"…I learned early that there is nothing new in Wall Street. There can't be because speculation is as old as the hills. Whatever happens in the stock market today has happened before and will happen again. I've never forgotten… The fact that I remember that way is my way of capitalizing experience."
- from Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
First published in 1923, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is the fictionalized biography of Jesse Livermore, one of the greatest speculators who ever lived. Now, more than 70 years later, Reminiscences remains the most widely read, highly recommended investment book ever written. Generations of investors have found that it has more to teach them about themselves and other investors than years of experience in the market. They have also discovered that its trading advice and keen analyses of market price movements ring as true today as in 1923.
Jesse Livermore won and lost tens of millions of dollars playing the stock and commodities markets during the early 1900's – at one point making the then-astronomical amount of ten million dollars in just one month of trading. So potent a market force was he in his day that, in 1929, he was widely believed to be the man responsible for causing the Crash. He was forced into seclusion and had to hire a bodyguard.
Originally reviewed in The New York Times as a nonfiction book, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator vividly recounts Livermore's mastery of the markets from the age of 14. Always good at figures, he learns, early on, that he can predict which way the numbers will go. Starting out with an investment of five dollars, he amasses a fortune by his early twenties and establishes himself as a major player on the Street. He makes his first killing in 1906, selling short on Union Pacific. He goes on to corner the cotton market, and has a million-dollar day. Bullish in bear markets, and bearish among bulls, he claims that only suckers gamble on the market. The trick, he advises, is to protect yourself by balancing your investments, and selling big on the way down. Livermore goes broke three times, but he comes back each time feeling richer for the learning experience.
Offering profound insights into the motivations, attitudes, and feelings shared by every investor, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is a timeless instructional tale that will enrich the lives – and the portfolios – of today's traders as it has those of generations past.
