Correct way to get the most out of course

Hi Nate:  12 years in here.  I originally bought the original Brooks trading Course that was not as long as the current course and the graphics were in black and white.  I was lucky in that I had a job in the evenings where I had a lot of free time.  I converted the video files to Mp3s back then and had them on my phone.  During the down times at work I would listen.  My job was temporary full time and was going to last 3 years so that gave me a deadline.  My mind said, "I HAVE to have this down by fall 2017 which is when the job was scheduled to be finished."   I probably listened to the entire course 30 times over 3 years while at work and I'm not exaggerating.  I remember as Al was talking and it was the 30th time listening I knew the words that were going to come out of his mouth next.  I had it almost memorized verbatim.  I traded sim and real money during the mornings.  I went back and forth, sim to real to sim to real.  Back then there was no micro's so it was the full ES. 

We had bi-monthly trading meetings I went to where we studied Brooks methodology.  I ended up quitting that job Labor Day 2017 as I got it down before it ended. 

I would say repetition is key.  Watching or listening over and over and over and over.  Screen time as well.  The longer you are in the game, the screen time is what becomes most important to get better.  You're mind says, "I've seen this thousands of times" and the screen time gives you the confidence to push the button.     

Hi Nate,

12 years here as well and if I had to go back and do it all over again, I would definitely combine the study of the course (or books) with historic webinars, in a very specific fashion:

1. Watch a video.

2. Open your trading software and turn on the replay feature. This is a very specific kind of replay and your software has to support it. It allows replaying historic bars tick by tick, not jumping forward a whole bar at a time. It looks exactly as a real day would progress with bars forming one tick at a time at the speed the market moved back then. Optionally you can also place simulated trades to track your progress but that's for the 2nd part of the course (How to Trade). Ninjatrader and Tradestation have this kind of replay (if anyone knows others, please mention).

3. Analyze the price action bar by bar as the session progresses. Note your thoughts about what you think is the current Always-In direction and what is the current market cycle, and what patterns are forming. Go deeper and analyze every single bar as it's forming (if you have the time). This may take a long time if replaying the whole day in real time so you can focus only on the start of the day, or the middle or the end of day, depending on what kind of trading you expect to do when you go live. Some traders only have time for the open since they also work etc. 

4. After you finish marking up the chart, open a historic webinar of that same day (this will require purchasing the historic webinar monthly packs) and watch what Al said about that portion of the chart (at 1.4X speed perhaps), then compare with what you thought and note the differences. Al will mention concepts you haven't learned yet, don't worry about it and listen for the concepts you just covered in the video. For example, if you are studying about double tops, did Al mention double tops on this day? Did you spot them as the day was forming?

5. Move on to the next day's replay and repeat with the next webinar, listening for Al mentioning the concepts you're currently studying.

Some notes:

- notice that this doesn't mention watching the markets live at all. I honestly don't think it's productive or effective and is a waste of time to sit for hours watching a live market without having completed the course at least once. Especially if a more targeted approach can be taken using market replays at same speed and with the feedback of webinars. Beginner traders will be losing money anyways, so why not start with simulated trades, and while practicing with real money is important, I think that stage comes later after completing the course.

- what I wrote above is just to complete the first half of the course with a kind of reinforcement learning of the concepts while also getting exposure to seeing how markets move in real time + getting Al's feedback from his webinars 

- this doesn't even cover practicing trading yet which comes in the 2nd half of the course and we can have a discussion about that as well but I think getting all the theory down first is more important than placing trades. Knowing only half the BPA knowledge isn't going to help make good trades (using pure BPA) since it's a holistic methodology and requires seeing the whole picture of what the market is doing while trading.

- if you're going to buy the webinars, focus on the years 2021 and earlier as that's when Al presented every day so you get the most value out of the purchase. Here I made an outline of how the webinars are usually structured:

- consider exploring software like Anki for memorization (whenever Al mentions a golden nugget, create a question/answer of it with a screenshot to quiz yourself later) and a note taking software like logseq or Notion or other similar types that allows backlinking between notes and pieces of text. These links after a time create a mindmap of knowledge so you can see BPA concepts and all the references to all the notes where the concept is mentioned. 

Hope this helps,
CH
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BPA Telegram Group

Awesome wow thanks for taking the time to type this out. Jotted down a bunch of notes. Probably the only followup i would have is after 12/13 years, if you were able to go back in time and do it again, would you? And without any details has it been financially lucrative for you? I'm just debating how far i want to go down the rabbit hole.

Thanks again