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

by Al Brooks

While complex strategies and systems may work for some traders, understanding price action is all you really need to succeed in this arena. Price action analysis is an effective approach to trading today's markets—whether you're involved in stocks, futures, or options. It allows you to focus on the process of trading without being overwhelmed by a complicated collection of trading techniques. And while this method may appear elementary, it can significantly enhance returns as well as minimize downside risk. One way to apply price action analysis to your trading endeavors is with chart patterns. Nobody understands this better than author Al Brooks, a technical analyst for Futures magazine and an independent trader for more than twenty years. Brooks discovered ten years ago that reading price charts without indicators proved to be the most simple, reliable, and profitable way for him to trade. Mastering that discipline is what made him consistently successful in trading. Now, with Reading Price Charts Bar by Bar , Brooks shares his extensive experience on how to read price action. At the end of the day, anyone can look at a chart, whether it is a candle chart for E-mini S&P 500 futures trading or a bar chart for stock trading, and see very clear entry and exit points. But doing this in real time is much more difficult. Reading Price Charts Bar by Bar will help you become proficient in the practice of reading price action—through the use of trendlines and trend channel lines, prior highs and lows, breakouts and failed breakouts, and other tools—and show you how this approach can improve the overall risk-reward ratio of your trades. Written with the serious trader in mind, this reliable resource addresses the essential elements of this discipline, including the importance of understanding every bar on a price chart, why particular patterns are reliable setups for trades, and how to locate entry and exit points as markets are trading in real time. Brooks focuses on five-minute candle charts to illustrate basic principles, but discusses daily and weekly charts as well. Along the way, he also explores intraday swing trades on several stocks and details option purchases based on daily charts—revealing how using price action alone can be the basis for this type of trading. There's no easy way to trade, but if you learn to read price charts, find reliable patterns, and get a feel for the market and time frame that suits your situation, you can make money. While price action trading doesn't require sophisticated software or an abundance of indicators, this straightforward approach can still put you in a better position to profit in almost any market. Reading Price Charts Bar by Bar will show you how.

Genres: Finance, Business, Nonfiction, Money

432 pages, Hardcover

First published March 23, 2009

Reviews

[Qbo2078 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read through 100 pages before giving up. This book is insanely rich in material, however that simultaneously is its weak point. The book being packed with huge amounts of info, is insanely difficult to read and you will find yourself being confused and overwhelmed by even just a paragraph of information. Al Brooks rewrote and elaborated the material in this book into three separate books which are written in a more comprehensive manner. Still however, it is not recommended for absolute beginners.

I give this book a 3.5/5. It's amazingly informative. There's 1 point lost on the effort and time required to decipher the huge block of texts. Half a point is deducted from the lack of annotations and poor placement of the charts.

[Jw · Rating 5 out of 5]

The bible for serious traders, bar none.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

This particular trading book is a bit tough to review.

While on one hand I think Mr. Brooks provides a ridiculous amount of information here, at least with regard to a specific trading methodology, I think his organization and flow were very subpar. This isn't my first rodeo with PA-based trading analysis, let alone a dense trading book, but I think this one suffers from a lack of effort put into readability that comes across as a bit sloppy.

Large sections of the book are devoted to paragraphs and paragraphs of chart analysis, and the constant flipping back and forth on pages to find just the candlestick we were discussing (sometimes there are over a dozen to review) got really tiring and drained my interest. If there were more effort placed in dividing up the information more fluidly I think I'd have enjoyed, and likely absorbed, more of the content.

This might be worth a reread at some point, but I need to let my patience rebuild.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Im rating this 3/5 because while most of the material its good, and it does have some interesting set ups for price action trading, the writing style and organization of the whole book makes it almost imposible to keep track of the setups and logic behind them.
Price action/bar interpretation is right on, and in tune with other books on the subject, but the lack of organization and the added difficulty of the author giving "new names" to already known things (MB2 means buying a test of the EMA on a 2nd high/low, Hight 2 to refer to the 2nd high on a rally) makes this a tough non didactical read.
The material and set ups are nice, though nothing ground breaking. I do like his views on some of this classics of price action, but he should get a better editor.
Im going to check out his other books and videos, if any of them are any good I will be rating them for you here at goodreads ;)

[Aler · Rating 5 out of 5]

the bible indeed

study this book over and over and over and over again

[Abhishek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read the each details of this book is like finishing your MBA degree .But trust me this best book which explain you all the methods that can help you to navigate through your trading path easily . This is book not the book which newbie should pickup .It requires the great effort to read it ,understand it , assimilate it and then apply it .If you are the price action trader you should definitely read this book.

[Zach · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a struggle to read. I almost quit multiple times, but kept pushing through for the info. However it wasn't worth it, the info could easily be gained in other books written better than this.

Please don't waste your time reading this.

[Gan Mingsheng · Rating 3 out of 5]

hard to read, but fairly insightful

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book for beginner education. Could have been made abit clearer with better pattern identification. There are better books out there, but this is still worth the read and used for future referencing.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Takes a huge amount of willpower and concentration to finish this book. Even so, I had to skip a few pages now and then when it became overwhelming.

This is a no nonsense book on reading price action. Even though, like all other TA books, some analyses came across as a tad hindsight driven, the author was able to use a consistent approach to highlight how he came to the interpretations.

I would say it is very enlightening and provided me with fresh perspectives for my own trading.

[Haile · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very serious book. Also tough!

1.I recommend a follow up from Brooks website where he reviews bars Daily so as to make good sense of what he's written here.

http://www.brookspriceaction.com/view...

2. Download End-of-Day Market data and follow through,if you're also that serious.

[Mattail · Rating 1 out of 5]

Note to self: He is a trader, not a writer. Very hard to read, basically slogged through the entire book. Lots of information, not well presented (either that or there is something wrong with my comprehension skills)