The Stock Market Course
Author: George A. Fontanills and Tom Gentile Categories: Trading, Beginners, Technical Analysis
Quick Summary
A comprehensive educational course covering stock market fundamentals, technical analysis, options basics, risk management, and trading strategies. Fontanills and Gentile provide a structured curriculum that takes readers from basic market concepts through chart reading, indicator usage, and strategy implementation for both stock and options trading.
Detailed Summary
"The Stock Market Course" by George A. Fontanills and Tom Gentile is a comprehensive educational text that provides a structured curriculum for aspiring stock and options traders. Published by Wiley in 2001 as part of the Wiley Trading Advantage series, the book represents the foundational text in the Optionetics educational library, preceding the more specialized Options Course and Index Trading Course volumes.
The book is written from Fontanills' extensive experience as both a trader and educator. After studying at Harvard Business School, experiencing failures in multiple business ventures, and losing money in his initial trading attempts, Fontanills developed his systematic approach to managed-risk trading through studying what differentiated successful traders from unsuccessful ones. This personal narrative frames the book's pedagogical approach: trading success requires not innate talent but systematic education, disciplined methodology, and managed-risk positioning.
Co-author Tom Gentile brings complementary experience from the American Stock Exchange floor and his role developing the synthetic straddle approach -- an off-the-floor technique for rebalancing delta-neutral positions. Together, they combine institutional floor experience with retail education expertise.
The curriculum begins with foundational market concepts: how exchanges function, the role of market makers and specialists, order types and execution mechanics, and the regulatory framework governing securities trading. The broker selection chapter provides evaluation criteria for choosing between full-service and discount brokers, with attention to execution quality, platform capabilities, and fee structures.
Technical analysis coverage spans chart construction (bar charts, candlestick charts, point-and-figure charts), trend identification, support and resistance analysis, and pattern recognition. The indicator section covers moving averages, MACD, stochastics, RSI, and volume analysis. The approach is practical rather than encyclopedic, focusing on indicators and patterns that the authors have found most reliable in their own trading.
The options education section introduces the fundamental concepts of calls, puts, premium components (intrinsic and extrinsic value), the Greeks, and basic strategy construction. This section serves as a gateway to the more comprehensive Options Course, providing enough knowledge for readers to understand how options can be used for income generation, portfolio hedging, and speculative trading.
Risk management receives sustained attention throughout the text, with the Optionetics philosophy of "low-risk, high-reward" positioning permeating every strategy discussion. Position sizing, stop-loss discipline, portfolio-level risk management, and the psychological aspects of risk tolerance are all addressed. The book advocates delta neutral trading -- using options to mathematically control risk on every trade -- as the methodology most likely to produce consistent income without the stress of uncontrolled directional exposure.
The book serves its intended purpose as a comprehensive introductory course, providing the breadth of coverage necessary for new traders to develop a working understanding of markets, instruments, and strategies before specializing in specific approaches.
