10 Lessons I Learned
From Working With
William O’Neil
Ten lessons from working with Bill O’Neil, plus four printable pages: when to sell, how much to buy, what to do each weekend, and how to review your own trades.
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The risk card
The deeper you let a loss go, the harder it is to climb back out. That’s the whole reason the stop comes first.
The ten lessons
Each one comes with a short note on how it changes what I actually do now — not what it meant to me thirty years ago.
- 1Trading psychology and physical well-beingWhy you can’t execute the plan you wrote on Sunday, and what to fix first.
- 2Sound rules, so emotion doesn’t decide for youDecide once, calmly, so you’re not deciding at 2:40pm on a red day.
- 3Risk control and position sizingBe right a third of the time and still finish the year ahead.
- 4Cash is a positionPermission to sit out, and how to tell when you should.
- 5Post-analysis, and writing your own rules from itTurn the trades that hurt into rules that stop them repeating.
- 6Never doubt your rulesAct on a signal without needing to feel certain about it.
- 7No egoThe mistake that ends careers, and how to catch it in yourself.
- 8Reading the health and breadth of leadershipRead the market from the leaders themselves, not from lagging indicators.
- 9Listen to yourself, not to tipsWhy tips lose money even when they turn out to be true.
- 10Always stay positive, no matter what the market doesHandle a bad run without letting it turn into a bad year.
Four pages I keep next to the screen
The lessons explain the thinking. These four are what you use on Monday — printed, next to the screen, while the market is open.
The risk card
Never enter a trade without knowing where you’ll get out. Every exit rule on one page — the maximum loss, the level I actually aim for, and the two signals that tell you the trade is finished.
Position sizing table
Look up your position size instead of guessing at it. Find your account size and your stop distance, read off the largest position you can take, and stop sizing by how much you happen to like the stock.
The weekend routine
Walk into Monday with a focus list instead of a blank screen. Six steps in order, from grading your own positions down to two to five names with a plan attached to each one.
The post-analysis sheet
Build your own rulebook out of the trades that went wrong. One sheet per trade, ending in the only question that really matters: what rule does this produce?
Ross Haber
Ross Haber
Portfolio Manager · Mentor to Market Wizards & Investing Champions
I started in the market in 1994 as a retail broker, joined William O’Neil + Co. in institutional sales, and was managing firm capital within a year. I went on to run a hedge fund in New York for six years. Today I write The TML Report, and I co-founded TraderLion and Deepvue.
Ten lessons, and four pages you’ll keep
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