Page 1000 - How to Make Money in Stocks Trilogy

• I N T RODUC T ION •

What’s the Difference Between Getting Started
and Bill O’Neil’s How to Make Money in Stocks? . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

What You’ll Learn in Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
How to Get the Most Out of This Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiv

Start Right with 3 Must-Do Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv

This is a book about taking action. About taking specific steps to get started
on your path to making more money in the stock market.
Let me start with a little story about my own journey...
Before I began investing in the mid-1990s, I read several books about the
market. They were definitely helpful in terms of deciding what to buy.
It wasn’t until later I realized something was missing.
They didn’t address the other—equally important—pieces of the puzzle:
When to buy and when to sell.
But at the time, I was making money. And when you’re making money,
who needs sell rules?!
The rise of personal computers, the Internet and cell phones had
launched an explosive bull market, and I was making 35% one year, 40%
another. Like millions of other investors, my “strategy” was basically to buy
and just hold on for the glorious ride.
But in reality, I was blissfully unaware of my own ignorance.
I didn’t know that in a bull market, the vast majority of all stocks go up.
So while I may have thought my gains were due to my newfound investing
genius, I was actually just getting lucky. It was pure coincidence that I hap-
pened to buy at the right time. In fact, I had no idea there even was a “right”
and “wrong” time to invest.
And that led to my next rather painful epiphany: I had no sell rules. When
the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, I had no clue what to do because I didn’t
understand how market cycles work. I didn’t realize my primary goal should

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