I think that his success was a combination of discipline, technical analysis and most importantly the period of market history that he chose to enter in, and a willingness to assume a greater than normal amount of risk. His huge profits came during the most irrational period in market history, where unthinkable stock moves brought stratospheric returns. Over $2 million of Zanger's fortune came from QCOM alone, when it ran up through the end of 1999 to over $600 a share. Using technical analysis, he was able to sell his position before the blowoff came. Also, looking at his trades from last year, he was assuming fairly large and riskier sized positions in stocks--often a minimum of 1000 shares, usually 2000 shares. Those kinds of position sizes are usually used by scalpers, but to hold that much stock for swing trades is extremely risky if you're wrong. That's where his strict adherence to stop losses most likely saved him from major pain, and on the trades he was right about, his huge positions paid off big time. So in summary, that's how he did it--large positions goverened by technical anaylysis combined with strict position management. Many traders are unable to eliminate emotion from the picture completely, and that is the difference.