Curious to know, i have not read Al Brooks's books neither Lance Begg but i know some of you have studied both. Which author is easier to read and understand ? Which would you recommend if you only had one choice to make ?
Can you help answer these questions from other members on futures io?
I googled "Lance Beggs", found his site, and noticed this statement in his bio:
"2. What markets and timeframes do I trade?
At the moment I am scalping various currency and index futures markets (primarily the E-mini Russell (TF), the Euro (6E) and the Hang Seng (HSI) on the 1-minute and 1-range or 20-tick charts)."
My question is how is it possible to trade any instrument on a 1 range chart, let alone the ones he mentioned? I can see trading ZN or ZB on a 1 renko chart, but a 1 range chart with TF or HSI seems extreme to say the least. Does he really advocate this?
The following user says Thank You to Haverchuck for this post:
I subscribe to his newsletter and have seen excerpts from his book. He basically looks at the 1 range to see s&r levels within the bars you can't see on larger time frames. He explains it in a manner that seems to make sense, but I have never tried it and don't know if it's effective or not.
The following 2 users say Thank You to vegasfoster for this post:
let me first say, i am a big fan of lance beggs and what he provides in his weekly emails and on his site. i have read his book and find it to be well written and significant in its content.
that being said, i would recommend brooks book and website. while lance can articulate patterns well i found brooks, while a difficult read in the beginning, is much more insightful of using the mature price action. scalping off a five minute bar or any bar with some depth to it is more comfortable than off of small tick bars.
frankly, you dont need to buy the book just visit the website and once you get comfortable with the abbreviations there is more than ample forum material to review to see what is going on.
The following 8 users say Thank You to trader1512 for this post:
I think there is a difference in what you mean of Lance, because he has written 2 different manuals. 1 about scalping and another about trading the 3 min timeframes ( which can be applied to other timeframes).
I must confess that I have never read anything of either Brooks or Beggs (which I had never even heard of), but there is a lot of good material on TA from the good ol' days...
I would suggest starting there...
If you're going to read contemporary work, I would rather pick up a few books on quantitative finance...
I think if you haven't read the book, you can't say it is good or not, as long as you read the book, and identify the method in the book does help improving your trading, hmm... it is a good book.
Currently im reading Lance Beggs,( Price Action Trader- Intraday Price Swings ). Found it helpful in Multiple Time frame Analysis, 30min TF for Structure , 3min for Trading TF, 1Min for Fine tuning of Trading TF..concepts of SH/SL,sideways markets are good.
Its very easy to follow as Author explained it in simple language.
I haven't yet Finished his books about Scalping though, but i will.
I must say for lance the chapter where the traded examples are described minute by minute are very very good, because you can follow his thoughts while price is developing in his trade bar for bar. Haven't found anything as good( detailed ) as that. If anyone knows anything like that - from another source - please let me know, I'm interested in learning more.
That is a fair point. I am quite familiar with Mr. Brooks, though. But I will not suffer through his book, that is quite certain. As for Mr. Beggs, I took a look at his website and it did not inspire confidence.
I would much rather read some of the old classics, most of the new ones are just rehashing content anyway.
I think all discretionary methods are equally useless.
I'm not saying that to say that one can't make money with something learned from someone else..... but I think in the end it's a matter of THAT method making sense to the person trying to deploy it.
I believe they are all just as good, and just as bad as the next one. I'm sure someone has managed to trade with principles from Wyckoff and failed, and then got ahold of Brooks' Method, which may have made more sense that THAT individual..... or vice versa.
I'm currently reading through lances' material. I find his writing style to be a bit difficult, I am mildly dyslexic and his prose causes me problems.
However the concepts he presents in it are well explained and in depth. Since it is discretionary trading, on a personal level I feel comfortable with his methods and it does make logical sense to me the way he reasons what he does.
He does not believe in indicators or mechanical systems and I get the message that he believes auto trading should be left to institutions with vast resources and expertise.
Hi, Zwaen,
U r rt, Beggs writing style is simple.
about ur question on me trading his setups..Answer is NO.
I trade Market Profile, bt problem i was facing with it was Timing(Entry /exits) , so i apply his concepts of MTF analysis on MP, so its helping me for timing trades.
Well, per definition a discretionary system can't really be learnt. The key ingredient will be mind of the person trading it. The most important thing for a discretionary trader would be risk and money management in order to remain solvent when wrong.
There are many ways of making money in the markets, and people should do what they feel is best for them.
But there are still a lot of valid concepts in the works of, e.g., Wyckoff. Things like S/R never go out of fashion, and can easily be incorporated in automated systems, as well....
You said I think in a more concise manner of what I was saying in your first 2 paragraphs.
I think given enough time, a trader will eventually form whatever realizations necessary to make ANY discretionary system work. Could be as rudimentary as a ma cross I would imagine, but eventually, the trader would be mainly forming patterns in his head about how the price moves along with the ma.
I have not read any of Al Brooks' books, but I picked up an interesting morsel of info in his webinar on futures.io (formerly BMT). That is, he says he trades "don't care size", meaning he trades a number of contracts that is small enough not to affect him psychologically, win or loose on every trade. If his account will allow him to trade 10 contracts, he will trade 2. This way, you can trade your method without affecting it through fear and greed. I do the same thing, but never really thought about it much. I think most traders would benefit from this approach.
The following 3 users say Thank You to monpere for this post:
I fully agree with that belief. I have referred to it as an 'inherent ability to read the markets' in some of my other posts on the subject. Problem is, all the successful traders who have that ability write posts that say it's easy, just do this, just trust your instincts, trust your gut, just feel the market, you can develop that skill etc. Newbies, see posts like that and think, cool I can do that, but quickly find out if they have that ability or not. Skill is not developed through repetition alone, it requries aptitude or genetic ability first. If I am clumsy and uncoordinated by nature, I will probably never become a professional ball room dancer, or professional basketball player. I think if you don't have that ability, you can spend 10,000 hours at the screen, you will never succeed at discretionary trading.
I know I don't have that aptitude as indicated by my failure as a discretionary trader. But once I switched my focus to strict ruled based mechanical trading, I instantly jumped the hurdle. Even now after being a full time rule based mechanical trader for 5 years, If I try to speculate, and predict the market, I still fail miserably. I think humans have the psychological need to feel responsible for their own fates, so we naturally have a bias to be discretionary, as that style of trading fulfills that need. I think anyone failing as a discretionary trader, should put aside the natural psychological bias towards discretionary, and look into the rule based mechanical approach (welcome to the dark side )
The following 2 users say Thank You to monpere for this post:
I would agree that there will always be a % of the population that may never make it at trading even if they had all the time in the world. That probably holds true for just about ANY activity though.
But actually, there are probably dozens of variables or reasons a trader won't make it, beyond just them not having the aptitude to do it. So some people might eventually chalk up their inability to read a chart to lacking the aptitude for it, but that person could also just have not been in the environment to foster that ability. So what is the real reason? Could be dozens of things?!?
I would think that MOST people could become discretionary traders given the proper motivation and enough time to figure it out. But I also believe that if an infinite number of monkeys were typing on keyboards for an infinite amount of time, they would eventually type a Shakespeare novel.
Yeah! Most discretionary traders would think they would be able to pick the Shakespearean monkey, and just as in the numbers in real life, 95% of them will be wrong. Me, as a statistical mechanical trader, I would say, I don't like those odds
Well, the odds of that event occurring for the monkey are INFINITESIMALLY small. We're talking gagillionths of a percent here.
You have the aptitude to be a discretionary trader, I'm certain of it. You simply found another way before you figured it out, and you have likely resigned to the fact that it's an impossibility for you.
Lawl, if I figured out my mechanical system, I'd probably give up the idea of discretionary trading all together, and I'd be like the guy that wrote "market wizards," and say I can't trade discretionary either. (He said he couldn't trade discretionary and that systems trading was the only thing that allowed him to trade successfully).
You might be right. One of the issue behind the high trader failure rate is that, by default the great majority of traders are discretionary traders, and whether I am right or wrong about needing to have the aptitude, the discretionary trading learning process tends to take most traders to the 'point of ruin' way before they can develop that skill. So maybe the reality is, most may just blow up their accounts before they had the chance to fine tune their discretionary skill.
The following 2 users say Thank You to monpere for this post:
Very perspicace observation. And of course, most will not spend the time required on a simulator to practice their discretionary trading skills. Trading on a simulator means no chance of making real money, and most traders start trading for the real money. Add to this documenting their discretionary trading in a rigourous way, and many newbies will give up.
I once read that this figure was based on the accounts closed within a specific time period, with a certain broker.
The problem with this is that within this population:
1) there a lot of people who don't take trading seriously and just play(gamble) with a very tiny account
2) there are also a lot of people who think they will be a millionaire in just 3 years
3) there are a lot of people who take a few trades and lose interest and close the account
So I think that when this investigation whas done among a popalution who was serious and dedicated to becoming a trader, the failure rate will be far less. Nevertheless, trading should be seen as a profession and is not easy.
This statistics also hold for "professional" traders. Few years ago, some US prop firms went
bankrupt, and all their financials were thus put out by the court.
People were surprised to see again this magical 95% failure rate.
This was a prop where people were trading full-time seriously.
I hope I am not crushing your illusions. Interestingly every joe believes he will not
be one of the 95%.
As a currency trader, like Lance Beggs, I found his method works better than Al Brook's on currency futures. However, since most of his charts in his book are from 2010, I'm a little concerned about its profitability in long term.
The following user says Thank You to zcui for this post:
I don't think that will be a problem. The point is, Lance shows the concepts which always work in the market. He also ofcourse states that it is the market structure which can make it work.
Take for example a Pullback. You can call it a pullback, a Ross Hook via TTE, a retracement, hidden divergence, a H2 or several other names. The point is that the market has a bias to either the bulls or the bears, and you have to look for a weak push from the countertrend traders and enter at the point where they will put their stoplosses.
What you have to do is analyse charts of your preferred market, and look which pullbacks work, and which pullbacks don't work. For example, a pullback which has candles in decreasing length, or doji's in the leg, or tails on the candles in your desired direction shows weakness of the countertrend traders. Offcourse beware if the trend is getting " old" ( 3d push) or is looking to strong SR.
So the concepts will work, finding weakness in the countertrend leg, but the way it materialises in your chart will vary across marktets and across time. For example Ross states taking pullbacks to the RH via TTE only on the 1,2,of 3th candle of the pullback. This rule has worked for him in his market, at that time, but will change over time and markets. I think you have to trade the concepts, and find your own rules.
So everyone wil have to analyse it for the market they like to trade, and that is the only way you will get confidence in your setups, through your own research.( imho)
One of my worst enemies are my own false assumptions
The following 11 users say Thank You to Zwaen for this post:
I've read both and enjoy each. not a fan of brooks new book. The basics are the same, but beggs is easier to read. Trapped traders and fading weakness. Markets have to move from areas of "support" to areas of "resistsnce" because all the orders are there....
Is trading really so difficult? nooooope...
Are the psychological barriers in trading next to impossible?yuuuup.
Honestly, I'm convinced if a beginner follows beggs book to a T and really takes the time to visualize the market from other traders pov, he/she could be consistent in 1-2yrs.
also...might as well give joe ross a plug.....if someone studies with joe his/her curve will be reduced as well.
bottom line---learn how and why markets move and know where the orders are....
The following 5 users say Thank You to lsubeano for this post:
Yes and no....but more importantly, they compliment each other. Joe is a fantastic teacher, and
a lot of his teachings are free...his chart scan, spead, options scan emailz are all free....
I'd buy joe's trading the emini and then take a 'tte' webinar.....that's all you literally need to trade profitably.
hope that helps.
The following 3 users say Thank You to lsubeano for this post:
)
