Reading Price Charts Bar by Bar: The Technical Analysis of Price Action for the Serious Trader 1st Edition

I am a full-time trader, and have been for well over 10 years. I will not write in great detail about this book, but just want to share some general impressions and reactions to a few of the other reviews.First of all, this is a difficult book to read. One reason is simply that there is so much information in the book, and all of it is important. It really is necessary to read the book 2-3 times, taking notes, and taking notes on the charts. Consider this book to be an advanced course in trading (more than chart reading).On that same thought, I think this would be an enormously difficult book for someone new to trading. If you do not have a good understanding of the basics of traditional technical analysis (Wyckoff, Edwards and McGee or Murphy, maybe the Schwager book on Technical Analysis) then I cannot imagine that this book will be productive for you. You would be better spent putting in the serious (probably more than a year) time needed to get a good background, and then come here. I think this book will also be of limited utility for someone who has not traded and maybe even who has not traded actively. If you make a few decisions a year in your Ameritrade account, there is still value in this book for you, but you are not the target audience.There is no magic method or guru to be followed in this book. This is a profound book that deals with applying sound fundamentals to market action. Some (much) of the analysis is subjective and flexible, but that is the nature of real time trading -- it often is possible to read any given moment in 4-5 different ways. Because this book makes an effort to show you the thought process of trading, it appears needlessly thick to some reviewers who have suggested that more simple examples are needed. I disagree. If you go through the examples in this book 4-5 times each you will only have the entry level understanding necessary to start learning from the live market. This is not the fault of the author by any means -- he has actually done an exceptional job of presenting the information you need to trade profitably.There are two legitimate production issues with the book. The first is that the charts are tiny, but Wiley makes the chart graphics available from their website for free. You would be well advised to download all the graphics files there and print them out or study on your screen. For my own learning, I found annotating printed versions of the chart by hand to be very useful.The second is the issue that the book introduces concepts in the wrong order. Frankly, I agreed on my first read through and was fairly lost because I didn't understand the author's labeling system or some of his unique terminology. I would recommend skimming the entire book, then starting over and referring to the glossary frequently on your second read through. A second edition would benefit from a brief first chapter "primer" to introduce concepts like H1, H2, etc. (Another aside, don't get too caught up in labeling H1 and H2 bars!)Lastly, some reviewers have been critical of the writing style. I completely disagree. It is obvious that the writer has a technical writing background and the actual quality of writing is head and shoulders above most trading books.In short, this is a fantastic book. Certainly one of the best trading books I have read in a long time, but this is a book that demands you study it and study it again. Not a book for new traders and not a book to be read casually.

A book on trading--especially day trading, I think--should be reviewed differently than most kinds of books. Many here judge this book based on criteria that simply shouldn't matter, if one's primary concern is to become a better trader rather than to buy a flawless literary artifact. If the latter is true, those who criticize this book for its often arcane, and sometimes perhaps even unfathomable, language are both right yet at the same time barking up the wrong tree: so what?Al Brooks, let us establish from the outset, is the real deal. He has many wise things to say about trading, reflecting his refreshingly idiosyncratic way of seeing and expressing things, earned after many years of cutting through the nonsense. As Brooks states in his preface, some things in his book are worth dwelling on more than others. Even Brooks is aware--as indicated by his own response to an Amazon review included somewhere in here--that this book can be obscure at times. He insists that his subsequent books remedy this deficiency, that they cover everything covered in this book and more but more clearly, with the implication that one need not buy this book but only those others. While I respect Brooks' candor on this score, I appeal to the serious trader: Is this really good enough for you?One has the choice to dwell on the fact that sometimes the meaning of what Brooks says in this book is less than easy to understand, if not worse, or rather to accept this fact, spend less time on such passages, and move on instead to those parts of the book that speak more clearly, insistently, and unambiguously to the reader. And why not? Are you a serious trader or aren't you? If you are--and I mean this non-facetiously--wouldn't it be worth the less-than-hundred-bucks this book costs if it contained merely a single sentence that helped your trading in some lasting way? The answer to this question is important, as it goes to the heart of the distinction between what Brooks calls a "serious trader" and the sort of person, who happens to trade, who is more concerned with whatever flaws this book might contain than with whether or not, and how much, it helps him or her trade. Search your soul and discover--decide--what you are.There are many less-flawed books on day trading out there but few, if any, as rewarding to grapple with--the way one grapples with reading a work in an ancient, highly inflected language--as this first attempt by Al Brooks to share with us the wisdom he's acquired over many years of trial-and-error experience in the trenches. For those of us who have gone through our own respective initiation and paid our tuition at Day Trading U., more than nine-tenths of this book could be blank and what was left would still be worth much more than what it costs. For those who don't understand what I'm talking about, you have a lot to learn, believe me. All I can say is: attend like a hawk to your money-management while paying the tuition you need to pay to eventually get there. If you're indefatigable enough, you will. If not, stick with your day job and leave trading to those who refuse to take no for an answer.