Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering

Are stories of turning a few thousands into millions by trading stocks real?
I did once read a book titled "How I made a million dollars on the stock market". It sounded realistic enough to be a true story. The author made it clear on the first page that (a) this was due to some exceptional circumstances, (b) that he would never again be able to pull off something like this, and (c) you would never be able to pull of something like this, except with extreme luck.  (The situation was small company A with a majority shareholder, other small company B tries to gain control by buying all the shares, the majority shareholder of A trying to prevent this by buying as many shares as possible, share price shooting up ridiculously, "smart" traders selling uncovered shorts to benefit when the price inevitably drops, the book author buying $5,000 worth of shares because they were going up, and then one enormous short squeeze catching out the traders. And he claimed having sold his shares for over a million - before the price dropped back to normal).  Clearly not a matter of "playing your cards right", but of having an enormous amount of luck.