This book will help investors navigate
By Dave Kamm • Special to news-press.com • August 1, 2010
What's the economic climate expected for the third period of 2010? What's the stock market outlook for the remainder of 2010 and 2011? How about a view of the bond market? The answer to all three inquiries is Beluthahatchee — a Miccosukee term for "dark water."
I often peruse shelves at the book superstores for the latest investment and business books. When the stock market is hot the printing presses run three shifts, but now they are less active. The past few months I didn't find a compelling new investment book that fell into the "must get" category.
Under that circumstance, I check books that are already in my personal library.
For about a decade, starting in 1978, Bill O'Neil traveled the country giving seminars in an effort to gain subscribers for his newspaper and chart services. He visited Florida often and I made many long drives to hear him. Each time the subject matter was the same - making money in stocks.
In the 1980s, Bill wrote a book titled "How to Make Money in Stocks." Five years ago he published a book titled "How to Make Money Selling Stocks Short" - a treatise on how to recognize a huge winner when you own one, and what the end of the run looked like for some of the most famous winners in market history.
O'Neil starts with baby steps and develops the tools into a cohesive market strategy. Of the 200 pages, some 147 are annotated picture examples of good times to sell. If you enjoy learning from visual inputs, this book is your cup of tea.
The ideas and examples presented do not yield a buy-sell checklist, but a note pad will soon be filled by the reader. All technical indicators demand some artistic interpretation, but O'Neil gives many examples to guide us and reduce the amount of subjectivity required.
Two major mistakes investors often make are not selling a stock that has performed well, and buying a stock that "looks cheap" because it's way below the previous high. The title "How to Make Money Selling Stocks Short" may better be titled "How to avoid decimating your portfolio".
If capital gains are one of your goals and if a picture is worth 1,000 words, then the O'Neil book is worth thousands, more than the $20 asking price.
— Dave Kamm is an investment adviser representative with Raymond James & Associates Inc. Member New York Stock Exchange/SIPC. The foregoing material does not provide a complete description of the security, markets or developments mentioned.
from the news-press.com published on August 1, 2010