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Mark Minervini
BIOGRAPHY
Mark Minervini traded his first stock in 1983. He invested in a few hundred shares of Allis Chalmer, a seller of tractors and forklifts. Soon after, Minervini became familiar with the work of Richard Love, author of the book Superpeformance Stocks: An Investment Strategy for the Individual Investor Based on the 4-Year Political Cycle. Love’s work had a profound influence on Minervini’s professional and philosophical views on investing and the formulation of his own investment strategy.
By his early thirties, Minervini was at the helm as President of a leading institutional research firm in New York City, advising hedge funds and institutional investors in the U.S., Canada and Latin America. During this period, Minervini also kept a demanding schedule of regular television appearances on CNBC, CNN and Fox News.
It was Minervini’s initial intention to simply support himself from his trading profits, but his well-timed investment decisions increased his wealth dramatically each year, as well as the popularity of his opinion. After a decade of studying and trading the U.S. stock market, Minervini founded Quantech Research Group, Inc., an institutional research firm, in 1993. Minervini made available for a fee, to institutional investors, his in-house research based on his methodology Specific Entry Point Analysis® - SEPA®. Clients paid as much as $10,000 per month for Minervini's stock recommendations; his clients list included some of the biggest names on Wall Street.
In May of 2004, BusinessWeek wrote, "Minervini sells what's often considered the holy-grail in investing.”
To demonstrate the capabilities of his SEPA® Technology, Minervini entered the 1997 U.S. Investing Championship with his own capital. He won the real-money investment derby with a 155% return for the year, nearly double the results of the next nearest competing money manager. In fact, Jack Schwager wrote in Stock Market Wizards: Interviews with America’s Top Stock Traders: for the period 1994-2000, “Minervini's performance has been nothing short of astounding. His average annual compounded return during the period has been a towering 220 percent. Most traders and money managers would be delighted to have Minervini’s worst year – a 128 percent gain – as their best.”
In 1998, Minervini publicly voiced two back-to-back market calls, which shortly after propelled him into the media spotlight. On the August 28, 1998 Cavuto Business Show – Fox News Network, Minervini discussed the statistical similarities between the market then and the market on the Friday before the "Black Monday" crash of 1987, in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 508 points in a single day. The Monday following Minervini’s appearance (the very next trading day), the Dow Jones Industrials fell 512 points. One month later, Minervini turned bullish. In a September 28, 1998 profile titled “Trust the Computer,” Barron’s wrote: “Minervini was still bearish on the market until last week, when he did an about-face and turned raging bull.”
He recommended, among other stocks, Yahoo, Broadcom, Network Appliances and Abercrombie & Fitch, all of which went on to score spectacular gains as the stock market entered a new bull phase. Twenty months later, Minervini turned decidedly bearish. On May 30, 2000 on CNN, Minervini said that the NASDAQ had entered a bear market and that the bear market would continue. He explained: “Oracle, EMC, Cisco, Nokia – some of these favorite big-cap NASDAQ stocks that have been holding up quite well – they’re going to give way now, and that’s really going to unsettle investors.” Minervini previously had called for a steep decline in the Internet/dot.com sector on the same network on March 30, 2000.
During the March 30 CNN interview, Minervini said: “Many of these (Internet) stocks are going to go down between fifty and as much as eighty percent and some will go the way of Dr. Koop (bankruptcy).” Twenty-eight months later the NASDAQ Composite Index was down sixty-five percent, while Oracle, EMC, Cisco and Nokia were down an average of eighty-three percent. Minervini had avoided one of the most devastating bear market declines in stock market history. He protected his personal portfolio and locked in his gains by going to cash before the decline hit. With the exception of a few well-timed short trades, Minervini sat idle in cash through what was nearly a three-year bear market before returning to the stock market on the long side.
On May 10, 2004, BusinessWeek reported: “Jan. 9 Minervini bought Taser (TASR/NASDAQ), a company that makes Taser guns – nonlethal weapons for police departments. He spotted its potential using his proprietary methodology, "Specific Entry Point Analysis" (SEPA); he then rode the stock up 121% in only six weeks.”
Minervini’s achievements led to his recognition in Stock Market Wizards: Interviews with America's Top Stock Traders, by best-selling author Jack Schwager. A chapter in the book is devoted to Mr. Minervini and highlights his investment philosophy and money management approach. Schwager noted that Minervini's exceptional returns tell "only half the story." Mr. Schwager wrote: "Amazingly, Minervini achieved his lofty gains while keeping his risk very low: He had only one down quarter – barely – a loss of a fraction of 1 percent.”