How To Make Money In Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times or Bad, 3rd Edition Paperback – May 23, 2002

Just needed stock investing guide and this book provided very useful information. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to trade stocks!

It has been 3 years. I started with one system and lost a few thousand (though that is small for your big mouth traders-but this is large for me on a very strick fix budget and low income). I recieved the "24 Lessons to successful investing"-by O'Neil when I subscribed to the 2 weeks of his paper...it opened my eyes to a world I longed to know and knew little about. It encouraged me greatly. I recommend if you have not a clue about the market. Start with that book. Then I read the 2n Edition to "How to Make Money in Stocks", and I was encouraged further. In the market you need patience, and also as a little person with no experience and no "inside" information, I was encouraged to go out there and find it. But I was still lost. I research further and read it a second and third time. Though I understand and knew what he was talking about, I was not getting the process down packed of how the markets work and think. But what I was doing was NOT loosing money either. I thought that was a great sign.Then I bought the 3rd Edition and there it all fell together. His 3rd edition put more clarity to what I had learned from the 2rd edition. I truly feel the 3rd one is nicely polished an more clear with specific details on reading charts and distiguishing up and down markets. When to be in it to win it and when to be out with no doubt. Plus he added color as he did with his newspaper recently.As a person with no experience to the market this exposed me to a more simple process of understanding it. There is so much mis guided information out there, you can loose plenty of money in the process. BE CAREFUL. I am not a long term investor of mutual funds...just toss your money to a fund or money manager or 401k and work ...for the rest of your life-No No. I want results and control. This should fully get you started.In the market you should keep it simple. Too much information causes doubt-remember that. Having information on the market can be overwelming. KISS-(Keep it simple stupid). Once you have a solid foundation of understanding, then you can experience other things and expose yourself to more ideas. But you need to get started simple first.You will not see results right away, but hopefully mentally you will understand your flaws of what your doing wrong. So many people are stuck on the tradition of the market. Don't follow tradition. Be flexible and think what works and geer your skills to it. There is not just one way of trading, but this book will point you to many ways. Just remember to be simple and expose yourself to the experience. Once you get yourself started with an account, do not buy large, test and start small. Test your knowledge and your judgement of your research and information. Is it right or wrong?There is so much to gain out there, but tradition, sell high, buy low...in it for the long run, options are better...no no ... too complicated and to long too wait, and how can you sell high if you do not know where the low is? You have not clue.His paper is also fantastic. Simple and too the point. And yes he does promote it in the book, but he teaches you how to gather information as well getting other ideas of the market, and has a vast amount of information on reading charts and finding information on stocks "Investors Corner".The website...is also a great place to start as well, some articles from the paper and free "Investors Corners" info. Plus there is a "Ask IBD", if you have any of your own questions as you study to learn more of this complex Market.I know how fustrating it can be out there, but start here then move on to other books-because you would have already established a foundation and structure to be more judgemental and controling of your money and your future. Success doesn't happen over nite. It takes time and study and testing. But here is the first step to that thousand mile journey.Success-Don't just buy it...Use it. And keep it simple.

The CANSLIM system described in this book really works. However, there are limitations as others have pointed out. Be prepared for the following, or you may not be happy with this book:- It takes time to learn the system, and you must be constantly watching to market for this to work (or make sure you have limit orders in to protect yourself if you do not watch things daily). This is not a system that you can spend an hour a month on. It will require a few hours a week, at a bare minimum.- To truly learn and improve on this system, you will likely need to subscribe to Investor's Business Daily (IBD), and spend time reading it. While it is possible to do a lot of this research without IBD, it would take a lot of time.- The system applies to bull markets. While you can apply it in bear markets, there are a lot of warnings about it.If you are committed to spending the time (and money to subscribe to IBD), this is a good system. If you are a passive investor, or cannot commit the time, this is not for you.

I have read many books on investing, and this one is, all things considered, the best. It has it's weaknesses--the section on technical analysis is inadequate, and the numerous signs by which one can supposedly tell when a stock is topping out are simply too vague to be be followed. Nevertheless, the system does work. Though retrospective (and therefore subject to the charge of data mining), O'Neil's 40 year database has identified numerous factors associated with stocks that are likely to go up. James O'Shaughnessy, in What Works on Wall Street, has performed a similar study, and has found roughly similar results, the main difference between the two being that O'Shaugnessy's data supports the idea that a low p/e stock is more likely to be successful, while O'Neil discounts the influence of p/e. No matter. Both have confirmed that a stock that has been going up is likely to continue going up. Relative strength counts. In addition, O'Neil's insistence on cutting your losses while they are still small is perhaps the single most important lesson an aspiring millionaire can learn. About two years ago, I was telling a colleague of mine that I felt lucky to have sold Cisco, Juniper and Sun for small losses. His comment was an amazed, "You mean you locked in a loss?" A few days ago, I made a similar comment to him, figuring that he had probably forgotten our earlier discussion. This time, he listened attentively, smiled sadly, and nodded. The many Amazon reviews which regard the book as an advertisement for Investor's Business Daily do have a point. However, there are many free search engines (stockpoint.com, marketguide.com) with which one can identify stocks satisfying the CANSLIM criteria. Similarly, there are a number of free online charting sites (clearstation.com, bigcharts.com) which give much of the same information as O'Neil's proprietary charting service. I've lost money the past few years, but I haven't lost much, thanks to the fact that I've been mostly in cash, which puts me way ahead of most professionals. William O'Neil gives very, very good advice.