How Bill O’Neil cracked the secrets to picking stocks

William O’Neil is a legendary investor and one of America’s true great success stories. His entrepreneurial spirit and strong work ethic led him to develop his own unique stock selection method and set up his own companies, which helped millions of investors improve their portfolio performance.

His innovative work on stock analysis and the development of the CAN SLIM system has been recognized by his colleagues in the financial industry. Among his many honors, O’Neil was recently named the 2020 Overall Achievement Award as part of the six annual awards of the Benzinga Global Fintech Awards.

O’Neil’s focus and natural ability to find great stocks led to success early in his career. He had several winners, starting with Chrysler in 1962. Then came the short at the Korvette department store. A year later, he made one of his biggest deals with Syntex, one of the earliest manufacturers of birth control pills.

In just over a year, the investor turned a $ 50,000 investment into a profit of over $ 200,000.

“What really set Bill apart was his ability to put emotions aside and really focus on stocks and information about them,” said Charles Harris, portfolio manager at O’Neil Capital Management.

In 1964, O’Neil became the youngest person to buy a place on the New York Stock Exchange at the age of 30. He then set about creating a series of research products aimed at the institutional investor.

Surprisingly, O’Neil did not want to keep his unique approach to stock analysis a secret. Instead, he wanted to share his knowledge with the wider investment community.

“The first product I created was a chart that not only has the whole price and volume, but has all the basics, sales, their profits, return on equity,” O’Neill said in an interview with 50- anniversary of William O’Neil + Co. in 2013

“I put everything in one place where you can look at one and see all these variables. And no one else has done it that way.”

Harris added: “He is one of the few traders who have survived for decades and decades from the tops and bottoms of the markets.”

“It’s a living testament to the success you can have by investing if you’re disciplined and have a good and tested strategy.”