Most forummers here rated high on Nicolas Darvas's classic book - "How I Made $2 Million in the Stock Market". Do anyone here able to offer comments on his two other books: 1. You can still make it in the market 2. Wall Street: The Other Las Vegas Thanks!
Just my opinion (noting that your ET handle indicates you are probably a fan) but yesterday two books arrived at my house: "How I made 2 million in the Stock Market", first published in 1986 but recounting market activity in the late 50s, written by Nicholas Darvas and "Reminiscences of a Stock Operator", first published 1923, written by Edwin Lefevre recounting activity in the early 1900s by Jesse Livermore (it is believed). The Nicholas Darvas book was about a 2-hour read (a very short book). Half of the book is comprised of an appendix containing his cable traffic (selective) between he and his broker(s). A pleasant story to read but it really is discussing a very few trades. I can't help but have my suspicion arroused in that the story is a little too perfect, like an Aesop fable it first recounts the trader stumbling through every pitfall that existed (then and today). I mean it reads like somebody carefully laid out an outline of basic trading philosphy and then wrapped a good story around it. I don't believe a word. The Edwin Lefevre book uses similar quaint language but seems realistic in that he (Livermore or Livingston) busts out completely several times and it does a more complete job of describing the scams and shenanigans that existed. There is just more here and it is alot more believable. This book actually schooled me a little and was also a pleasant read. Scott
I liked both those books too. If I was looking for education I would get William ONeil's HTMMIS or Stan Weinstein's book instead of either of them. For a good read I really enjoyed Darvas and all the evidence I could find suggests he was "real." If he was faking it he would have had much tighter money management and not made nearly as much money
After reading "how I made..." I picked up "Las Vegas" and was pretty disappointed. It's not a bad book but I wouldn't describe it as inspirational nor educational. You'd be better off putting some $$ elsewhere IMHO.
How about "You can still make it in the market"? I saw this book is selling over 120 USD in amazon.com even for an used copy.
Time magazine May 1959 p84-85 Business Pas de Dough The lights go low at Manhattan's garish Latin Quarter nightclub. Onto the stage glides a slim hipped, broad shouldered man in white tie and tails. He grasps his partner, a stunning redhead in black tights, whirls her over his head on one arm, hurls her dramatically in a split-legged fall to the floor. The dance team is Nicholas Darvas and his half sister, Julia, one of the top acts in the U.S. What the tired businessmen watching the show do not realize is that Hungarian-born Nicholas Darvas, 39, is a better moneyman than most of them; he is a top stock-market speculator who has has parlayed his considerable weekly income ($3,500 currently) into a fortune of more than $2,000,000. Moneyman Darvas' methods would raise the eyebrows of most Wall Streeters. Instead of studying the fundamentals -price earnings ratios and dividends-he judges public enthusiasm, a method that works best in volatile markets. "In my dancing I know how to judge an audience," he says "It is instinctive. the same way with the stock market. You have to find out what the public wants and go along with it. You can't fight the tape, or the public. Mental Charts. Darvas' system is tailored to his job. Since he has to do trading from wherever he is dancing (he recently completed an Asian tour) he ignores tips, financial stories and brokers' letters, has never been in a brokers office. Basically, his approach is that of a chartist; he watches price and volume. But the only charts he keeps are in his head. He studies the weekly stock tables in Barron's, receives a nightly wire from his broker giving the high, low and closing of stocks he is following, as well as the Dow-Jones averages. When a stock makes a good advance on strong volume, he begins watching it, buys when he feels that informed buyers are getting in. For example, when he was playing in Calcutta, he noticed E.L. Bruce moving up in the stock tables. Suddenly, on 35,000 shares it moved from 16 to 50. He bought in at 51, though he knew nothing about the company, and "I didn't care what they made." (they make hardwood flooring.) He sold out at 171 six weeks later. Darvas places his buy orders for levels that he considers breakout points on the upside. At the same time, he places a stop-loss sell order just below his buy order, so that if the stock does not move straight up after he buys, he will be sold out and his loss cut. "I have no ego in the stock market." he says. "If I make a mistake I admit it immediately and get out fast." Darvas thinks his system is the height of conservatism. Says he; " If you could play roulette with the assurance that whenever you bet $100 you could get out for $98 if you lost your bet, wouldn't you call that good odds?" If he has a big profit in a stock, he puts the stop loss order just below the level at which a sliding stock should meet support. He bought universal controls at 18, sold it at 83 on the way down after it had hit 102. "I never bought a stock at the low or sold one at the high in my life," says Darvas. "I am satisfied to be along for most of the ride." Limiting his selections to five or six stocks at a time, Darvas often studies one for weeks or months before buying. He steers away from blue chips, buys only growing companies. "I am only in infant industries where earnings could double or treble," he says. "The biggest factor in stock prices is the lure of future earnings. The dream of the future is what excites people, not the reality." Eight Hours A Day. Darvas studied economics at the University of Budapest, fled Hungary for Turkey in World War II (he still holds Turkish citizenship), methodically trained eight hours a day to become a dancer. He came to the U.S. in 1951, got interested in the market in 1952 when a Toronto nightclub owner paid him off in a mining stock that promptly trebled. (He sold it at that point; it later collapsed.) Darvas trained for the market just as methodically as he had studied his dancing, read some 200 books on the market and the great speculators, spent eight hours a day until saturated. two of the books he rereads almost every week; Humphrey Neill's Tape Reading and Market Tactics and G.M.Loeb's The Battle for Investment Survival . He still spends about two hours a day on his stock tables. Even though he has made a fortune he plans to keep on dancing. Dancing is his business; the stock market is just that second income.
you can make it in the mkt...it was scanned on the 'net at one point. 1974ish book, he talks about the dar-box or something like that, basically making things so they're more easily visible. found that the methodology still worked in '74 - instead of going into tech, he was going into oil/energy stocks. thought the methodology worked for 52 wk lows as well, but he didn't like shorting. i see "wall st" was reissued in paperback... the darvas system for otc profits isn't of any use for more than a historical perspective; he talks about selling those (OTCs) on the way up because the market was illiquid, quotes weren't reliable, etc.
Per the "www.darvastrades.com" website: $30000, to $2,250,000, in 1.5 year. This is an annual rate of 5000%. Trust me: if someone has a system which can consistently return 5000% per year, that person does not need to sell his system for anything. People will be lining up outside his door to give him money to invest. He can have billions of dollars in trading capital in no time. Even just take his modest initial investment of $30,000 in consideration: Year 1: he has $1.5 million Year 2: he has $75 million Year 3: he has $3 billion Year 4: he has $187 billion Year 5: he has $9.3 trillion Year 6: he has $468 trillion Year 7: he has $23437 trillion See... it will only take him 4 years to beat the richest man in America Warren Buffet. 7 years he can own the world. Why hasn't it happened?