Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard: How to Achieve Super Performance in Stocks in Any Market Hardcover – April 11, 2013

This was a good read for sound advice on a particular trading strategy. I took 7 pages of hand-written notes and I have been trading for 3 years with some serious professional education. Some points: specialize in a particular trading style; buy on the uptrend, not hoping for a bounce off the bottom; 5-point Specific Entry Point Analysis, which mixes fundamentals (earnings, revenue, new products/services, relative strength) with chart analysis (technicals; cup and handle, high tight flag), good description of the 4 stages of a stock cycle (always trade in stage 2); the fallacy of P/E (quality stocks cost more to buy so have higher P/E); some risk management, but read Think and Trade Like a Champion for that and position sizing. "Think and Trade" will be a very quick read if you read them back-to-back as 80% is a review/copy of the first book but not as much fundamentals background (both worth reading). I like and agree with most of the content. I don't agree with the trailing stop loss placement advice as there is scant mention of support/resistance technical analysis. I also don't agree with who he thinks are the market participants for a a certain given volume, which is important to know who you are trading with. For example, a 500% spike in volume is not buy-side institutions (BlackRock, Fidelity, Vanguard) as is taught in this book. But I like the discussion about retail trying to get back to break even and how volume drops off before a breakout (shakeout and supply/demand). Also, MACD might be overused by retail and laggy to be of use anymore for entry/exit signals.

This book is perfect for someone at my level of investing: I love it, and am actually a professional artist with a physics degree (don't ask), and I've always "dabbled" in stocks ever since my Aunt Lydia showed me how to set up a brokerage account in the 80's. But I always felt guilty about making money from it, due to some Puritan background issues, so that wasn't my goal, until now. I actually need to send my children to college, and that requires more than what I make as an artist, so I have motivation to increase my capital by 1000% (unfortunately, that's how much college education costs). Anyway, the Investors Business Daily, a fantastic newspaper, has helped me enormously, as well as How to Make Money in Stocks. However, I find I fall asleep when I read that book. And I have only made it to 1968 in their stock charts. And then I signed up for MarketSmith, a wonderful graphs and tutorial program associated with the IBD, in January 2020. And I made a trade with AMD, oh, and Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Iphi, Now, that raised my portolio by 40%, which was encouraging. But I still felt clueless. I also really have emotional trouble dropping losers quickly enough. So, when Marketsmith hosted Mark Minervini on their weekly chat, I was drawn to his organized approach to stocks. Also, he was extremely concrete about numbers, about recommendations, about the big picture (which is something I find blurry), and he recommended Walmart, an unexpected one (I didn't buy it though, cannot stand shopping at Walmart). And I then followed him on Twitter, and saw that he's teaching a workshop in November, online. Well, due to the pandemic, I have no weddings to paint in November. Normally I'd be very busy, so I figure I'll spend 5000$ on the class (that is a very small percentage of my gains at this point), and I asked the Marketsmith people what I need to do to prepare. They told me to read Mark's books. I dreaded this, because the How to Make Money in Stocks puts me to sleep (literally), and I used to try to read Warren Buffet's mentor's book about Interpreting Balance Sheets, and I could never quite finish Lefevre's book (which I know is very important to get through). But I bought the books a few days ago on Amazon, they arrived this weekend, and I am already over halfway done with the first one. And it's great. It's written so clearly. It contains many of the same concepts as William O Neil's book, but it's as if William O Neil assumed his readers have all been to Harvard Business School, and Mark writes for people like me: intelligent, curious, yet unfamiliar with net profit margin (net makes me think of fishing). So, I heartily recommend this book. Also, I have made so many mistakes, lost a lot of money along the way, and he covers so many of the errors that I consistently make. And it's very concrete. The Earnings Surprise, for example. I recently experienced that with Fortinet, very sad. And I had noticed it with Adobe last year, and didn't understand it, and it happened with Chegg (got faked out by it). That alone is worth the book. Hopefully I will finish reading it today, then I can start on the next one, and then I'll sign up for his class. I feel extremely lucky to have the opportunity to take a class from such a brilliant person.

I'll start this off by saying that I'm in no way affiliated with Mr. Minervini. I'm just a Soldier and small-time individual stock trader trying to get my trading on the right track. I preordered this book as soon as it was available to do so. I mean...this is Mark Minervini, a trader of Market Wizards legend. After reading everything I could find on the internet about him, I jumped at the chance to hear what he had to say in a book, especially given the fact that I don't have the time or money to attend his live seminars or subscribe to his website. In Market Wizards, it was like pulling teeth to get Mr. Minervini to reveal any specifics of his trading, so I obviously was ecstatic that he was revealing the SEPA methodology in this book. As soon as the book arrived, I read it from cover to cover in a few hours. After one read, I could tell this was a work that I would reference again and again. The sections on following the leaders, chart reading and risk management are among the best lessons on trading I've ever read.In the last 10+ years of trading, I've literally read hundreds of books on trading and I've spend thousands of hours researching and studying charts. I have shelves and shelves of trading books, not to mention all the courses, DVDs, PDFs, and Kindle books I've collected on trading. While most of these things I've read aren't worth a second look, I would put Trade Like A Stock Market Wizard in the top five books on the market. I read this book no less than once a month in its entirety and specific sections several times a week. I have two hard copies so I can highlight and I have a Kindle edition of the book. Mark covers so many critical aspects of trading that I'm constantly cross-checking what I'm doing against what he's saying.To say that his methods have turned my trading around is an understatement. I went from blowing my account out three times and spending thousands of dollars and countless hours looking for the mythical Holy Grail to doubling my account in the six months since I received this book. Some might say that it's dumb luck, but this is the first time I've ever felt in control of my trading. Mark put his methodology out there in such a clear and concise manner that it instantly clicked and I was immediately able to implement the methods into my own trading. It was like I was finally able to put all the pieces together and string a bunch of good trades together while controlling my risk. I'm becoming more and more a master of hitting singles and doubles, instead of my normal tendency to swing for the homerun. My main objective is to gain a multiple of my risk and do it over and over again, just like Mark teaches.While this book might not be for everyone, I think that anyone reading this book can come away with a solid understanding of a method that has stood the test of many bull and bear markets. It has certainly made a significant impact on my trading and given me a feeling of control over the last 6 months and 30+ trades that I've never felt before. Thanks, Mark. I'm eagerly awaiting book number 2!!