The Brooks Trading Course is among the controversial ones out there. Users have mixed reviews about it, and it cannot be easy to separate myth from fact.
So I decided to take the course myself and see what it’s all about. The review you are about to read now documents my findings.
Spoiler alert, I’ll recommend an alternative to the Brooks Trading course after reviewing it.
But for now, let’s take a deep dive into what the course is all about and whether it’s worth your penny.
Here is what this review will expose to you about the Brooks Trading Course:
- What’s the Course About?
- Who’s the Instructor?
- What’s in the course?
- Price and Cost of the Course
- Pros and Cons of the Brooks Trading Course
- Alternatives
- And finally, my recommendation
There is a lot to cover, so let’s get started.
What’s The Brooks Trading Course About?
The Brooks Trading Course is meant for any financial market trader who wants to learn or sharpen their skills in price action trading.
Price action trading is more or less a form of technical analysis but can be very complex to get the hang of.
As you don’t use indicators in your trades and are relying more on price history, you need to know things like when to enter and exit a trade setup, what price signals you should look out for, and what the observed market movement means in your following trades.
In the Brooks Trading Course, Al Brooks (the course creator) claims to provide explicit explanations of various market conditions and movements.
Among other things, from the course, you should get a rational explanation for an asset’s price changes per every bar on the candlestick bar chart.
About The Instructor
Al Brooks created the Brooks Trading Course. Once a medical eye surgeon in Chicago, Al Brooks is now a price action trader and author of various books on price action.
The 71-year-old has reportedly been featured in different organizations, including but not limited to Wiley, CME, and Futures, where he has worked as a technical analysis contributor.
Al Brooks trades Emini, bonds, currencies, gold, crude oil, stocks, and options with the same strategies he teaches in the Brooks Trading Course.
Only a few traders have written even one book on trading. But Al has written at least four; Reading Price Charts Bar By Bar and the Price Action Trilogy.
The Price Action Trilogy is a collection of books on three different aspects of price action: trends, trading ranges, and reversals.
It is recommended to start from the Price Action Trilogy if you want to start reading Al’s books, as the Price Charts Bar by Bar can be difficult to understand.
Every trader, whether in futures, stocks, options, or something else, has their dominant trading psychology, and for Al, it’s no different.
Unlike many other traders, Al believes that every little change, every tick in the market, has big or small implications.
Al views the market charts and every key player in the market as one big puzzle with myriads of exciting pieces, and he takes it upon himself to discover more and more of those tiny bits of the puzzle.
What’s In The Course?
The Brooks Trading Course has up to 92 hours of pre-recorded videos on key areas in price action and forex trading.
The course is in two versions; the Brooks Trading Course and the Forex Trading Course. You can purchase any of the two at a time or buy the two at once.
All course videos have English subtitles with Spanish and Portuguese in the pipeline.
Al says the information in the videos will help you trade consistently in any market. He will also introduce you to his trading strategy, which involves delaying online trade using 5-minute charts, 60-minute charts, daily, weekly, and monthly charts.
Getting into the course content proper, the Price Action Course discusses the fundamentals of price action before delving into the how-to of trading price action.
The Forex Price Action Course follows the same pattern, fundamentals first and then how-to of trading forex price action.
Let’s take a closer look at each section. I’ll start with the Price Action Course.
Price Action Course
Price Action Fundamentals
This part dives into the how and why of market movement and also explains chart reading.
Users will learn how to understand and spot support and resistance levels. In addition, they will get practical training on the chart patterns that indicate the right combination of probability, risk, and reward for optimal trade.
The PA fundamentals include the following subtopics:
• Getting Started
The chart basics and price action tutorial begins with how the markets work, the purpose of charts, and the type of charts that exist.
Some sub-sections address such terminologies as risks, costs, brokers, pips, swing trades, program trading, spoof trades, HTFs, and tackling negative emotions.
• Charting Analysis
The videos here discuss candles, setups, signals, pullbacks, bar counting, buying and selling pressure, and gaps.
• Market Cycle
This segment is for all things market cycle, Always In, trends, breakouts, channels, and trading ranges.
• Support, Resistance, and Basic Patterns
The 34 videos in this part will acquaint users with the meaning of support and resistance and how to apply them in your trades.
Then comes measured moves, reversals, major trend reversals, final flags, wedges, double tops and bottoms, triangles and shoulders, et cetera.
• How To Trade Prerequisites
This segment eases you into the core part of the Price Action training. It discusses the Trader’s Equation and Probability, Protective Stops, Actual Risks, Scaling In, and everything else.
How To Trade Price Action
This is where Al talks about the actual process of trading price action. It begins and ends with the following categories viz,
• Trading Price Action Patterns
• Trading Channels and Ranges
• Trading Different Times of the Day
• Swing and Scalp Trading
• Managing Losses.
Forex Price Action Course
The Forex Price Action Course is almost identical to the Price Action Course.
It comes with a fundamental segment and a how-to section that is the same as the PA course.
But there is a difference. The Forex Price Action Course lacks charts and examples of trade in action. It’s all explanations. The Price Action Course, on the other hand, contains chart examples for a more practical learning experience.
It’s unclear why Al would repeat the same content for two courses meant to be different, but that’s just how it is.
Price And Cost
The Brooks Trading Course has different payment plans depending on your category of choice.
In other words, you can buy the Brooks Price Action Course, or the Forex Trading Course, or the two-in-one package.
The Brooks Price Action Course alone is $399, down from the regular price of $599.
The Forex Trading Course costs the same as the Price Action Course.
Buying the combo (Price Action+Forex Trading) will set you back by $499. That way, you save $298 compared to purchasing the two courses separately.
Nevertheless, you will pay separate charges for Al’s price trading room. It costs $99 monthly to gain access to the trading room.
You will hardly find another trading course that is priced so low. Does that suggest low-quality training? Probably not. Al says that the course is priced that low so that more people can afford it.
Pros of Brooks Trading Course
Al Brooks’ approach to trading is quite unique, and while other trading gurus may have their methods (traders usually have differing views), there are substantial benefits to learning with the Brooks Trading Course.
I’ll now highlight the pros of the course below.
Starts From The Basics
Al’s trading course is meant to accommodate newbies to trading. Al devotes an entire module to teaching new students the terminologies used in day trading.
Knowing what each term in trading means is the first step in understanding what the market is all about, so it’s advisable you don’t rush the introductory modules.
Extensive
In the Brooks Trading Course, Al talks about the majority of topics in trading. You will be hard-pressed to find an aspect of trading not covered in his course.
It helps You Become Versatile
Al doesn’t stop at teaching trading strategies that only work for specific markets.
Instead, he aims to equip you with trading insights that can be applied in all market phases and cycles so you can keep making profits no matter the market fluctuation.
The Brooks Trading Course can help you regardless of whether you are trading stocks, commodities, futures, crypto, or forex.
Daily Trading Room
Al’s course entitles you to a daily trading room where he talks about Emini price action, including the price action update for that day.
Cons of Brooks Trading Course
The Brooks Trading Course is not nearly perfect, and here are the weak points of the course:
Extensive Coverage of Market
This is supposed to be a good side, and it is. I discussed that in the pros section of this review.
However, when you begin to delve into all kinds of markets, you are loaded with a lot of information at once, and it can be challenging to wrap your head around it all.
Quality of Training is Questionable
While Al tries to make his course as beginner friendly as possible, it’s easy to notice the lapses in his explanations when you take the course.
The overall concepts make sense, but Al’s manner of explaining them can be confusing, and it can seem that even he needs help understanding the core concepts and is only regurgitating something written down.
Also, in many of his trading webinars, you never get to see him anticipating future movement. It’s all hindsight analysis he does.
Course Can be Time-Consuming
That’s because the training is repetitive, and there is a lot of redundancy.
Al tries to cover every possible market phase and trend. He also likes giving explanations and strategies for every single market twitch.
That can be overwhelming for beginner traders. The truth is, only an experienced trader can account for every subtle change in market price.
Boring Delivery
Before I tested the Brooks Trading Course, many past users I interviewed complained of the boring way Al talks.
And guess what? That was the first thing that jumped at me when I started watching his videos.
The tone of delivery needs to be more enthusiastic and varied. I guess it is due to age, but then Al isn’t helping with that kind of pattern.
You can easily get distracted when watching the videos or, worse still, sleep off and then close them in frustration when you wake up.
Your experience in this regard might be different but prepare an extra dose of alertness portion (preferably coffee) before watching Al’s videos.
Alternatives to Brooks Trading Course
The Al Brooks PA course has some value in it. His strategies based on price action analysis can go a long way to help you reduce your reliance on indicators and widgets for your following trades.
That said, his emphasis on picking out every little change in the market chart can be burdensome to implement, even for an experienced trader.
Are there easier ways to learn stuff like day trading and forex without all the complicated protocols Al recommends? Yes. Let me introduce you to a trading course I highly recommend for beginners.
Humbled Trader Academy
The Humbled Trader Academy (formerly HT Community) is a video course on day trading.
Shay Huang, a Canadian-based Taiwanese day trading expert, launched the course.
The Humbled Trader Academy targets newbies to day trading and promises to take them up to the intermediate level.
Joining the Humbled Trader Academy gives you access to a ton of video content, live trading forums, a Discord Trading channel, one-on-one support interaction with the trading coaches, and daily live market reports, among other things.
Compared to Al Brooks, Shay is more straightforward with her trading strategies and doesn’t overwhelm you with information about every market phase and price chart change.
Instead, she focuses on six specific setups you can model to hit the ground running with your trades.
Additionally, with the Humbled Trader Academy, you get the HT Trading Roadmap that shows you the process to follow to become an expert day trader.
Although you only get one year of access to the whole Academy after paying, the curriculum is regularly updated, unlike Al’s course, which gives you lifetime access to static training.
Overall, compared to the Brooks Trading Course, the Humbled Trader Academy presents a far more simplified way of learning how to trade stocks and is, by far, the better option for beginners in any trading.
Click here to read my full review of the Humbled Trader Academy.
Which Do I Recommend?
And now, it’s time to hand down the verdict. Before that, here is a recap of everything you’ve read before.
The Brooks Trading Course focuses on price action as the most effective way to pick a profitable trade.
The trading course is meant for beginners and grants lifetime access to its content for a low entry price.
However, the Brooks Trading Course can be overwhelming as Al tries to feed you with explanations for every market fluctuation, no matter how small.
Then there is the question of credibility. Many points accusing fingers at Al Brooks for not being straightforward with his trades and whether they are making any meaningful difference in his income. Al rarely, if ever, talks about his trades.
He only gives you general scenarios in his trading course and seldom uses his trades as examples.
I recommend the Humbled Trader Academy as a much safer buy. The level of personal assistance you receive from the trading coaches via the Discord Trading channel and the HT community is way beyond what Al Brooks can give you in his trading course.
In the HT Academy, you will also be treated to live trades where the expert traders apply the same strategies they teach you and skillfully avoid unnecessary complications.
Although the HT Academy is priced almost four times as much as the Al Brooks Trading Course, it delivers more value than the latter.
Ultimately, it comes down to how much you are willing to spend on a trading course. If you’ve got a few hundred dollars to spend, you might be content with Al Brooks.
But if you’ve got two grand to spare and genuinely want to go for the better option, the Humbled Trader Academy will not disappoint you.
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