Key Nuggets from Mark Minervini:
- The popular averages usually mislead investors from seeing key leaders emerge. When you focus on the market as your lead indicator (instead of individual stocks) you almost always miss a good number of key stocks. Why? Because leaders lead the market.
- I only focus on top stocks and the top stocks lead me to the top sectors.
- The average trader waits for his favorite stock to breakout while failing to purchase numerous key leaders that emerge and then wonders why superperformance is elusive. You must learn not to select stocks, but rather let them select you.
- Practice does not make perfect, it only makes habit. Only perfect practice makes perfect. If you're practicing wrong, all you are doing is perfecting mistakes. That's why top coaches get paid so much. Knowing how to develop the correct habits is priceless.
- Once I get a decent gain I usually take some off and then move my stop up as the position improves. In the late stages of a bull market I'm more of a trader. After a big correction I tend to try and give the initial leaders some time to make a bigger move.
- There's a counter intuitive reality in the stock market... the things that suddenly look cheap are usually expensive and those that appear expensive are often quite cheap.