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186 HOW TO MAKE MONEY IN STOCKS SUCCESS STORIES

A grandmaster is one who has achieved the highest level. In the investing world,
Bill O’Neil is a legendary trader and one of the most successful investors of
all time. But what sets him apart from some of history’s greatest traders is his
dedication to teaching and helping other investors.

William J. O’Neil

The Man
Layers of complexity are often found in highly successful people. Bill is a man
who is not easily defined, whose work ethic was developed at an early age. He
came from a modest background and always held down part-time jobs.
Whether it was delivering the newspaper or working in the produce section of
a local grocery store, Bill O’Neil has worked very hard most of his life.
He is also an intensely private man, somewhat reserved and modest, but
compelled to help other people, even if this puts him in the limelight. Bill
scoffs at the notion that he is anything other than a regular guy and is
uncomfortable with too many compliments.
His simplicity, sense of humor, and down to earth attitude can be
observed by his choices in watches; he often wears a Mickey Mouse watch
when he speaks in front of an audience and needs to keep track of the time.
In other somewhat amusing instances when he has forgotten his watch, Bill
will borrow other people’s watches and lay them on the podium to help him
keep track of time. Bill has often inadvertently put several of these watches
in his pocket and forgotten about them after he finishes speaking. IBD
National Speaker Justin Nielsen works with Bill on special projects and has
had to hunt down many “borrowed watches” from Bill and return them to
their rightful owners before they go through the wash cycle.
But underneath Bill’s unassuming nature is a fiercely driven man. In
1958, Bill started his career as a stock broker at Hayden, Stone & Company
after a tour in the U.S. Air Force and college.
In 1960, Bill was accepted to Harvard Business School’s first Program for
Management Development (PMD).
Determined to succeed, Bill studied the greatest stock traders of all time:
Gerald Loeb, Bernard Baruch, Jesse Livermore, and Nicolas Darvas. As a
young stock broker, Bill also studied Jack Dreyfus, who, at the time, was
outperforming all of the other funds. Jack was a great bridge player and had
a sharp mind that Bill admired, so Bill sent away for the Dreyfus prospec-