Customer Reviews

Monster Stocks: How They Set Up, Run Up, Top and Make You Money

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

John Boik has written a very valuable book that can make you serious money trading stocks if you study it and use his system. I have personally made thousands of dollars trading several of the stocks in this book. You will learn how to identify the stocks that will double and triple in just a few months, some even gorw 1000% to 7000% in less than a year. Stocks like Google, Apple, Yahoo, Taser, and many others. Stocks that change the way we live by creating new products that are very popular and lead to explosive earnings in the company and price increase in the stock that the majority of money managers want to be a part of.
You will get to see how these stocks perform in technical price strength, the author gives bar charts during the major part of the move showing the price compared to the 21, 50, and 200 day moving average along with the relative strength line and volume. You will see how to enter at price break outs to new highs and add on at retreats in price to the 21 or 50 day moving average. But most importantly when to sell at exhaustion gaps in price or when the stock's price falls through the 50 day moving average. It is crucial to sell and lock in profits before the run up ends.
Here are the keys to trading success found in this book:
Monster fundamentals:
1. Outstanding sales or revenue growth.
2. Strong and accelerating earnings growth.
3. High rates of return on equity (ROE).
Rules:
1. Only buy in an overall uptrending market.
2. Only buy stocks in sound price bases with strong fundamentals.
3.Buy stocks at their 52 week highs or better yet all time highs at break outs in price.
4. Only stay in stocks that act right with rising prices on rising volume and pull backs on lighter volume.
5. Sell when it is time, do not stay in when the price falls through the 50 day moving average support line.

This book is a great tool to have in your stock trading library, it is outstanding for new traders and an excellent refresher course for seasoned traders. It is one of my new instant favorites.

I just completed the book and I loved it. Understand I am an avid can slim follower, and I have also taken all the 4 level of workshops offered by William O'Neil and IBD. I also, got to know Jim Roppel at the Master's Level workshop in May that we both attended. This book is very accurate on on the details it covers. It also stresses the extreme difficulty of doing this technique, although for the rare few that can accomplish this skill, it is truly rewarding. After you read this , and you haven't already, the next book you will want is O'Neils book How to Make Money in Stocks, 3rd edition. Only after reading that last book many times over and doing all the follow up, which will require 2-4 years of study, will you feel that you are an intermediate Monster Stock trader.

Fire up your charting software. Scan for stocks that have gained greater than 200% in the last 250 trading days (1 year). Review. You have just saved yourself $29.00. There is nothing new in this book. O'neil was quoted so many times I began to think this was written by him. I congratulate anyone who has the moxi and staying power to finish and publish a book. That doesn't mean I have to like the finished product.

The book's title is misleading to say the least. The book offers little new information than his previous book - How Legendary Traders Made Millions. It just simply repeats the same principle in the chart again and again. Buy stock in the break out, pyramid buy more when stock drops to its support level, usually at 21 or 50 day moving average. Sell when the stock has its finally climax run. It could have been a 5 to 10 pages brochure.

If you really want to find out how a monster stock got setup, started and finished, I strongly recommend you read Brad Koteshwar's book - The Perfect Stock: How a 7000% move was set-up, started and finished in an astonishing 52 weeks.

I had previously purchased his other two books. The first covered the best US traders (this is a very good book) and the second book covered the US equity market and the best US traders through history, this book also was pretty good in terms of detail and explanation. His current book was shallow lacking in detail and appears to have rushed to the publisher. I was throughly disappointed.

I agree with some of the other reviews you would be much better served by purchasing the books on trading written by William O'Neil

I had the privilege of reading the book today as soon as it was out today. Its a great book it tells how the biggest runner of any bull cycle shape up. Its similar to past winners like Hansen Natural, Yahoo etc.
If we follow the same principles we will know the monster stock in the current Bull rally which started from 29th Aug has been Intutive surgical,
Baidu and VM ware. It highlights couple of main points for monster stocks,
Great earnings every quarter, New product to the market, a recent IPO,
great return on equity. If we keep the fundamentals written in the book
then in every bull cycle one can piggy back on one or two monster stocks and change the financial condition of oneself. I would recommend one to read all the books by JOhn Boik and all the books by William O Neil along with reminscence of a stock operator which is a autobiography of Jesse Livermore.
I consider Livermore, Gerald O loeb, William O neil as the best trader ever and if we follow their principles by reading their books we could improve our returns many fold. Also the books by John Boik reflects on the above great traders and their strategy.
Remember three things work in stock market, Discipline, Dedication and Desire the 3D's.
Good luck to all the Quality growth stock traders.

Boik's term "Monster Stocks" refers to stocks that have at least doubled in price within 18 months. This book describes the practical application of a set of rules for identifying and profiting from such high-growth stocks. These rules involve criteria both for a stock's fundamentals, and subtle details of price and volume action of the stock and of the general market.

What I liked about the book is that it profiles about 30 such stocks as brief case studies, which include the chart basing setups that may have been evident, key points and characteristics of corrections during the stock's growth, and indications that presaged of the end of their run-ups. These are accompanied with annotated charts of relevant market indices and of the stocks profiled. The attendant commentary on these particular growth stocks and the events in the markets allowed me to learn by comparing the rules to how I would have reacted in the same situation. Most of the examples occur during the period 1996 through 2006.

Much of the methodology aligns with and makes mention of the Investor's Business Daily rules as described in their educational material and in Bill O'Neil's books. This book builds on IBD's teachings in that it uses the methods to focus on the special case of stocks that at least double in price including the psychological challenges, buying and pyramiding tactics, and the significance of moving-average support.

Boik describes methods that are relatively simple, but adds that the attention to detail and discipline required is not easy. I know from experience that many of us will find it difficult to make a large commitment to a high-growth stock, at least in its early stages, because the characteristics go against much of the conventional wisdom. Many investors will sell such a stock when it makes violent corrections - only to watch it make new highs soon thereafter. Similarly, it takes great discipline to act on the various warning signs and sell even though the stock is making successive new highs and the fundamentals have never been better. Boik does a reasonable job of explaining the details of what to observe, and rules by which to buy, add more, sell or hold these stocks through such observations. Among other things, the rules limit your risk and provide assurance when holding such stocks during their growth phase.

The book concludes with a Monster Stock finding and handling template, and a summary of the Monster Stock rules.

A criticism that led me to rate this book four stars instead of five was that the writing style tended to be wordy and repetitive, making the book longer than it needed to be. Also, the graphics were sometimes difficult to follow, and required some study before I was able to relate them to the text. I was able to endure this however, and found a lot of valuable content.

I can also recommend the following to those wanting more on growth stock investing:

The Zurich Axioms'' by Max Gunther ©1985

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre ©1923

How to Trade in Stocks by Jesse Livermore ©1940

How to Make Money in Stocks by William J. O'Neil ©2009

The Successful Investor by William J. O'Neil ©2004 (*a true gem)

Trader Vic - Methods of a Wall Street Master by Victor Sperandeo ©1991, 1993

The Market Wizard series of three books by Jack D. Schwager

This book is just an overview of some of the monster stocks from the past years (and the tech bubble). For those of you who are already familiar with the CANSLIM system, this book offers case studies on certain stocks in the CANSLIM way.
The conclusions, methods, criteria, ... are all the same. Buy companies with high quarterly earnings growth, accelerating sales number, ROE > 15%, the best industry groups, high relative strength, ... I found it disappointing, because this book does not add anything for the average growth investor.

If you are a deep into CANSLIM and love to read more on these stocks and how they performed in the best, then this book is suited for you. If however you want to read a good book on growth investing, go for O' Neil his classic `How to Make Money in Stocks". That's also the place where this author got most of his material from.

If you believe in the old addage "to be the best, learn from the best"
then this book will help you profit from the past success' of some of the biggest stock market winners of the past twenty years.

John Boik presents a well thought out method for acquiring wealth. The big money he claims is made in finding those few companies who can change the world. If an investor can recognize these monster stocks and manage them correctly, the result will be life changing wealth. Boik gives the reader a history lesson--that all monster stocks display the same characteristics just the names of the companies and their symbols change.