced that it would be shut down in one week.
Since I felt I had learned things from Al's posts and his articles, I decided to contact him to see if there was a way to continue the website and to have at least some occasional input from him. He was originally opposed to the idea and said he didn't want to do anything that would interfere with his own trading. I encouraged him to put his trading first and not do anything to cause him to lose money.
After about a dozen e-mails back and forth we agreed to a new trial website under the following conditions: Al would keep control of the domain name, keep ownership of his own content, have moderation control over new content, and post new content as he felt led to do. He committed to posting at least an end-of-day commentary "for a few weeks". That was the extent of Alâs commitment. I committed to volunteering my time to creating a new website with the purpose of developing a community of traders interested in strictly price action trading - geared towards Alâs approach. I would be the owner of the website space, responsible for all expenses, develop any new features, porting his old content over to the new site, and handle the day-to-day operation. Al also reserved the right to take over the website at any time if he desired to do that since his name was on it. On August 20th, the day the old website closed, the new website opened.
The extent of my contact with Al has been through e-mail, alone. I have never talked to him on the phone, we have never met in person, we have no official contract regarding the website and, as he has said, he doesnât even know my last name. I canât even speak to his character outside of the scope that he has done as he said he would up to this point. Al has been perfectly clear from the very beginning that he would consider the possibility of a subscription service to help compensate him for his time posting on the website. This fact has been stated on both his old website and the current one. I donât find it to be unreasonable for him to want some compensation for his time if people are benefiting from it. Up to this point, neither of us have felt it would be worth his time to do that. He has also stated that he makes so little off of his book that no one should feel compelled to buy it.
Regarding the âdonationsâ, this came about after a couple of people requested a way to help share in the expenses for the board. No âdonationâ option had existed prior to that. Since I was paying the costs myself I decided to accept the generous offer from others. My feeling was that this would help foster a sense of community amongst the members. Al was not consulted before I added the donations button and has no expectation of receiving any of the money. Up to this point, I have received $100.39 (after PayPalâs fees). This is almost enough to pay the web host fee for one year. I am open to looking for other ways to add value to the website if people want to chip in on that. We already have a chat room hosted for free on IRC so I'm not sure what else I would add. I appreciate those that have donated and I anticipate that the website will continue at my own expense even if no other donations come in. My involvement up to now has been completely voluntary and I have well over 50 hours of work in the website and received no pay for doing it. It is just something I enjoy doing, in addition to trading.
I hope this helps to clarify the misinformation that had been put out there by others.