197 of 216 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Short this book (it shorts you)!, January 3, 2005
This review is from: How to Make Money Selling Stocks Short (Wiley Trading) (Paperback)
I am a big fan of O'Neil, subscribing to Investors Business Daily as well as the DailyCharts website. I had hoped to get some valuable insights into short selling but I did not. This book did not cost much, but it was not worth the time or the money.
O'Neil credits his co-author "Gil Morales... undertook the tremendous task of rewriting... this work... originally published... in pamphlet form...". This book is still a pamphlet, with about 150 pages of charts out of the 192 pages. The meat of the subject boils down to the "short selling checklist", which doesn't even fill 2 pages. In essence, short only in a confirmed bear market, shorting former leaders months after they peak.
Your time and money would be much better spent buying a good book on technical analysis (John Murphy's books are required reading and he educates you on many indicators to look for when shorting stocks). At least you'd learn that what this book calls "overhead supply" is called resistance (and you'd learn not only to sell resistance but you'd also learn to buy support... but only in a confirmed bull market, and only months after the stock bottoms).
Miles Hoffman, CFA
Atlanta
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100 of 115 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Extremely Disappointing, February 14, 2005
This review is from: How to Make Money Selling Stocks Short (Wiley Trading) (Paperback)
William O'Neil is perhaps the one individual responsible for my development as a trader and investor. I consider How to Make Money in Stocks to be one of the most valuable books on stock trading. I cannot say the same for this one. In fact, I found it to be a complete waste of both my time and money. There was not a single new or insightful bit of information in the text. If I could give it 0 stars I would.
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43 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Extremely Basic Short Selling Treatise, December 26, 2005
This review is from: How to Make Money Selling Stocks Short (Wiley Trading) (Paperback)
William O'Neil, publisher of Investor's Business Daily, as well as the author of a handful of highly readable, and very useful investing books, has updated his 1976 original treatise on short selling with the assistance of Gil Morales, Chief Market Strategist for his firm. The book briefly covers the mechanics and rationale for short selling. Selling short is the opposite of buying long. However, many investors are afraid to short because they either think it is un-American or dangerous. Neither premise is correct. If you know what you are doing, have a game plan, have stop-loss rules and monitor the markets daily, the opportunity to make money is there. And the May through October timeframe in 2006 may turn out to be terrific shorting opportunity.
The first part (27 pages) of this 194-page three-part paperback covers how and when to sell short. Using colorful charts with detailed explanations of the key price and technical market conditions, the authors illustrate the proper timing of the short sale.
Part II entitled "The Anatomy of the Short Sale," details the mechanics of a short sale in seven pages. Two page-size charts illustrate the four phases of a short sale and the logic used to known when to pull the trigger.
Part III is composed of 155 pages of annotated chart examples of different stocks pointing out the stock's trading characteristics and exact sell point. The chapter includes detailed write-ups of nine stocks and their charts, and hundreds of single page charts with annotations
Some of the key points made in the book include:
1. Very few investors know how and when to sell short correctly.
2. Use daily and weekly charts of a stock's volume and price.
3. Use 20 and 50-day moving averages of price and the piercing of these averages by the price.
4. Best short sales are the biggest winners in the prior bull market
5. Determination and persistence are required characteristics of a successful short seller
Overall, this book provides a very basic introductory discussion of short selling which is not totally inclusive of all the information needed to make the sale. Comparing this book to his other books, O'Neil does not provide the same degree of detail or insight. He could have put more emphasis on providing more indepth discussions on the psychology and practice of short selling, as well as show how to use options instead of stocks. An investor considering short selling should become familiar with the market's internal statistics, sentiment indicators, and technical analysis (e.g., MACD, stochastics, RSI, etc.) before even considering a short sale. Since 50-70% of a stock's move is dependent on the market's trend that should be the first item to be determined.
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