William J ONeil wrote the book called 'How to make money in stocks' (see our education page), it has sold several millions of copies. He is listed as one of Investopedia.com greatest investors.

Here is bio.

Bill O'Neil majored in business administration at Southern Methodist University, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1955. After military service, he started his career as a stockbroker with Hayden, Stone & Company in 1958, and developed an investment strategy (CANSLIM), which made him the highest performing broker in his firm. His professional and financial successes lead him to form a brokerage firm, the William O'Neil & Co., Inc, in 1963. At 30 years old, he became the youngest person to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.

In 1983, he founded a national financial daily newspaper called Investor's Daily, which became the Investor's Business Daily in 1991. As of 2007, he serves as CEO of William O'Neil & Co., is the chairman and publisher of the Investor's Business Daily, and lectures and writes on investment topics nationwide.

Investment Style

O'Neil blends a mixture of quantitative and qualitative strategies in his performance-oriented investing approach. In brief, his investment style is to seek out only those growth stocks that have the greatest potential for swift price rises from the moment they are purchased.

Essentially, Bill O'Neil's motto is "buy the strong, sell the weak." His criteria for identifying a stock that's about to head for the stratosphere are summarized in his well-known acronym CANSLIM:

C - Current quarterly earnings per share have increased sharply from the same quarters' earnings reported in the prior year (at least 25%).

A - Annual earnings increases at a compound rate of no less than 25% (P/E is unimportant - probably in the range of 20 to 45 with these stocks) annually over the last five years.

N - New products, new management, and new highs. Stocks with a good "story."

S - Supply and demand. The less stock available, the more buying will drive up the price. Look for stocks with 10 to 12 million shares outstanding.

L - Leaders and laggards. Stick with those stocks that outperform and shed those that under perform.

I - Institutional ownership. Favor companies that are "under owned" by the top professional investors. (For related reading, see Institutional Investors And Fundamentals: What's The Link?)

M - Market direction. Buy stocks on major downturns, but avoid purchases after a decline of 10% or more gets underway.

William ONeil is a Jack Dreyfus (1913-2009) fan. In William ONeil book he states..

Jack Dreyfus was a chartist and a tape reader. He bought all his stocks based on market action, and only when the price broke to new highs off sound chart patterns. He was also beating the pants off every competitor who ignored the real-world facts of market behavior (supply and demand) and depended only on fundamental, analytical personal opinions.

Jack's research department in those early, big-performance days consisted of three young Turks who posted the day's price and volume action of hundreds of listed stocks to very oversized charts. I saw these charts one day when I visited Dreyfus's headquarters in New York.

Shortly thereafter, two small funds run by Fidelity in Boston started doing the same thing. They, too, produced superior results. One was managed by Ned Johnson, Jr., and the other by Jerry Tsai. Almost all the stocks that the Dreyfus and Fidelity funds bought also had strong increases in their quarterly earnings reports.

So the first buy rules I made in 1960 were as follows:

1. Concentrate on listed stocks that sell in excess of $20 a share with at least some institutional acceptance.

2. Insist that the company show increases in earnings per share in each one of the past five years and that the current quarterly earnings are up at least 20 percent.

3. Buy when the stock is making or about to make a new high in price after emerging from a sound correction and price consolidation period. This breakout should be along with a volume increase to at least 50 percent above the stock's average daily volume.

Once the reader appreciates Richard Wyckoff work, we believe you will conclude that Dreyfus methods are similar in part to Wyckoff methods. Richard Wyckoff was born in 1873, Jack Dreyfus in 1913. Richard Wyckoff was a already established as a Wall Street star long before Jack Dreyfus entered the work force. Therefore it is safe to assume that Dreyfus must have acquired influenced from great investors of his time, and by deduction one of them must have been Richard Wyckoff.

You can review William J ONeil comments on his book via his youtube channel. There is also a website Canslim.net run by Kenneth J Gruneisen implementing O'Neil methods.

Readtheticker.com comments

You may ask, why haven't we added William ONeil to our list of legendary traders like Wyckoff, Gann and Hurst. Simple put we have! After you read both the Richard Wyckoff material and William ONeil book you will find that many of the ONeil terms and methods are based upon Wyckoffian logic. In our view, William ONeil does a great job of modernizing Richard Wyckoff teachings.

We do find favor CANSLIM, but with a caveat.

The CANSLI of CANSLIM is just fine, it is adequate approach to determine fundamentals of a stock. The M is for market direction or technical analysis of a stock chart or index. William ONeil market timing knowledge is too simplistic for our liking. We believe the methods within this website enhance the M of CANSLIM to the highest degree. If you review Amazon.com one star comments made by those who have reviewed the book 'How to make money in stocks' their primary criticism is the simplistic methodology in determining market direction. We hope our site overcomes the 'Market direction' short fall felt by these reviewers.

The charting method and annotations used in William ONeil CANSLIM charts can also be created with the readtheticker.com 'Analysis Chart'. As much of William ONeil methods are Wyckoff based, our charts have been built to meet Wyckoff analyst needs, therefore William ONeil charts is an easy fit for us. You can use our comments display to make notes of the stock fundamentals.

Here is a review of William ONeil book 'How to make money in stocks' that we concur with.

Source: Floyd from BlueChipOptions.com, Video link

Readtheticker points from Floyds video regarding William ONeil

1) Money management: Encourages 8-10% stop losses and position sizing.
2) Break out stocks: Considers stocks that are already doing well and will do better.
3) Basket of stocks: Know a lot about a small number of stocks, rather than a little of a lot of stocks.
4) Relative Strength (or Alpha): How well a stock performs against other similar stocks and sectors.
5) Pivot point entry (we prefer Gann and Hurst patterns): ONeil uses the classic 'cup and handle' price pattern.

We at readtheticker cover the above with ease.