|  JAN 1988

Winning on Wall Street by John Sweeney

Winning on Wall Street by John Sweeney Author: Martin Zweig Publisher: Warner Books 666 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10103 Price: $20 This is a good book. It has a very reasonable approach to trading the market, or even individual stocks. It's a compendium of experience-generated trading guidelines and indicators which should well serve a new trader or someone with fewer than five years of market study. It's frank (""Had I stayed with it, I would have made 50 points ... But that's only a fantasy.""), focused (""There is nothing wrong with bonds. My specialty happens to be stocks."") and straightforward (""Buy strength, sell weakness, and stay in gear with the market.""). If detail is your thing, there are umpteen indicators described in detail, both fundamental and technical. One or two (such as the Zweig Sentiment Indicator) are not disclosed—you're given the elements and the idea and left to create a similar indicator on your own. The indicators that are disclosed are well worked out in worksheets and displayed in graphs. In broad categories, the indicators used are monetary, momentum, sentiment and seasonal. From my standpoint, this hits the high points without overdosing. There is a promotional function to the book which is most prominent in Chapter 11, ""How to Pick the Winners."" The answer is to search for ""strong growth in company earnings and sales; a reasonable price-to-earnings ratio; buying by corporate insiders; and reasonably strong price action..."" You can do this by hand or use the Zweig Security Screen, which apparently searches about 3,000 stocks for proper characteristics.

by John Sweeney