Trading Price Action Trends

Al Brooks breaks down, bar by bar, what each candle reveals about institutional behaviour in the market. He builds a reading system with no external indicators, in a dense, demanding book that many traders consider the most complete treatise ever written on price action. Brooks traded the E-mini S&P 500 for decades, and every concept grows out of that direct futures experience.

This title is part of a price action trilogy by the same author, focused here on how trends form and break bar by bar. Brooks starts from the idea that every candle tells a story about who controls the market at that moment, and that learning to read it replaces any derived indicator.

This isn't a one-off read: it's a reference manual that demands months of study and practice on real charts. The payoff is a level of market reading most traders never reach, because most give up before mastering it. If you're willing to put in the effort, Brooks gives you the ability to trade any market, on any timeframe, without leaning on a single indicator.

It's the most demanding price action read in this catalogue, and not the one to open first if you're starting from zero — it already assumes some fluency reading charts. If you want a narrower, less dense take on the same subject, this catalogue also has Understanding Price Action, by Bob Volman, focused on scalping with a more minimalist method.