New trader studying Al Brook price action books

Beginner Questions
1

Hi all,

I have traded on and off for the last couple years. And had very mixed results. I read on one of the forum pages harmonic trading was the best/most effective method if truly studied so I bought “trade what you see” by Larry Pesavento and Leslie Jouflas , started trading that way and was having steady success. I decided one day to trade randomly of fundamentals and lost hugely attempted to win it back by using harmonics continued gaining losses and closed my account.

From then on I decided to learn price action and have been reading Al Brook “price action trading” series, whilst testing his ideas on demo account and occasionally going live. I’m half way now through the second book ( an extremely hard read!!), but wish to preserve to the end. I read elsewhere to be able to truly grasp Al brook teachings and trade successfully with it , you should combine the book knowledge with an understanding of pricing volume from a books such as " A Complete Guide To Volume Price Analysis - Anna Coulling".

Has anyone got any thoughts on the two books and how I should do to complement my understanding?

2

First of all, Hello and welcome to the forum. :cool:

It’s unusual to find a first-time poster studying Al Brooks - I don’t remember it, here, before.

I had a lot of “false starts” in trading, and it took me years to be able to make steady profits from it, and even more years to make a living from it. I wish I’d realised at a much earlier stage that “price action” was definitely the way for me to go: it would have saved me a [B][U]lot[/U][/B] of time. :8:

I’m now a price action trader, myself, needless to say - thanks to Al Brooks, among others.

I certainly agree that his books are far from easy going.

I’d read a few other “price action” books before getting as far as Al Brooks, and [I]still[/I] found his three textbooks pretty heavy going and had to read each of them really slowly and at least twice. I do think his [U]content[/U] is excellent, though (for those who persist with it!).

At the time, I attributed my difficulty reading Brooks mostly to the fact that English isn’t my first language, but with hindsight I no longer think that was really all that relevant, given that I managed other people’s textbooks much more easily: I now think the reality is that Brooks’ books are just badly [I]edited[/I].

(I don’t know the Persavento and Jouflas book you mentioned at all. I’ve read something by Anna Coulling, but not that one.)

If it helps you at all, I strongly recommend Bob Volman’s two books: [I]Understanding Price Action: Practical Analysis of the 5-minute Time-Frame[/I] and [I]Forex Price Action Scalping: an In-depth Look into the Field of Professional Scalping.[/I] (Don’t let the titles put you off, or imagine that the content is limited to what the titles suggest: the contents of the first book mentioned above are also very applicable to other, longer time-frames; and those of the second book - which not everyone would call “scalping” anyway - are also applicable to much slower trading than what scalpers are doing.)

Regarding “thoughts on the Al Brooks books”, all I can suggest, from my own experience, is that they’re definitely worth persisting with; but I’m wondering whether a break from them, to read Bob Volman first, might be helpful to you. Difficult to know, really! It would have been, to me, I think, if I’d tried them that way round.

(I also found Lance Beggs a very helpful author, for “price action information”.)

I also recommend Al Brooks video course (which is [B]far[/B] more approachable than his books), and have “reviewed” it here.

Good luck and good wishes - and I look forward to hearing more from you (especially about how you’re getting on!).

Lexy

2 Likes
3

Thank you Lexy,

I will look into buying the two books you suggested to compliment the Al brook books.

Cee

4

you can find the free version of his pdf books online
just google it

there is no holy grail just read the experiences , flip their story books
the holy grail is within you , did you like that ? :smiley:

1 Like
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Bob Volman’s book: Understanding Price Action: Practical Analysis of the 5-minute Time-Frame, Lexys is spot on… It’s a great first read for a newbie price action student. Clear and easy to follow.

“Strayalian” is my first language and Al Brooks writing style can be hard to get into.

Naked Forex is another good read, a lot more technical to follow than Volman’s methodology. But opens up other ways to look at the market.

I have to get a copy of Forex Price Action Scalping: an In-depth Look into the Field of Professional Scalping…

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6

Switching systems (moving from technicals to fundamentals or even moving to a mix) can be difficult.
We often ignore some pertinent information because we’re focussing on the new information.
It’s very easy to look at an economic calendar and buy when there are better than expected and sell when it’s worse than expected. The price action should assist, also one cannot be certain when the price movement will come. Sometimes it’s before the event and sometimes hours/days after the event.

In the newbie stage it’s important to absorb information without passing judgement on certain things. Eg in this case you had a bad experience switching to some fundamentals, you may therefore conclude that fundamentals do not work for you.
It’s easy to get to a point where you see the calendar and ignore price action and think there’s an easy buck to be made, remember the easy bucks take work to obtain.

Keep studying price action, in my opinion price action is #1.
Practice tempered with books will give the most benefit, not one without the other :slight_smile:

I’m going to read these books too, they weren’t on my radar but you can bet I’ll get right into it :slight_smile:

1 Like
7

Thanks for all the responses to this thread, I have spent my time since posting on here, reading through all the AL Brook books and also the Bob Volman books. They are really insightful and definitely great for someone wishing to work with Price Action. I’m at the point now were I have understanding of the info, trading in a micro account and just breaking even ( maybe I should re read all the books to get an even clearer understanding of all the concepts)

However due to the change of my work schedule I feel that I need to work on a longer time period as the books focus on mainly 5 min timeframes), so maybe placing trades early in the day and exiting at the end of the day.

Wanted to know if anyone had tips for developing Price action on Longer time frames (books, courses etc) or if there are good mentors that can help guide me with next stage of my development with Price action around my schedule?

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Most of the techniques that Brooks teaches for 5 minute charts also work at least as reliably on 4 hour charts. They just don’t trade nearly so often.

9

Hello All,
Really glad to see the topic here. I really need some help here regarding few setups.

  1. Is Bob Volmans First Entry and second Entry same as H1 and H2 or L1 and L2 entries of Al Brooks or is it M2B and M2S setup or BOTH ??.

Thanks and Regards.

10

Please i will like to have access to the Al Brooks video course, how do i go about it?