66 of 67 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A complete book, September 13, 2010
This review is from: The How to Make Money in Stocks Complete Investing System: Your Ultimate Guide to Winning in Good Times and Bad (Paperback)
This is a great book. It will turn many of the conventional nuggets of wisdom about stock market on their head. It is a fairly complete book. For an individual trader it explains the investing process well. The 100 or so charts at the beginning of the book are very valuable and informative. CANSLIM is the right system to follow in my experience as well. Probably the most important piece of advice in the book is the advice to cut your losses short at 7-8% from your purchase price of a stock. Most recently 3 follow through days in the market have failed. This book however says that follow through days which mark the beginning of an uptrend in a stock market are reliable about 80% of the time. No book, no investing philosophy can be perfect, that's why one needs to cut the losses short so that one can live to fight another day.
This book with green cover is only slightly different from the one with orange cover. The differences are-
1) there is a quiz at the end to test your knowledge of CANSLIM
2) there are more recent charts of stocks which were hits and picked around March 2009 as part of William O'Neil's institutional service. These are stocks like Priceline, CERN, NFLX etc.
3) there is a CD attached to the back cover about a trial of one of their services.
All in all i don't think there is a need to get the latest book if you already have the book with orange cover.
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36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Simply the BEST., October 11, 2010
This review is from: The How to Make Money in Stocks Complete Investing System: Your Ultimate Guide to Winning in Good Times and Bad (Paperback)
I have read over 150 books on stock trading and investing. I have reviewed them all here on Amazon. With this book I will now have read "How to make money in stocks" three times, reading the 2nd, 3rd, and now 4th edition. I have to say after reading this book at different stages in my trading journey, and having used its principles in real investing and trading I truly believe this is the #1 stock trading/investing book out there. I myself have used the principles of this book to average over a 20% return in my 401K from 2003 to 2007 and then like some of the smart readers of O'Neil's newspaper went to cash in January 2008 completely sidestepping the financial meltdown thanks to his principles. Author William O'Neil is the modern day predecessor of the greatest trading legends, Jesse Livermore, Nicolas Darvas, Gerald Loeb, and Bernard Baruch. From the investing results of his proteges Gil Morales and Chis Kacher with their accumulative 18,000% return during the boom years that they document in "Trade like an O'Neil Disciple" he is likely the greatest living pure stock trader in the world. William O'Neil also runs O'Neil and Company and advises some of the world's top money mangers. O'Neil is also publisher of the Investor's Business Daily newspaper which he subsidizes because it is not profitable. (I think he publishes it for himself, all of his other businesses are profitable.)
At the beginning of the book you will see the price charts of the greatest winning stocks of the past 100 years. They are marked with notes to show you what proper bases look like and what a stock looks like coming out of a cup with handle formation. You will see the difference between a strong chart and a weak chart. It is very interesting to see what a climax top looks like right when a stock runs out of buyers and then investors sell in a panic. How the 50 day moving average relates to a chart along with the general market is also very educational.
The book lays out both excellent fundamental reasons for buying growth stocks using the CAN-SLIM method along with the rules on when to buy them. It also advises to cut all losses to no more than a maximum of 7% to 8%, and to prepare to take profits when you are up 20% to 25% in a winner. The key is to cut the loser when it starts failing to make new highs out of a chart cup with handle formation, and also let a winner run and do not sell it unless it pulls back sharply or it runs to high to fast and fails to hold the new highs with a climax top formation.
The CAN SLIM method is based on a stock having these fundamental criteria:
C-Current quarterly earnings per share should be up a major percentage-25% to 50% minimum-over the same quarter the previous year.
A-Annual earnings growth rates of 25% to 50%.
N-New products,new services or new management along with new price highs.
S- Supply and demand:big volume demand for the stock at key points.
L- Buy only the leading stock in the top industry groups.
I-Only buy stocks with some institutional sponsorship.
M-Only buy into an up trending market.
The book covers each of these areas in great detail. This deluxe edition of the book also has a free month of eIBD, an action plan DVD, and admission to a three hour IBD investing workshop. You will understand the CAN SLIM system after reading this book. This system was built after studying the greatest winning stocks of the past 100 years both their fundamentals and technicals. This book is a wealth of information. It is not based on anyone's ego, beliefs, or predictions. William O'Neil has turned making money in stocks into a science. AAII's independent study showed the CAN SLIM method was #1 of many systems tested from 1998 to 2009 with an average 35.3% annual and cumulative 2,763% return.
The only thing I disagree with in this book is O'Neil suggesting buying and holding stock mutual funds for 15 or 20 year time horizons because unlike stocks they do come back and history has shown 10 year holding periods are almost always a win. Studies have shown you can double your returns in a stock index by simply selling when it crosses down through its 200 day moving average and only buying back when it crosses back above the 200 day moving average. I could not watch my mutual fund's value melt away and do nothing, they do track the market very closely. I do not understand why O'Neil would put that in his book after the carnage of 2000 and 2008. I mentally can not deal with such large losses I go to cash from mutual funds in recessions and down trends. The book could have also gone a little deeper into the psychology of investing/trading, most traders and investors have huge problems cutting their losses, letting their winners run, and sometimes even pulling the trigger to buy the stock. I would love to have had a chapter on O'Neil's thoughts on trading psychology.
Regardless, in my opinion the #1 book on investing/trading on the market today.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Basically HowTMMIS Ed. 5... but not worth getting if you have Ed. 4, March 17, 2011
This review is from: The How to Make Money in Stocks Complete Investing System: Your Ultimate Guide to Winning in Good Times and Bad (Paperback)
William O'Neil's books are an essential part of any investor's or trader's library. Seriously, even if you don't buy into his philosophy, what he says in these books will help you since he tells you the rules of the market. I (and many other traders) have made a lot of money using his method.
The only difference between this book (basically, 5th Edition) and the 4th edition (orange cover) is the "Bonus Chapter" at the end - 45 pages of test charts and questions. In my opinion, not worth buying if you already own the 4th Edition. Yes, the DVD is also included, but it's only maybe 15 minutes long and tells you how to use their newspaper and site. Once again, not worth paying extra for... I'm sure their investor.com site has a similar video available. The 4th/5th edition include several additions over the prior editions, and I highly recommend buying one of them to replace the 1st-3rd edition books.
When I started learning O'Neil's strategy in 1993, there was only the newspaper. Then, he added one seminar ($800), which I took in 1999 and which helped me understand his system and make (and keep) 300% in 6 months (9/1999-3/2000). Today, there are so many options to learn... Investors.com, his several books, several different levels of seminars, Meetup user groups, etc. Ironically, this book pretty much covers everything that's taught through the other mediums - you just need to read it carefully and thoroughly and repeatedly. From what people have told me, the one medium which teaches skills not mentioned in the book is the Chart reading seminar ($3000), where you learn advanced chart reading skills.
Learning to trade using CANSLIM (i.e. the O'Neil method) does changes your life, but you need to be ready to spend several years to learn the skill.
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