Jesse Lauriston Livermore Quotes
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There is time to go long, time to go short and time to go fishing.
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If you can't sleep at night because of your stock market position, then you have gone too far. If this is the case, then sell your position down to the sleeping level.
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Without faith in his own judgment no man can go very far in this game. That is about all I have learned - to study general conditions, to take a position and stick to it. I can wait without a twinge of impatience. I can see a setback without being shaken, knowing that it is only temporary.
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I did precisely the wrong thing. The cotton showed me a loss and I kept it. The wheat showed me a profit and I sold it out. Of all the speculative blunders there are few greater than trying to average a losing game. Always sell what shows you a loss and keep what shows you a profit.
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The desire for constant action irrespective of underlying conditions is responsible for many losses on Wall Street even among the professionals, who feel that they must take home some money every day, as though they were working for regular wages.
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To anticipate the market is to gamble. To be patient and react only when the market gives the signal is to speculate.
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I was utterly free of speculative prejudices. The bear side doesn't appeal to me any more than the bull side, or vice versa. My one steadfast prejudice is against being wrong.
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"I can't sleep" answered the nervous one. "Why not?" asked the friend. "I am carrying so much cotton that I can't sleep thinking about. It is wearing me out. What can I do?" "Sell down to the sleeping point", answered the friend.
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Don't take action with a trade until the market, itself, confirms your opinion. Being a little late in a trade is insurance that your opinion is correct. In other words, don't be an impatient trader.
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Speculation is a hard and trying business, and a speculator must be on the job all the time or he'll soon have no job to be on.
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A loss never bothers me after I take it. I forget it overnight. But being wrong - not taking the loss - that is what does damage to the pocketbook and to the soul.
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Wall Street never changes, the pockets change, the suckers change, the stocks change, but Wall Street never changes, because human nature never changes.
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A man must study general conditions, to seize them so as to be able to anticipate probabilities.
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After spending many years in Wall Street and after making and losing millions of dollars I want to tell you this: It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight!
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Instead of hoping he must fear and instead of fearing he must hope. He must fear that his loss may develop into a much bigger loss, and hope that his profit may become a big profit.
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In a narrow market, when prices are not getting anywhere to speak of but move within a narrow range, there is no sense in trying to anticipate what the next big movement is going to be. The thing to do is to watch the market, read the tape to determine the limits of the get nowhere prices, and make up your mind that you will not take an interest until the prices breaks through the limit in either direction.
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Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon. I found it one of the hardest things to learn. But it is only after a stock operator has firmly grasped this that he can make big money.
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The stock market is never obvious. It is designed to fool most of the people, most of the time.
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Professional traders have always had some system or other based upon their experience and governed either by their attitude towards speculation or by their desires.
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Every once in a while you must go to cash, take a break, take a vacation. Don't try to play the market all the time. It can't be done, too tough on the emotions.
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If somebody had told me my method would not work I nevertheless would have tried it out to make sure for myself, for when I am wrong only one thing convinces me of it, and that is, to lose money. And I am only right when I make money. That is speculating.
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One of the most helpful things that anybody can learn is to give up trying to catch the last eighth - or the first. These two are the most expensive eighths in the world. They have cost stock traders, in the aggregate, enough millions of dollars to build a concrete highway across the continent.
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A man may see straight and clearly and yet become impatient or doubtful when the market takes its time about doing as he figured it must do. That is why so many men in Wall Street, who are not at all in the sucker class, not even in the third grade, nevertheless lose money. The market does not beat them. They beat themselves, because though they have brains they cannot sit tight.
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I never argue with the tape. To be angry at the market because it unexpectedly or even illogically goes against you is like getting mad at your lungs because you have pneumonia.
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I began to realize that the big money must necessarily be in the big swing.
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People who look for easy money invariable pay for the privilege of proving conclusively that it cannot be found on this earth.
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The game of speculation is the most uniformly fascinating game in the world. But it is not a game for the stupid, the mentally lazy, the person of inferior emotional balance, or the get-rich-quick adventurer. They will die poor.
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Never buy at the bottom, and always sell too soon.
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It is foolhardy to make a second trade, if your first trade shows you a loss. Never average losses. Let this thought be written indelibly upon your mind.
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He really meant to tell them that the big money was not in the individual fluctuations but in the main movements that is, not in reading the tape but in sizing up the entire market and its trend.
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Jesse Lauriston Livermore
- Born: July 26, 1877
- Died: November 28, 1940
- Occupation: Stock trader
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