Trade Like an O'Neil Disciple: How We Made 18,000% in the Stock Market

8.12. THE TENTH COMMANDMENT

One of O'Neil's overwhelming traits is his intense dedication and passion for the markets, something that led us to postulate the Tenth and Final Commandment, "Always maintain insane focus." Maintaining "insane focus" doesn't mean becoming a workaholic, since this implies that one is simply a mindless slave to one's job. What it means is finding one's passions in life so that the "work" that we do as we express these passions of ours is never really work. Not everyone is lucky enough to work at what they love, but to O'Neil it was something to strive for in life, and maintaining insane focus is another way of saying that people should always seek and pursue their passions in life, one way or the other. It is what makes life worth living, and by relentlessly pursuing our passions we attain the state of insane focus that in turn drives high levels of success. In O'Neil's view sitting around drinking beer, watching TV, and playing video games never struck him as a worthwhile, much less interesting, activity. As O'Neil used to say, "Don't just 'dabble,' dive in!"

To understand this, it helps to understand that O'Neil never saw any reason to take a vacation. Vacations are for people who hate their jobs, and O'Neil would tell us that if we could afford to leave the office for a three-week vacation, then we were proving we weren't very important to the operation. In 1999, we knew that the last time O'Neil had taken a vacation was in 1982, taking the family ...