how to make money in stocks book review

A Stock Picker's Guide To William O'Neil's CAN SLIM System

• I review and outline all the elements of William O'Neil's successful book How to Make Money in Stocks.
• I critique O'Neil's general approach and compare it to other investment gurus.
• I set up a screen according to O'Neil's rules and test it to see how well it performs.
• I do much more than just articles at The Stock Evaluator: Members get access to model portfolios, regular updates, a chat room, and more. Get started today »

In 1988, William O’Neil published How to Make Money in Stocks , which has apparently sold over two million copies since then. In this article, I’m going to take a close look at O’Neil’s techniques, philosophy, and system.

O’Neil calls his system CAN SLIM after the first letters of each of its principal seven components. Unfortunately, it sounds more like a diet than an investing system - and indeed, O’Neil’s writing has a lot in common with diet books.

In my opinion, some of O’Neil’s guidelines make no financial sense and could be very harmful to investors, while others are tremendously valuable. At the end of the article, I’m going to create a screen that follows all of his rules and demonstrate why it simply doesn’t work.

O’Neil versus O’Shaughnessy

William O’Neil and James O’Shaughnessy are from very different generations: O’Neil was born in 1933 and O’Shaughnessy in 1960. Both of them have devoted a considerable portion of their lives to examining stocks that outperform the market. But they took very different approaches.

O’Neil made a special study of “superstar stocks” whose prices doubled, tripled, or went even higher. He was interested in finding out what these stocks had in common with each other. O’Shaughnessy, on the other hand, studied the market as a whole, and tried to find factors that effectively classified stocks into potential winners and losers.

These very different approaches had very different results, predictably.

Let’s take betting on horses as an analogy. The O’Neil approach would be to look at winning horses and see what they had in common. The O’Shaughnessy approach would be to classify all possible bets not just according to the characteristics of the horses but according to the betting odds.

The odds in betting are similar to the prices in the stock market. In parimutuel betting, odds are determined purely on the basis of how interested the aggregate bettors are in each horse, just as in the stock market the price is determined purely on the basis of how interested the aggregate investors and traders are in each stock. This, as both O’Neil and O’Shaughnessy recognize, is valuable information indeed.

In looking at horses (and what I write here is purely hypothetical, based on no data at all, and given purely for illustration), O’Neil might have noticed that horses who are likely to win often have odds that have gotten lower in the last few weeks, like a horse whose odds have gone from 4:1 to 5:2. O’Shaughnessy might have noticed that the highest payoffs are on safe, reliable horses with little glamour whose odds are uncharacteristically high - 20:1 or higher. Thus, O’Shaughnessy favors unglamourous stocks that are underpriced, while O’Neil favors stocks that are making new highs; O’Shaughnessy finds that high-growth stocks underperform, while O’Neil finds that they outperform.

But there’s another major difference in their approaches. Before O’Neil even approaches the historical study of a stock, he knows whether it was a winner or loser. He comes to the investigation of stocks armed with foreknowledge. O’Shaughnessy, on the other hand, sets up backtests to test his theories and does his utmost to avoid look-ahead bias . He wants to find factors that will predict whether a stock’s price will rise or fall without knowing the answer in advance.

It’s pretty obvious which approach is more “scientific” and which is more calculated to appeal to a broad audience. The promise of stocks that double or triple in value is easy to sell; the promise of avoiding look-ahead bias will only appeal to the statistically minded investor. That’s why O’Neil’s newsletter, Investors Business Daily , has over 100,000 subscribers who each pay over $400 a year, and why his book has sold over two million copies. O’Shaughnessy’s success, while considerable, pales in comparison.

Chart Patterns

How to Make Money in Stocks (I read the fourth edition, published in 2009) starts with dozens of pages devoted to charts illustrating cup-and-handle patterns; more of these recur throughout the book (the head-and-shoulders pattern also plays a large part). I’m afraid that I personally have no patience with these charts. Each of them shows a pattern and what happened in the days immediately after the pattern. Most of them show a sharp rise in the stock’s price immediately after the pattern comes to an end. This, to me, is all anecdotal evidence, or twenty-twenty hindsight. What about all the stocks that experienced a sharp rise without ever having a cup and handle in their charts? What about all the cups and handles whose price subsequently fell? Could you recognize a cup and handle if it were on the very right side of the chart, before the subsequent rise? Take a hundred random stocks and chart them, stopping on some random date in 2019. How many have cup-and-handle patterns on the right edge of the chart? I’m sure there must be at least four or five. What happened to those stocks after that random 2019 date? Did they all zoom up? Or did some of them take a plunge? Now, take ten random stocks. In each one, go back in time and find a six-month period of great price appreciation. What patterns do you see immediately before that six-month period? Now, go back and time and find a six-month period of great price depreciation. What patterns do you see immediately before that plunge? Is there any real difference?

A large number of academic papers have been written on using chart patterns to predict stock prices, and the near-unanimous conclusion is that they simply don’t work very well. There is practically no statistically significant evidence for them, and it’s not for lack of trying. A typical study, dating from 2017, is Empirical Evaluation of Price-Based Technical Patterns Using Probabilistic Neural Networks , which also includes an overview of previous studies. (The overview, unfortunately, mixes up studies of momentum factors with studies of chart patterns; the former have been shown to work, over and over again.) This particular study “reveals that no pattern produces statistically and economically significant profits for a cross-section of stocks and indices analyzed.” And that’s after the author, Samit Ahlawat, who is very well versed in technical analysis, has carefully identified and studied dozens of different patterns, all of whose results he carefully tabulates in his article.

The C in CAN SLIM

“C = Current Big or Accelerating Quarterly Earnings and Sales per Share.”

O’Neil found that explosive quarterly earnings were the most predictive of all the factors he looked at when he examined what his “superstar stocks” had in common before their huge increases. In doing so, he focused primarily on the growth in quarterly earnings per share over the same quarter the previous year.

In my own research, I have found that this factor - whether you use net income as your basis, or operating income, or EBITDA, or the current quarter’s earnings estimate, or all of them - is indeed a very powerful predictive force when it comes to short-term price gains. Nothing in the CAN SLIM system is, to my mind, more important than this one factor. In fact, of the stocks I currently own, 80% of them sport earnings growth of over 25% by this measure, which is O’Neil’s threshold, and I’ll probably sell most of those that don’t quite soon.

O’Neil also emphasizes the importance of some sales growth and introduces the idea of accelerating growth. Again, he’s right on the money here. If I had to choose one chapter of How to Make Money in Stocks that all short-term investors (those who typically hold stocks for less than a year) should read, I would choose this one.

The A in CAN SLIM

A stands for Annual Earnings Increases. Here, O’Neil argues that we should invest in companies with high annual earnings growth and high return on equity. He also devotes considerable space to attacking the use of the P/E ratio and claiming that stocks with high P/E ratios can be superb bargains.

Below are six bar charts. For each of them, I took one factor and ranked, using Portfolio123, all US stocks with a price greater than $15 (O’Neil recommends limiting your choice to such stocks) on one factor against other stocks in the same sector, with monthly rebalancing, excluding N/As from consideration. (The leftmost bar is the S&P 500.) The left three charts reflect the compounded returns over the last ten years, the right three over the last twenty.

The top row is EPS growth, the most recent quarter compared to the same quarter last year (the C in CAN SLIM). Clearly, the top half of stocks on this measure perform better than the bottom half.

The second row is EPS growth, the most recent trailing twelve months compared to the twelve months before that (the A in CAN SLIM). Clearly, stocks with middling annual EPS growth outperform stocks with high or low annual EPS growth.

The third row is trailing-twelve-month P/E, with lower numbers on the right. While P/E makes absolutely no difference over the last ten years, over the last twenty, low P/E stocks have outperformed high P/E stocks more forcefully than high EPS growth stocks have outperformed low EPS growth stocks.

In short, I don’t believe this chapter offers any useful advice. In fact, limiting yourself to stocks with very high annual growth will exclude many of the stocks most likely to outperform. And I strongly believe that low P/E compared to stocks in the same industry is a valuable factor in deciding what stocks to buy.

The N in CAN SLIM

N stands for new, as in “Newer Companies, New Products, New Management, New Highs off Properly Formed Bases.” As far as new products go, quite a few industries (energy, mining, utilities) are not going to be offering many of those. But O’Neil doesn’t spend much time on such companies, devoting half the chapter to promoting stocks that are making new highs. The following bar charts rank stocks on how close they are to their twelve-month high price.

As you can see, companies that are very close to their twelve-month high price are not primed to outperform.

The S in CAN SLIM

S stands for supply and demand. Here, O’Neil advocates buying companies with low floats - in other words, small companies - because they have much more room to grow than big companies. He also advocates investing in companies that buy back shares. Both of these, in my opinion, are excellent ideas.

The L in CAN SLIM

L stands for Leader or Laggard. One way to tell whether a stock is a leader or a laggard is to use a multifactor ranking system to do so, something that O’Neil hints at when he writes,

“By number one, I don’t mean the largest company or the one with the most recognized brand name. I mean the one with the best quarterly and annual earnings growth, the highest return on equity, the widest profit margins, the strongest sales growth, and the most dynamic stock-price action.”

I’m a firm believer in ranking stocks, and it looks like O’Neil likes to do so as well.

The I in CAN SLIM

I stands for Institutional Sponsorship. O’Neil suggests that winning stocks already have a significant number of institutional investors, and that investors look for stocks that are followed by quality portfolio managers and sport an increasing number of buyers. But he also warns against stocks that are oversubscribed . This is excellent advice: stocks with an increase in institutional holders do better than stocks with a decrease; it’s not a bad idea to avoid stocks with fewer than twenty institutional holders; and it’s very wise to avoid the fifty stocks with the largest percentage of their shares held by institutions.

The M in CAN SLIM

O’Neil argues that if you try hard enough, you can predict the direction of the market as a whole, at least in the short term, so that you know when to buy stocks and when to go to cash. “In your analytical tool kit,” he writes, “you absolutely must have a proven, reliable method to accurately determine whether you’re in a bull (uptrending) market or a bear (downtrending) market.”

This strikes me as a fool’s errand. I’ve written at length on market timing , so I won’t spend time on it here. Suffice it to say that O’Neil offers no sure tips on market timing, instead advising readers to check certain ratings and columns in IBD. Characteristically, IBD published a column on March 31st entitled “ Corona Virus Stock Market Crash: Here’s How to Spot a Market Bottom .” This was eight days after the market bottomed, and IBD was advising investors what to look for. In fact, the biggest one-day percentage gain of the entire year so far was on March 24, the day after the market hit bottom. If you missed that gain because you’d gone to cash, you were probably a victim of the belief that you could time the market. Because I know I can’t time the market, I remained fully invested, lost a third of my money, and then proceeded to more than double what I had left.

In sum, when it comes to CAN SLIM, I like four out of O’Neil’s seven rules: C, S, L, and I.

The Most Dangerous Part of the Book

Right at the beginning of Part II is the most dangerous part of O’Neil’s book: his advocacy of selling any stock you own that goes down in price more than a certain percentage. “ Always, ” O’Neil writes in boldface,“ without Exception, Limit Losses to 7% or 8% of Your Cost .” This is a classic example of anchoring bias and one of the biggest mistakes novice investors make (yes, I made it too when I was a novice investor). Remember: the future price of a stock is completely unrelated to the price you paid for it . The price you paid for it is irrelevant . It’s absolutely worthless information. Never look at the price you paid for a stock when you’re trying to decide whether to sell, hold, or buy more.

“Now hold on,” O’Neil might say. “What I’m talking about is simply smart money management. Cut your losses before they become big.”

But every time you sell a stock, you forego the chance that it’ll rise in price. And if a stock has just fallen in price over the last week or two, it has a better than 50% chance of rising in price over the next week or two (stock prices tend to mean revert over the short term). Not only that, by selling, you are locking in your loss . Is that smart money management?

When to Sell

O’Neil follows this chapter with another on when to sell, which is based on the principle of looking for what he calls “climax tops.” Once again, the pages are full of charts and patterns. The chapter is long and complicated, full of advice like this:

“Sell if a stock closes at the end of the week below a major long-term uptrend line or breaks a key price support area on overwhelming volume. An uptrend line should connect at least three intraday or intraweek price lows occurring over a number of months. Trend lines drawn over too short a time period aren’t valid.”

For the same reasons I dismissed chart patterns earlier, I can’t put my faith in this.

Money Management

O’Neil’s chapter on money management has some good advice in it, but it’s also full of “told-you-so” charts illustrating the falls of Enron and AIG ( AIG ). It’s here that O’Neil finally lays out his rules for what stocks to consider: a minimum price of $15 per share and no OTC or foreign stocks. I can’t understand why he buries these most basic rules at this point in the book.

The 21 Mistakes to Make

O’Neil has a delightful chapter, appropriately the 13th, called “Twenty-One Common Costly Mistakes Most Investors Make.” I’m quite proud to say that in my investing I deliberately make more than half of these 21 “mistakes” every day. Clearly, O’Neil and I are from different investing universes. Here are the “mistakes” I make:

• I stubbornly hold on to my losses (when I have good reason to believe the stock will increase in price).
• I buy on the way down in price. Let’s say I buy a diamond bracelet for $500 and plan to resell it for more. Then, I see an identical bracelet for $400. Why wouldn’t I buy that one too?
• I average down in price. Same as above.
• I don’t learn to use charts.
• I don’t have “specific general market rules to tell when a correction in the market is beginning or when a market decline is over.”
• I fail to “understand the importance of... learning how to use charts to significantly improve selection and timing.”
• I select “second-rate stocks” because of low price/earnings ratios. A lot of my biggest investing successes have been in totally “second-rate stocks.”
• I want “to make a quick and easy buck.” Every day, every week, every month. It’s by making lots of quick and easy bucks that you can compound your winnings.
• I cash in “small, easy-to-take profits” when a stock I hold no longer ranks highly and I “hold the losers” when those losers rank highly.
• I worry “too much” about taxes and commissions (and transaction costs).
• I never transact at the market, placing only limit orders, and spend hours trying to get good fills.

Investing Like a Professional?

When Part III, called “Investing Like a Professional,” rolled around, I was wondering if the book would ever end. The hucksterism begins to get truly wearisome.

“Regardless of your current position in life or your financial standing, it’s clearly possible for you to make your dreams come true using the CAN SLIM system. You may have heard or read about the thousands of individuals who have changed their lives using this book and Investor’s Business Daily . It really happens, and it can happen to you if you are determined and have an overpowering desire, no matter how large or small your account... as long as you make up your mind, work at it, and don’t ever let yourself get discouraged.”

It’s almost like a parody of a self-help book, and a far cry from “investing like a professional.” The professionals I know have no patience with language like this - which is followed by dozens more cup-and-handle stock charts illustrating successful stocks.

Thankfully, there is some more material of value after this. O’Neil wisely advocates investing in industry groups that are leading the market. I think this is such valuable advice that it should have been added to the CAN SLIM system. There’s a lot more in this part; but I think I’m on the verge of exhausting the reader. So, let’s move forward to chapter 20...

The CAN SLIM screen

O’Neil concludes his book with a list of “important rules and guidelines to remember” that summarizes the rest of the book. I have used this list, along with material from the rest of the book, to create a stock screener on Portfolio123, which I used as a basis to simulate O’Neil’s investing system.

Here are the screening rules:

• price greater than $15
• no foreign or OTC stocks
• annual EPS growth greater than 25% each of the last three years
• projected EPS growth greater than 25%
• most recent quarter’s EPS growth (over same quarter last year) greater than 25%
• previous quarter’s EPS growth (ditto) greater than 25%
• most recent quarter’s sales growth (ditto) greater than 25% OR greater than trailing twelve-month (TTM) sales growth (acceleration)
• ROE greater than 17%
• current quarter’s profit margin higher than TTM profit margin
• price closer to the 52-week high than the 52-week low
• relative price strength (as measured by the 52-week price change) in the top 15%
• the number of institutional holders has increased over the last year
• a minimum of twenty institutional holders
• avoid the top fifty stocks most held by institutions
• avoid the 20% of industries with the weakest six-month price gains

But there’s a major problem with this screen: no stocks pass it. If I use FactSet data, only 58 stocks have passed this screen over the last 15 years. (The most recent are Enphase Energy ( ENPH ), Netflix ( NFLX ), Hamilton Lane ( HLNE ), and ServiceNow ( NOW ), all of which passed the screen at one point or another since April.) During the entirety of 2019, only one stock passed the screen - Amazon ( AMZN ) for a couple of weeks in January.

And how do the stocks which do pass the screen fare?

Terribly. If you had bought each of the stocks that passed the screen over the past 15 years and held each for six months, you would lose an average of 6% per stock. If you changed your sell rules so that you sold if the stock went 7.5% below its purchase price or if the most recent TTM EPS change was worse than it was a year ago (both rules that O’Neil strongly advocates), your average return rises to -1.4%, which is still terrible.

CAN SLIM in the Real World

IBD has put a modified version of the CAN SLIM system into practice in an ETF whose ticker is FFTY (Innovator IBD 50 Fund); it holds the top fifty stocks according to IBD’s own criteria and rebalances weekly, with a higher portfolio weight assigned to the top-ranked tickers. The ETF’s performance is nothing to write home about: although it’s up over 6% YTD, it has lagged the S&P 500 over the last year, the last three years, the last five years, and since its inception in April 2015.

AAII has three CAN SLIM screens with different criteria for each. The first has a ten-year annualized performance of 6.3%, the second 10.7%, and the third, which is based on the third edition of How to Make Money in Stocks (I’ve been using the fourth), 23.5%. All of these numbers are out of sample. If you had put an equal amount of money into each of them ten years ago, you would have outperformed the S&P 500 by 2.8% per annum. These screens are very well-designed, but necessarily leave out many of the requirements of CAN SLIM.

The CAN SLIM Antidote

At the same time as I read How to Make Money in Stocks , I also read Mohnish Pabrai’s The Dhando Investor . Pabrai is a follower of Warren Buffett, and in this book, he expounds on the mantra of value investing by using interesting examples of Indian immigrants who have bought businesses and made fortunes on them. It’s a short and quite repetitive book, and his maxims I found too simple to be really useful. But there’s one concept that I think is well expressed and likely to lead to investing success: concentrate on low-risk but high-uncertainty assets.

Many assets are underpriced because of high uncertainty about their prospects. The prospects of a few of these assets can be broken down into, say, a half-dozen possibilities. If each of the possibilities is low-risk (a high margin of safety) and a few of them are high-return, you’ve got yourself a relatively risk-free bargain with massive potential.

I don’t think you could find two immensely successful investors and authors with more opposing viewpoints. Both of their books are easy to read and full of anecdotal evidence, though O’Neil’s book is about four times as long. While it’s not easy to backtest O’Neil, it’s impossible to backtest Pabrai. But my gut tells me he’s right.

My takeaway? There are lots of ways to invest. Learn from the masters, but keep your inner meter on high alert.

My marketplace service, The Stock Evaluator , comprehensively ranks over 5,000 stocks weekly based on a sophisticated multi-factor system with deep roots in accounting and valuation methods. It has a terrific out-of-sample record: since the service began over 2 years ago, high-ranked stocks have consistently outperformed the market while low-ranked stocks have massively underperformed it.

This article was written by

Yuval Taylor is a hedge fund manager, author, and analyst who has been using multifactor ranking systems to buy and sell stocks since 2015. He focuses on microcaps and emphasizes evaluating every stock from as many angles as possible via algorithm. He is the leader of the investing group The Stock Evaluator .

Features of the service include a spreadsheet of nearly 10,000 stocks rated from 0 to 100 weekly and live chat for questions.

Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Seeking Alpha's Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.

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How to Make Money in Stocks: A Winning System In Good Times And Bad, Fourth Edition Paperback – 18 May 2009

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About the author.

William J. O'Neil is primarily an entrepreneur and stockbroker who founded the popular business newspaper, Investor's Business Daily. He was listed as one of the top 100 business news luminaries of the world on 2000 by the TJFR news group. His other books include The Successful Investor: What 80 Million People Need to Know to Invest Profitably and Avoid Big Losses, Business Leaders and Success: 55 Top Business Leaders and How They Achieved Greatness and How to Make Money in Stocks: Desk Diary 2005.

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How to make money in stocks, the mcgraw-hill companies, inc., chapter one, chapter two.

Excerpted from How to Make Money in Stocks by WILLIAM J. O'NEIL Copyright © 2009 by William J. O'Neil. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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How to Make Money in Stocks: A Winning System In Good Times And Bad, Fourth Edition: A Winning System in Good Times or Bad (PERSONAL FINANCE & INVESTMENT) Paperback – 18 May 2009

Written by the acclaimed entrepreneur, William J O'Neil, How to Make Money in Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times and Bad, Fourth Edition is a handy guide that that deals with the stock market and its intricacies. The author of this book has written down the hard-earned knowledge he gained from his own experiences as an investor.

The price charts of winning stocks from the past century have been listed out in the beginning of this book. These charts are supplemented with notes throughout in order to make them more comprehensible to readers. In this book, the author discusses his trademark CAN SLIM method of investing.

The CAN SLIM method put together by the author consists of 7 steps which are aimed at maximising profits. This book imparts valuable information about the times when one needs to cut a loss and the times when one needs to invest and make a profit.

Mutual funds and exchange-traded funds are discussed as well by the author and he provides important tips on the ways to properly approach them while investing. The CAN SLIM method highlighted in this book was formulated by the author after analysing stock market patterns over the last 100 years.

How to Make Money in Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times and Bad, Fourth Edition runs its readers through important investment-related aspects such as an organisation's growth rate, demand and supply, mutual funds, etc. The 4th edition of this book was published by McGraw-Hill Professional in 2009 and is available as a paperback.

• ISBN-10 0071614133
• ISBN-13 978-0071614139
• Edition 4th
• Publisher McGraw-Hill
• Publication date 18 May 2009
• Part of series PERSONAL FINANCE & INVESTMENT
• Language English
• Dimensions 14.22 x 2.29 x 22.61 cm
• Print length 464 pages
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About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., how to make money in stocks, the mcgraw-hill companies, inc., chapter one, chapter two.

Excerpted from How to Make Money in Stocks by WILLIAM J. O'NEIL Copyright © 2009 by William J. O'Neil. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ McGraw-Hill; 4th edition (18 May 2009)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 464 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0071614133
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0071614139
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 14.22 x 2.29 x 22.61 cm
• 10 in Personal Financial Planning
• 13 in Professional Public Finance
• 26 in Financial Retirement Planning

About the authors

William oneil.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

William J. O'Neil

William J. O'Neil is the founder and chairman of Investor's Business Daily. He also founded William O'Neil + Company, a leader in equity market information and data research for more than 400 major institutional money managers worldwide.

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Customers find the book highly informative with plain and simple common sense investing. They also say it's easy to read, but not an idiot's guide.

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Customers find the book highly informative, with plain and simple common sense investing. They also appreciate the concepts, real-world examples, and case studies. Readers also mention that the investment content is very good and fully backed up with long-term research. They mention that it shows charts with trends in the stock market and lots of graphs as examples.

"...O'Neil's approach is methodical and well-researched . He presents a clear, actionable system that demystifies the complexities of the stock market...." Read more

"...common mistakes investors make' is lucid and forceful, and aimed at all investors regardless of their level of experience. Strongly recommended." Read more

"...This book will present a good idea but its a gift for you so that you get enticed and perhaps buy the IBD membership later." Read more

"Excellent book, concepts , and Real life examples...." Read more

Customers find the book quite easy to read, straightforward, and printed nicely. They also say it's well written and easy to pick a watchlist from patterns.

"...The CAN SLIM strategy he outlines is easy to understand and implement , making it accessible for both beginners and seasoned investors...." Read more

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How to Make Money in Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times and Bad, Fourth Edition: A Winning System in Good Times or Bad Paperback – 8 June 2009

Anyone can learn to invest wisely with this bestselling investment system!

Through every type of market, William J. O’Neil’s national bestseller, How to Make Money in Stocks , has shown over 2 million investors the secrets to building wealth. O’Neil’s powerful CAN SLIM® Investing System―a proven 7-step process for minimizing risk and maximizing gains―has influenced generations of investors.

• Proven techniques for finding winning stocks before they make big price gains
• Tips on picking the best stocks, mutual funds, and ETFs to maximize your gains

PLUS strategies to help you avoid the 21 most common investor mistakes!

“ Investor’s Business Daily has provided a quarter-century of great financial journalism and investing strategies.” ―David Callaway, editor-in-chief, MarketWatch

“ How to Make Money in Stocks is a classic. Any investor serious about making money in the market ought to read it.” ―Larry Kudlow, host, CNBC’s "The Kudlow Report"

• Print length 464 pages
• Language English
• Publication date 8 June 2009
• ISBN-10 0071614133
• ISBN-13 978-0071614139
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Stock Market Highlights, Sept 02: Markets post record close; Sensex tops 82,550, Nifty near 25,300

Stock market highlights: 27 out of 50 constituent stocks of nifty50 ended higher, with gains led by bajaj finserv, bajaj finance, hcl tech, hero motocorp, and sbi life insurance.

Rupee Update on Monday :: Rupee ended 5 paise weaker vs US dollar today

Stock Market Closing Bell LIVE Updates :: BSE MidCap, SmallCap indices end in red

Stock Market Closing Bell LIVE Updates :: IT, FMCG, PSU Bank indices rise

Stock Market Closing Bell LIVE Updates :: Bajaj twins lead rally, TaMo, M&M, Airtel weigh

Stock Market Closing Bell LIVE Updates :: Nifty ends range-bound session below 25,300

Stock market closing bell :: sensex ends with near 200-point gain.

Stock Market LIVE Updates: Premier Energy IPO listing prediction: Will strong GMP fuel 100% returns?

Stock market live updates: agri-tech (india) announces the schedule its next agm, stock market live updates: gujarat state petronet rebounds 13% on heavy volumes; zooms 47% in 11 days, stock market live updates: bajaj finance, bajaj finserv lead gains on the nifty50.

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Stock market live updates: the anup engg stock rises 4%, hits 52-week high on pact with graham corp, stock market live updates: sensex, nifty trade marginally higher, stock market live updates: nomura lowers its fy25 economic growth forecast for india to 6.7%.

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Money blog: Oasis resale U-turn as official reseller lowers fee amid criticism

The Money blog is your place for consumer and personal finance news and tips. Today's posts include Twickets lowering fees for Oasis tickets, the extension of the Household Support Fund and O2 Priority axing free Greggs. Listen to a Daily podcast on the Oasis ticket troubles as you scroll.

Monday 2 September 2024 19:00, UK

• Oasis resale U-turn as Twickets lowers fee after criticism
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Twickets has announced it is lowering its charges after some Oasis fans had to pay more than £100 in extra fees to buy official resale tickets.

The site is where the band themselves is directing people to buy second-hand tickets for face value - having warned people against unofficial third party sellers like StubHub and Viagogo.

One person branded the extra fees "ridiculous" (see more in 10.10 post), after many people had already been left disappointed at the weekend when Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing pushed tickets up by three times the original advertised fee.

Twickets said earlier that it typically charged a fee of 10-15% of the face value of the tickets.

But it has since said it will lower the charge due to "exceptional demand" from Oasis fans - taking ownership of an issue in a way fans will hope others follow. 

Richard Davies, Twickets founder, told the Money blog: "Due to the exceptional demand for the Oasis tour in 2025, Twickets have taken the decision to lower our booking fee to 10% and a 1% transactional fee (to cover bank charges) for all buyers of their tickets on our platform. In addition we have introduced a fee cap of £25 per ticket for these shows. Sellers of tickets already sell free of any Twickets charge.

"This ensures that Twickets remains hugely competitive against the secondary market, including sites such as Viagogo, Gigsberg and StubHub.

"Not only do these platforms inflate ticket prices way beyond their original face value but they also charge excessive booking fees, usually in the region of 30-40%. Twickets by comparison charges an average fee of around 12.5%"

The fee cap, which the Money blog understands is being implemented today, will apply to anyone who has already bought resale tickets through the site.

Mr Davies said Twickets was a "fan first" resale site and a "safe and affordable place" for people to trade unwanted tickets.

"The face value of a ticket is the total amount it was first purchased for, including any booking fee. Twickets does not set the face value price, that is determined by the event and the original ticketing company. The price listed on our platform is set by the seller, however no one is permitted to sell above the face-value on Twickets, and every ticket is checked before listing that it complies with this policy," he said.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people have complained to the regulator about how Oasis tickets were advertised ahead of going on sale. 

The Advertising Standards Authority said it had received 450 complaints about Ticketmaster adverts for the gigs.

Some  expressed their anger on social media , as tickets worth £148 were being sold for £355 on the site within hours of release, due to the "dynamic pricing" systems.

A spokesperson from ASA said the complainants argue that the adverts made "misleading claims about availability and pricing".

They added: "We're carefully assessing these complaints and, as such, can't comment any further at this time.

"To emphasise, we are not currently investigating these ads."

Ticketmaster said it does not set prices and its website says this is down to the "event organiser" who "has priced these tickets according to their market value".

Despite traditionally being an affordable staple of British cuisine, the average price for a portion of fish and chips has risen by more than 50% in the past five years to nearly £10, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Sonny and Shane "the codfather" Lee told Sky News of the challenges that owning J-Henry's Fish and Chip Shop brings and why prices have skyrocketed. 

"Potatoes, fish, utilities, cooking oil - so many things [are going up]," he said. 

Shane also said that he is used to one thing at a time increasing in price, but the outlook today sees multiple costs going up all at once.  

"Potatoes [were] priced right up to about £25 a bag - the previous year it was about £10 a bag," Sonny said, noting a bad harvest last year. 

He said the business had tried hake as a cheaper fish option, but that consumers continued to prefer the more traditional, but expensive, cod and haddock. 

"It's hard and we can we can absorb the cost to a certain extent, but some of it has to be passed on," Shane added. 

After a long Saturday for millions of Oasis fans in online queues, the culture secretary says surge pricing - which pushed the price of some tickets up by three times their original advertised value to nearly £400 - will be part of the government's review of the ticket market. 

On today's episode of the Daily podcast, host Niall Paterson speaks to secondary ticketing site Viagogo. While it wasn’t part of dynamic pricing, it has offered resale tickets for thousands of pounds since Saturday. 

Matt Drew from the company accepts the industry needs a full review, while Adam Webb, from the campaign group FanFair Alliance, explains the changes it would like to see.

We've covered the fallout of the Oasis sale extensively in the Money blog today - see the culture secretary's comments on the "utterly depressing" inflated pricing in our post at 6.37am, and Twickets, the official Oasis resale site, slammed by angry fans for its "ridiculous" added fees at 10.10am.

The growing backlash culminated in action from Twickets - the company said it would lower its charges after some fans had to pay more than £100 in extra fees for resale tickets (see post at 15.47).

Tap here to follow the Daily podcast - 20 minutes on the biggest stories every day

Last week we reported that employers will have to offer flexible working hours - including a four-day week - to all workers under new government plans.

To receive their full pay, employees would still have to work their full hours but compressed into a shorter working week - something some workplaces already do.

Currently, employees can request flexible hours as soon as they start at a company but employers are not legally obliged to agree.

The Labour government now wants to make it so employers have to offer flexible hours from day one, except where it is "not reasonably feasible".

You can read more of the details in this report by our politics team:

But what does the public think about this? We asked our followers on LinkedIn to give their thoughts in an unofficial poll.

It revealed that the overwhelming majority of people support the idea to compress the normal week's hours into fewer days - some 83% of followers said they'd choose this option over a standard five-day week.

But despite the poll showing a clear preference for a compressed week, our followers appeared divided in the comments.

"There's going to be a huge brain-drain as people move away from companies who refuse to adapt with the times and implement a 4 working week. This will be a HUGE carrot for many orgs," said Paul Burrows, principal software solutions manager at Reality Capture.

Louise McCudden, head of external affairs at MSI Reproductive Choices, said she wasn't surprised at the amount of people choosing longer hours over fewer days as "a lot of people" are working extra hours on a regular basis anyway.

But illustrator and administrative professional Leslie McGregor noted the plan wouldn't be possible in "quite a few industries and quite a few roles, especially jobs that are customer centric and require 'round the clock service' and are heavily reliant upon people in trades, maintenance, supply and transport". 

"Very wishful thinking," she said.

Paul Williamson had a similar view. He said: "I'd love to know how any customer first service business is going to manage this."

We reported earlier that anyone with O2 Priority will have their free weekly Greggs treats replaced by £1 monthly Greggs treats - see 6.21am post.

But did you know there are loads of other ways to get food from the nation's most popular takeaway for free or at a discount?

Downloading the Greggs app is a good place to start - as the bakery lists freebies, discounts and special offers there regularly. 

New users also get rewards just for signing up, so it's worth checking out. 

And there's a digital loyalty card which you can add virtual "stamps" to with each purchase to unlock discounts or other freebies.  

Vodafone rewards

Seriously begrudged Virgin Media O2 customers may want to consider switching providers. 

The Vodafone Rewards app, VeryMe, sometimes gives away free Greggs coffees, sausage rolls, sweet treats and more to customers.

Monzo bank account holders can grab a sausage roll (regular or vegan), regular sized hot drink, doughnut or muffin every week. 

Birthday cake

Again, you'll need the Greggs award app for this one - which will allow you to claim one free cupcake, cream cake or doughnut for your birthday each year.

Octopus customers

Octopus Energy customers with smart meters can claim one free drink each week, in-store from Greggs (or Caffè Nero).

The Greggs freebie must be a regular size hot drink.

Make new friends

If you're outgoing (and hungry), it may be worth befriending a Greggs staff member.

The staff discount at Greggs is 50% on own-produced goods and 25% off branded products. 

If you aren't already aware, Iceland offers four Greggs sausage rolls in a multi-pack for £3. 

That means, if you're happy to bake it yourself, you'll only be paying 74p per sausage roll. 

Millions of Britons could receive extra cash to help with the cost of living this winter after the government extended the Household Support Fund.

A £421m pot will be given to local councils in England to distribute, while £79m will go to the devolved administrations.

The fund will now be available until April 2025 having been due to run out this autumn.

Councils decide how to dish out their share of the fund but it's often via cash grants or vouchers.

Many councils also use the cash to work with local charities and community groups to provide residents with key appliances, school uniforms, cookery classes and items to improve energy efficiency in the home.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves said: "The £22bn blackhole inherited from the previous governments means we have to take tough decisions to fix the foundations of our economy.

"But extending the Household Support Fund is the right thing to do - provide targeted support for those who need it most as we head into the winter months."

The government has been criticised for withdrawing universal winter fuel payments for pensioners of up to £300 this winter - with people now needing to be in receipt of certain means-tested benefits to qualify.

People should contact their local council for details on how to apply for the Household Support Fund - they can find their council  here .

Lloyds Bank app appears to have gone down for many, with users unable to see their transactions. 

Down Detector, which monitors site outages, has seen more than 600 reports this morning.

It appears to be affecting online banking as well as the app.

There have been some suggestions the apparent issue could be due to an update.

Another disgruntled user said: "Absolutely disgusting!! I have an important payment to make and my banking is down. There was no warning given prior to this? Is it a regular maintenance? Impossible to get hold of someone to find out."

A Lloyds Bank spokesperson told Sky News: "We know some of our customers are having issues viewing their recent transactions and our app may be running slower than usual.

"We're sorry about this and we're working to have everything back to normal soon."

We had anger of unofficial resale prices, then Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing - and now fees on the official resale website are causing consternation among Oasis fans.

The band has encouraged anyone wanting resale tickets to buy them at face value from Ticketmaster or Twickets - after some appeared for £6,000 or more on other sites.

"Tickets appearing on other secondary ticketing sites are either counterfeit or will be cancelled by the promoters," Oasis said.

With that in mind, fans flocked to buy resale tickets from the sites mentioned above - only to find further fees are being added on. 

Mainly Oasis, a fan page, shared one image showing a Twickets fee for two tickets as high as £138.74. 

"Selling the in demand tickets completely goes against the whole point of their company too… never mind adding a ridiculous fee on top of that," the page shared. 

Fan Brad Mains shared a photo showing two tickets priced at £337.50 each (face value of around £150, but increased due to dynamic pricing on Saturday) - supplemented by a £101.24 Twickets fee. 

That left him with a grand total of £776.24 to pay for two tickets.

"Actually ridiculous this," he  said on X .

"Ticketmaster inflated price then sold for 'face value' on Twickets with a £100 fee. 2 x £150 face value tickets for £776, [this] should be illegal," he added. 

Twickets typically charges between 10-15% of the ticket value as its own fee. 

We have approached the company for comment.

Separately, the government is now looking at the practice of dynamic pricing - and we've had a response to that from the Competition and Markets Authority this morning.

It said: "We want fans to get a fair deal when they go to buy tickets on the secondary market and have already taken action against major resale websites to ensure consumer law is being followed properly. 

"But we think more protections are needed for consumers here, so it is positive that the government wants to address this. We now look forward to working with them to get the best outcomes for fans and fair-playing businesses."

Consumer protection law does not ban dynamic pricing and it is a widely used practice. However, the law also states that businesses should not mislead consumers about the price they must pay for a product, either by providing false or deceptive information or by leaving out important information or providing it too late.

By James Sillars , business reporter

It's a false start to the end of the summer holidays in the City.

While London is mostly back at work, trading is fairly subdued due to the US Labor (that's labour, as in work) Day holiday.

US markets will not open again until Tuesday.

There's little direction across Europe with the FTSE 100 trading nine points down at 8,365.

Leading the gainers was Rightmove - up 24%. The property search website is the subject of a possible cash and shares takeover offer by Australian rival REA.

The company is a division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

One other point to note is the continuing fluctuation in oil prices.

Brent crude is 0.7% down at the start of the week at $76.

Dragging the cost lower is further evidence of weaker demand in China.

Australia's REA Group is considering a takeover of Rightmove, in a deal which could be worth about £4.36bn.

REA Group said in a statement this morning there are "clear similarities" between the companies, which have "highly aligned cultural values".

Rightmove is the UK's largest online property portal, while REA is Australia's largest property website. 

It employs more than 2,800 people and is majority-owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp,.

REA Group said: "REA sees a transformational opportunity to apply its globally leading capabilities and expertise to enhance customer and consumer value across the combined portfolio, and to create a global and diversified digital property company, with number one positions in Australia and the UK.

"There can be no certainty that an offer will be made, nor as to the terms on which any offer may be made."

Rightmove has been approached for comment.

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