Reading Price Charts Bar by Bar: The Technical Analysis of Price Action for the Serious Trader: 416 (Wiley Trading)

This is by far the best book on technical trading I've read. Brooks works from the notion that every bar on the chart is important, and reading what each one tells you will help you reliably and consistently identify high probability trade setups using nothing more than a few trendlines and the 20ema. Every page is crammed to bursting with information and Brooks makes no attempt to comfort the reader by making his explanations easy to follow - you have to work hard at sentence on every page to get the most out of it, and at times it's hard going, but it'll reward you with a much more in depth appreciation for the markets and where the money is. My understanding of charts and my confidence in placing trades based purely on price action has been transformed by this book. The printed charts can be difficult to read as they're quite small, but you can download them all from [...] which makes them much easier to follow. While the author trades predominantly US stocks and Eminis, his methods and analysis are applicable to all major markets including forex, indices, commodities and futures. I absolutely love this book, and my copy looks ten years old because I'm in it constantly, underlining passages, making notes, sticking stickies into it and generally reading and rereading. If you work hard at it and give it the effort it deserves (nay, demands), it's a goldmine. Brilliant.

haven't, read the whole yet, but it gives a absolute brilliant explanation for all the major setups and patterns what you can find in Bukolwski's encyclopedia. Easy to read, but it's not for beginners for sure. Loads of books out there what you can start with and you will need it to understand what Al Brooks trying to give you. As I read, I feal like someone actually want to teach and not refering to websites or forums like Bigalow or John Carter. Well written, somethimes need to go back a few pages to see on the charts what he's actually talking about. Do need to do your own research in the mean time, but this book changes the view I look at my charts. Failers, possibilities, late entry, exits and targets, stops, you name it it's in here bar by bar. cannot recommend high enough.

Like the other reviewers have mentioned, this book is work. Real work. You must put the time and effort in to understand what this man is saying, keep at it and go over it repeatedly untill you understand the lessons contained within. Its far from easy, but the majority dont do the necessary work to become skilled at this profession, they are the ones who provide liquidity and get eaten by the pros who do what it takes to become phenenomenal. These methods work regardless of the time frames that you trade, the principles work. If you are comitted to your goal of being a trader to be reckoned with, buy this book and master it.

I read the other reviews that said this was a hard book to read and wondered how hard it could be. I've been involved in the financial markets both professionally and personally for well over ten years. I'm an investor and a trader and I've also developed financial software. So I'm not a beginner. I had heard lots about Brooks' methods and decided to learn them from the horse's mouth. First of all, this book is NOT "badly written" in the obvious sense. That is, the author can write perfectly intelligible sentences. Certainly the book begins well with a clear discussion of what moves markets, institutional trading and the impact of things like news and algorithmic trading. It's when he starts discussing price action (about halfway through chapter one!) that things take a turn. First of all, the book is really, really badly organised. For example, as early as page 10 he mentions the "EMA Gap Bar short setup" and the "Failed Final Flag". Now AFAIK these are Brooks' own terms for particular chart patterns. But he talks about them as if you should know what they mean, despite the fact he does not attempt to explain them until chapters 4 and 9 respectively. Let me be clear: he does not mention them in the sense of an introduction to things you'll learn on page whatever - no, he says look at the Failed Final Flag on Fig. 1.2, with no further explanation. This is something that happens on almost every page. You are forever consulting the index and looking half a dozen chapters ahead. And often the explanations, when you find them, are very hard to follow. This is what people mean by difficult to read. To continue with the Failed Final Flag example, I ended up asking AI, which also seemed a little confused (presumably because it had read Brooks' books). Eventually I found a forum where someone explained it more clearly than the author. Really fundamental concepts to Brooks' trading strategies, such as High/Low 1 and 2 patterns are really badly explained. He expounds in dense passages like (to pick one at random): "If there is a bear and there have been several bull entries that failed as the market continued to sell off, each of these entry prices (the high of each signal bar) will be targets once the reversal up finally succeeds." That is fairly typical, and to me that is hard to follow. But the worst thing is the diagrams. Words almost fail me here. If there is one thing that could help a book about technical trading it is clear diagrams. So much of that abstruse text could be explained by a simple picture. But no. Instead, we have hundreds of diagrams that are simply black-and-white screenshots of a full chart window. The only annotations are numbers, and it is totally unclear what the numbers refer to unless you have 20:20 vision, a 10x magnifying glass and a micron-scale ruler. A simple chart might have 20 numbers on it, of which maybe half will be mentioned in the text. What's more, he might only discuss one or two relevant candlesticks on a chart, but he prints the full chart, zoomed out to max, with maybe two whole days' worth of 5-minute candles on it. I really cannot get my head around it. Why would anyone do that? I assume it's to do with "context", i.e. knowing what happens leading up to the interesting candles, but the way he does it is infuriating and I found most of the charts to be useless because this. So why did I give it 3 stars? Because if you persevere, and use the internet like a dictionary for every term you don't understand, then it is clear Al Brooks knows his stuff. I learned a lot from this book, and it made me think about day trading in a whole new light. He explains price action in ways I'd never considered, literally discussing the significance of every bar of a trade. His big thing is context, knowing what "phase" the market is in moment to moment, and that alone will save you a fortune as a trader. Just be prepared for some long evenings and some frustration understanding it all!

Recently hospitalised for 3 days which gave me the opportunity to get through the worked examples in Chapter 15 alongside the charts (downloaded from Wiley) printed on A4. Now able to understand what Al is on about in the remainder of this book and in his webinars. He knows how to scalp. Very grateful to him for sharing his ideas. Likes to point out 3 or 4 reasons to enter any trade rather than focusing on the set up and key trigger. This complicates the story and clearly made it impossible for whoever proof read the work to have any idea what was going on, so he simply signed off the first draft and ran for the hills! Managed to extract a few key elements from the book and traded them last week on CL, NG, GC, TF, 6B & 6E futures. 42 winning trades (average = 4.1 ticks), 12 loosing trades (average = 3.2 ticks). Been in this game for 10 years and find it hard to believe anyone who claims to consistantly deliver better results than these.

A bit confusing although it contains a lot of information. Largely superseded by his trio of books that are much more detailed and easier to understand.

Waste of money, really complicated to read would take a long time to fully understand the strategies let alone impliment. It went in the waste bin.

awesome insight to his method...