Reading Price Charts Bar By Bar by Al Brooks

The “serious trader” part of the title says it all. I have read some of Al Brooks’ articles in Futures Magazine and I watched and online trading seminar in the past and I was very interested in reading his recently published book - Reading Price Charts Bar By Bar – The Technical Analysis Of Price Action For The Serious Trader (May 2009). I was expecting an intensive book, but I didn’t realize it would take me about five times longer to read than average trading/investment book.

Al Brooks has a background that I think many of us can relate to. He did not learn his trading skills from 30 years on the floor of a futures exchange. Rather, he struggled for many years learning to trade on his own until he finally got it right. He had to scrap his reliance on technical indicators and rely solely on price action before he could finally see the markets clearly.

Al Brooks has almost created his own language to describe different types of setups in the markets, so it can make the book a more difficult read. This also gives you an idea how much time and effort he has spent researching and analyzing the markets. He only uses a simple price chart with a 20-period exponential moving average to trade.

Purely reading price charts is a foreign concept to many new traders as there is an endless stream of new technical indicators being developed. Many traders heavily rely on their indicators and don’t completely understand what is really happening in the markets.

The author’s analysis of the markets from looking at a chart with no indicators was eye opening and I felt like I have gotten a much better understanding of the battle between the bulls and the bears with every bar on the chart. After reading and studying the book, you should be able to spot who is in control of the market at any given time and how to spot the good trade setups.

This book is mainly for day trading and the author mainly trades the E-mini S&P. He uses a 5-minute chart to trade, but his analysis really applies to any market in any timeframe. This type of trading has probably worked for 100 years and it will probably work for 100 years into the future.

Reading Price Charts Bar By Bar – The Technical Analysis Of Price Action For The Serious Trader is one of the best trading books I have ever read. The book is not an easy read and you will have to thoroughly study the material. I will also caution you that all trading techniques look easy in trading books after the fact with well-chosen examples. The key is to first learn how to read the markets properly, pick the proper setup and be patient in waiting for only the best trade setups. That won’t happen overnight and it certainly won’t happen if you don’t put forth the enormous amount of effort it takes to learn this stuff.