The Secrets of Selecting Stocks for Immediate and Substantial Gains [Hardcover]

Larry Williams (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1986

You are shown William's personal technique for picking stocks based on identifying what stocks are under professional buying or selling. In addition, you'll learn how to successfully forecast the market's short, intermediate and long term trend; and be shown how to combine stock selection with market timing to improve your results.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 114 pages
• Publisher: Windsor Books; 2 edition (October 1, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0930233050
• ISBN-13: 978-0930233051
• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 8.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #649,679 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A welcome to my readers...

First and foremost I hope you are still finding value in my writings and want to thank you for reading. The royalties go to support the Max Wales scholarship at the University of Oregon. Max was the best professor I had...and this is just one way I have chosen to acknowledge him. The scholarship is to the School of Journalism so if any of you have kids going there let me know. Go Ducks!

I have a new book out, "confessions of a tax rebel" about my 12 year battle with the IRS. This certainly was the most arduous chapter in my life so far. The battle as well as how and why I got into it is fully covered in the book. It is kind of Indiana Jones meets the Department of Justice...the culmination was trial last year that ended---favorably---on the third day when all charges were dropped.

Wiley wanted an update to my 1998 book, "Long Term Secrets of Short Term Trading", that project was just completed and the new edition shud be out soon.

Lots of market stuff on my web page Ireallytrade.com and I will check in here from time to time

best wishes to all


Larry

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended, March 2, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Secrets of Selecting Stocks for Immediate and Substantial Gains (Hardcover)

I highly recommend this book. I have read over 300 books on stocks and have been trading for the past 7 years (successfully). I only read books written by people who are actually highly successful people, not academic types. Larry Williams stands even higher than Jesse Livermore as he has made and has been able to keep his money. Don't expect magic from this book; however, the methods work extremely well if you put in the effort. Even though the original edition of the book was published in the early seventies, the methods work equally well today. I am saying this from a practical viewpoint. Larry says that your stop order should not be more than 5% from your purchase price. When I first read this book, I though it was almost impossible to achieve this narrow number. However, after a lot of hard work and practice, most of my stops are less than or equal to 6% from the purchase price.

Update 6-17/2003
To give you a feeling of the power of his methods, I picked NTES at $6 and SOHU at $4 back in early November 2002. NTES closed yesterday at $36.14 and SOHU at $34.97!

To use Larry's methods effectively, I combined his methods in this book with 'How to Make Money in Stocks' by William O'Neil. If you look at the fundamentals of both NTES and SOHU right when they took off in November, they match O'Neil's CANSLIM criteria. If you look at Larry Williams technical criteria for picking stocks, again both of these stocks shine.

After having tried almost all the methods and having read all the great books out there, if you only read, combine, and use the methods in the above two books, you are guaranteed to be successfull. One other great book that should be in your arsenel is 'Trading for a Living' by Dr. Alexander Elder. The above two books teach you on how to pick winning stocks but they don't tell you anything about money management and how to manage your emotions. 'Trading for a Living' shines in this area. However, the section on how to pick stocks and trade are pretty poor.

My experience has been that if you use the above three books, your average return should be between 75% to 150% consistently year after year. This is based on practical experience and not some pipe dreams. A lot of the professionals make this kind of return year after year. However, once you make a certain amount of money, then it gets harder to make these kinds of returns as then you have enough money to start moving the market itself by your trades. Anyhow, at that stage, you don't need these high returns anyway as you have achieved your basic goals.

I am amazed that the books that are highly valuable are not the best selling. I guess that proves the point that the public is always wrong; it is always the 5% of the population that makes the most money.

18 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Outdated, September 4, 2003

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Secrets of Selecting Stocks for Immediate and Substantial Gains (Hardcover)

The only valid concept here is buying a stock acting better than the market, a divergence. It's coupled with using divergences in his accumulation/distribution indicator, which acts similar to On Balance Volume and other volume based indicators. The market timing indicators are all outdated or useless because of changes in the market. For example using the yield of the market (because of tax laws yields will remain low) and mutual fund cash levels (most funds are required to be fully invested with minimal amounts set aside for redemptions). This is not to knock Larry, he is very knowlegeable and you'd be better off with his more recent books. BTW, these concepts were not mentioned in his most recent book "The Right Stock at the Right Time" so I'd suspect he doesn't use them anymore.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A good primer, but dated, May 13, 2006

By 

Scruffy Scirocco (Vancouver, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Secrets of Selecting Stocks for Immediate and Substantial Gains (Hardcover)

If you're new to trading or technical analysis, this is a good primer. Much of the information in this book is based on a concept that I had discovered shortly before acquiring this book, that all the technical indicators in the world are so much smoke and mirrors if they don't factor volume into the equation.

This book was written in an era before home computers and many of the tools we have at our fingertips today. It was also written in an era before the "average" guy could directly control his portfolio in real time. For this reason, a lot of the signals he teaches as buy/sell indicators have been drowned out by increased volume and noise. The computer age has made the market more efficient and faster to react, which has dated his signals on a macro level. Nevertheless, the underlying concepts are sound.