Think & Trade Like a Champion: The Secrets, Rules & Blunt Truths of a Stock Market Wizard

I have read his book, "Think & Trade Like a Champion", his companion book, "Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard", and "Momentum Masters", where he is inteviewed along with 3 other top traders: David Ryan, Mark Ritchie and Dan Zanger. And I have met all of them. I also attended Mark's recent 2019 "Master Trader Program" which also featured David Ryan and Mark Ritchie. In over 35 years of investing and trading, I have read all the important books on investing and trading. Mark builds on the formidable foundation built by Jesse Livermore, Richard Wychoff, and William O'Neil, among others. If you've read O'Neil's book, "How to Make Money in Stocks", you have the foundation that Mark builds upon. In fact, he attributes much of his success to the techniques taught by O'Neil. But Mark expands upon O'Neil identifiying what he calls the "Volume Contraction Pattern". O'Neil touches on the pattern but Mark really explains it and shows it in action, time and time again. The precise characteristics become quite clear. More importantly, Mark shows how he manages his money, manages his risk, deals with volatile or flat markets, and methodically manages every aspect of his trades. How he preps for the next day, how he gauges the market environment and precisely how he uses stops to control risk. Mark's books are indespensible to anyone looking to trade the market and protect their investments. They are essential. Along with O'Neils books, they give you everything you need to succeed if you can stay disciplined enough to follow the rules he lays out. It is as much a psychological war within as it is a war with the market. Perhaps more so. But with the knowlege he imparts in these books, the rest is up to you. If you had to read only 2 books about investing in stocks, I would recommend Mark's two above all others.

Outstanding book.

In How to Make Money in Stocks, William O'Neil explains a breakout style of stock trading, used by Jesse Livermore and many others. In Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard, Mr. Minervini gives instructions on how to implement such a system profitably, and he includes his own modifications. He has a clear, almost conversational writing style, and covers a myriad of situations with charts and examples. I was (still am) very new to stock trading when I read these books. They helped me immensely. I highly recommend this second book, Think and Trade Like a Champion. If you are curious about which of these books to buy, the answer is buy both. They are not repetitive. Think and Trade Like a Champion adds finer detail on what is covered in this book. I didn't realize how completely clueless I was about this until I read these great books. His third book, Mindset Secrets for Winning, is excellent, as well. If the first book describes the rules of the game and the second details what to do to be great at it, the third explains what prevents someone from winning and how to overcome those obstacles. This is not a perfect analogy, and I am sure Mr. Minervini could have said it better! (Thank you again for writing these books.)

The boss Mark Minervini does it again. When you pick up this book, you get a candid lesson from a multi-millionaire trader on how to trade for a living and make money. Don't put books written by professional authors on the same pedestal as books written by professional traders like Mark. In this industry there are many losers who write books for a living and can't trade their way out of a Pokemon playing card auction. Many gems in this book, very helpful even for advanced traders. My criticism, I would say is about the last section of this book where a motivational speaker/psychologist is introduced. The section was pretty lame and the book finished weak in my opinion. The concepts that guest brought up were sophomoric at best. Still the book gets 5 stars because of the gold that Mark brings to the table. Another point I would like to bring up to Mark's attention and I hope that he will one day read my comment is with regards to how his profile is presented in the book. You were too conservative man. It is OK to tell people about your success. The "about the author" section only shares public information about you. Why not state the following, for example, "Within 10 years of trading successfully after my 7 years of struggles I managed to accumulate 30 million dollars" Or you can tell us "I have average 124% return over a period of 20 years..." You have the record why not be bold about this. Is a job interview the right time to be subtle about your skills or bold? Your resume is your net worth in trading. It is not boastful to state your success. This will better set you apart amongst new readers, from the plethora of losers who run educational and signal services for a living then write books that add to the noise and deceive beginner traders with shallow and hollow concepts. Thanks for the book. I highly recommend it to you all. Bye

Definitely focuses your skills at trading and make you think before hitting the buy or sell button. I like the analogy of keep your trades in the strike zone. Warren Buffett said something similar. My trades are much better now and I have more control. This book helped me trade like a champion.

I came to trading and investing late in my adult life. This was an area that I never really understood or had much comfort in. I started investing with so called financial advisors and was getting mediocre returns and excuses at every turn when I questioned their performance. Due to my ignorance of markets and my trust in so called “experts” I felt I was being taken advantage of. No matter how poorly my portfolio did, the advisor / broker always made their money. At that point I decided not to trust my financial future to anybody else and take it into my own hands. If I did not do well, I was the only one to blame. I read a number of books and websites/blogs on trading that either didn’t make sense to me or were outright scams After reading William O’Neil’s book How to make money in stocks. I finally found material to resonated with me, made sense, and didn’t sugar coat the risk involved in the market and the work it really takes to extract money from the market. O’Neil’s work led me to Mark Minervini’s, an O’Neil disciple. I bought Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard and Think & Trade Like a Champion and devoured them both in four days. I could not put the books down. The books were like drinking from a fire hose. There was so much information presented in a simple, clear, and concise manner. I use the word simple as the ultimate compliment of sophistication. The most sophisticated ideas appear simple, that is ultimate measure of sophistication. My head was spinning with all the ideas from Mark’s book that I decided to instead of reading 20 more books on trading. I would read Mark’s books 20 time over and over again. Each time I read them I the ideas started to gel and make sense to me. I went from super beginner, not even knowing how to place a trade. To being able to hold my own in conversations with experienced traders, with years and success under their belt. Mark’s focus on risk management, how to back into a trade risk first, risk reward ratios / getting odds were a game changer for me. When I first started trading it was in very volatile time in the market. The risk management rules, low risk entries into stocks and placing the correct stop loss allowed me to weather a difficult time in the market while learning, gaining experience, and coming out on the other side with all my capital intact and a small gain. This was while many experience traders that I knew where getting chopped up in a whipsaw market and had big losses. I will say that honestly it took me about 18 months of reading and re-reading and studying Mark’s books to really get a handle on his system and to understand what really moves markets, supply and demand and timing low risk entry points into the market. Understanding the Mark’s system is not something that works in all market conditions and that you don’t have to trade every day to make significant returns was an eye opener for me. The system has taught me when to go to cash, when to put a toe in the market and when to get aggressive. This book has been a game changer for me. It has changed my entire outlook on my life and has given me control of my financial future. I have gifted it over 10 times to close family and friends. And I continue to recommend it as probably the only trading book you will ever need.

I bought this book few weeks ago. I have many years of experience in investing in multiasset, even if I changed many styles with single stocks. Few years ago I discovered O'Neill book about Canslin and I liked it a lot. I tried to use it and I passed from losing a bit to gaining a bit. But I still needed something more. I bought other 2 books in the meantime (both trend following oriented because I understood that is the style for me) and I improved my performance. But not yet at the level I liked. After thinking a lot and reading positive reviews, I decided to give a chance to Minervini book. I was quite impressed, I think is a very good one and I regret it wasn't written before. I read it 3 times already, taking notes on my diary to create the plan and each time I find an idea or advice that I didn't catch in the previous reading. Of course I like a lot the part about when selling and buy, therefore I decided to focus on these patterns in the future. But a great thing of the book is the psychological part and the optimal size. I appreciated the idea about doing research on my own trades, and I discovered quite interesting bias in my trading. Hope that Minervini's book will help me to improve my trading. At the beginning I'll try to use it on European Markets that are the markets I know better, but can't exclude to jump in the US stocks. In Summary, if you are a trader that is not afraid to buy high to sell higher (or a bit lower if stopped) this is the book for you.The book will explain the optimal trading size to begin, letting grow the size when you're successful, and reduce it in difficult times. Definitively I recommend this book that I think it will open yourself a new world.

Mark Minervini is a very intelligent and experienced trader who focuses on identifying (1) market leaders already in an upward trend, (2) the optimal time to buy the stock right before it is likely to go further up, and (3) risk management best practices through to use of judicious stop orders. Frankly, this is complex stuff that you can’t really master just from reading a book (like boxing or riding a bike, you have to actually do it over and over to really get good). But this book is a contemporary guide that will point you in the right direction, teach you best practices for good risk managment, and help you understand a “big picture” framework for what good trading should look like. Mark’s style is the same as William O’Neal but he has refined the process with his own Volume Contraction Principals to identify optimal buy timing.