Brian Shannon

Brian Shannon is an American trader, technical analyst and author, and the founder of Alphatrends, a trading education website. According to Wikipedia, he was born on November 16, 1967, in Aurora, Colorado, grew up in Andover, Massachusetts, earned a bachelor's degree in business management from Merrimack College in 1991 and lives in Denver, Colorado. The same article lists earlier work at brokerage and trading firms including Thomas James, Lehman Brothers, Tucker Anthony, Dain Bosworth and MarketWise Securities, where it says he was lead trader and director of research, and states that he earned the Chartered Market Technician (CMT) designation in 2013. His own site describes more than 30 years of trading and market analysis experience; that figure is self-reported.

The founding date of Alphatrends varies by source: Wikipedia gives 2006, while the Alphatrends about page says the site was established in 2010 and that its community has trained traders since 2005. He is best known for his work on Anchored VWAP, the subject of his second book, and has discussed it on industry podcasts such as the CMT Association's Fill the Gap.

He publishes under the handle alphatrends on YouTube, X, Instagram, StockTwits, Threads and TikTok, all linked from the Alphatrends website. The YouTube channel showed about 62,000 subscribers when read on September 14, 2026; the TikTok account showed 26 followers.

Alphatrends sells two self-paced video courses. The Introduction to Stock Trading Course costs $99 and contains more than three hours of video in 12 chapters with quizzes and a final exam. The Advanced Stock Trading Course costs $499 and contains more than nine hours of video in 17 chapters, plus one free month of the Premium membership, a 30-minute one-on-one webinar with Shannon and a reduced yearly membership rate. The $99 paid for the introductory course is credited toward the advanced one, and the course pages state that there are no trials or refunds. The Alphatrends Premium membership costs $139 per month or $1,299 per year, with a two-week trial for $59, and includes daily trade-idea, midday and end-of-day videos, a members' Discord channel and educational seminars. A cheaper subscription on X costs $10 per month and includes a daily end-of-day video and a monthly seminar. Seasonal sales with lower prices appear on the site from time to time. His books are Technical Analysis Using Multiple Timeframes (2008) and Maximum Trading Gains with Anchored VWAP (2023), sold through Amazon and other bookstores; book prices are not listed on his site.

On reputation: Alphatrends states that its content is educational and not investment advice. A FINRA BrokerCheck search for "Brian Shannon" on September 14, 2026 returned no current registration that could be matched to him; registrations that ended many years ago may not appear there, so this neither confirms nor rules out his reported licenses. A search of the FTC's Cases and Proceedings library for "Alphatrends" on the same date returned no results. Mentor Explorer did not find independent press coverage examining his courses or results; the testimonials and the claim that the community has trained thousands of traders come from his own website.