Customer Reviews
24 Chapters of Boredom - By: Lee Noon, 17 Sep 2008 
I had high expectations of the book based on other reviews. However I was very dissappointed from the start & ended up just skimming through to the end of the book due to the endless self-promotion & waffle. The book spends more time promoting other investment material than actuallly in educating the reader. Occassionallly there is good advice it's just very unfortunate that you have to read through why you should visit my website, why should come to my seminars, why you should subscribe to my newsletters, why you should read my other books, etc... before you get to any useful investment advice.
Great Lessons for Stock Investors! - By: C. Clayton, 25 Aug 2008 
This book isn't about getting rich quick. It takes time, study diligence & patience coupled with controlling ones emotions to become an excellent investor.
William O'Neil, who started a successful financial paper known as Investors Business Daily, wrote How to Make Money in Stocks. Decade of research, critical thinking & common sense has helped O'Neil to create some very powerful ways of investing successfully. He melds both the technical & fundamental aspects of investing.
Each of the 24 lessons in this book is provided in a chapter form. Just a few of the powerful lessons are: Follow a system Rather Than your Emotions (Lesson 3), How to Buy a Stock at Just the Right Moment (Lesson 9) How to Gauge the Stock market's Health (Lesson 12) & many more.
I have read many books, magazines & articles on investing in stocks, bonds, mutual funds & more over the years. O'Neil's ideas are some of the most solid & consistent I have found to apply to the stock market. They are easy to read & understand the basic...but like anything worth while...it takes years to be good. I have read three of O'Neil's books & have found rich ideas in alll of them.
The Re-Discovery of Common Sense: A Guide To: The Lost Art of Critical Thinking
Further Directions on How to Make Money in Stocks Using IBD - By: Donald Mitchell, 24 May 2004 This book is an elaboration on the investment techniques in Mr. O'Neil's prior book, How to Make Money in Stocks. The elaboration focuses on additional insights into avoiding losses & using technical analysis (examining stock price & volume charts) to pick optimal stocks & times to buy & sell. If you haven't already read How to Make Money in Stocks, this book will lack context. I suggest that you not read this book until you have read that one. If you have read that one, this book will be valuable to you only if you plan to do your own stock picking & wish to use the Momentum Growth Investing model that Mr. O'Neil recommends in that book, & supports in Investors Business Daily. If this book is not yet right for you, based on these qualifications, you need read no further.
If this book fits, then, let me go on to provide some caveats. First, it is often hard to limit your losses in the kinds of stocks recommended by this technique. Following a company warning about earnings, it is not unusual for these stocks to falll 15-40 percent without ever trading at any price in between. So your losses may well be larger than he suggests here.
Second, technical analysis is a field that is filled with ambiguity. Your success in reading charts will not be as good as these examples suggest. Many academic studies fail to find any value in technical analysis.
Third, the kind of stocks that are recommended can perform very poorly if the market goes through a prolonged drop in valuation (as last occurred from 1973-1975). You will be buying stocks that are trading at enormous multiples. You could experience more sustained losses than Mr. O'Neil suggests in such a changed market environment, if it were to recur.
Fourth, few individuals have the discipline to adopt & follow a philosophy like this over a long enough time period to be successful.
Fifth, if you are curious, it doesn't hurt to look. But remember that over most time periods 90 percent of professional investors do not match the market averages. And they have a lot of advantages you don't have. Be sure to also look at John Bogle's, Common Sense About Mutual Funds, to get the other side of the story.
Having heard the caveats, let me say that Mr. O'Neil's advice is basicallly sound, well articulated, easy to follow, & balanced. It will make good reading for those who want to move toward developing the skills needed to be a self-directed investor in growth stocks being pushed along by earnings & investor momentum.
Good luck with your investments! May they do well regardless of the philosophy you follow!
A classic investment read - By: , 04 Jun 2001 This was one of the best investment books I have read. It's simple concise, it's simply a must for the would be serious private or commercial investor.
This book comes highly recommended for the first time investor who wants an insite into the markets & how to manipulate them for personal gain. It's a book that will be referenced time & time again.
One for the Christmas & birthday list.
