A trend is simply a series of higher highs and higher lows (uptrend) or lower highs and lower lows (downtrend). Brooks is pragmatic: you trade in the direction of the trend until the trend ends. He doesn't fight the tape. He famously notes that "The trend is your friend... until the end."

In a world of financial charlatans promising 90% win rates, Al Brooks is the refreshingly honest, brutally difficult truth. He looks at a chart and says, "This is a bear trend bar with a long lower wick. It suggests buying pressure. But we need to see the next bar to confirm. There are no guarantees. Let's watch."

Today, the term "price action trading" is ubiquitous. Whenever you hear a trader say, "Ignore the noise, look at the wicks," or "Wait for a close above resistance," they are speaking Brooksian.

In a world of trading saturated with lagging indicators, black-box algorithms, and subjective “gut feelings,” Dr. Al Brooks stands as a radical empiricist. A former ophthalmologist who walked away from a lucrative medical career to dissect the charts full-time, Brooks is the high priest of pure price action. To read his work is to believe that every single bar on a candlestick chart contains a universe of data—fear, greed, accumulation, distribution, and exhaustion—if only one knows how to read the Braille. The Origin Story: From Lasik to Limit Orders Al Brooks earned his medical degree from the University of Chicago and spent the early 1980s performing eye surgery. Trading began as a side hobby, but like many who discover technical analysis, he was quickly seduced by the challenge. Unlike medicine, where protocols are established and anatomy is fixed, the markets were a chaotic, living organism.