Why You Win or Lose [Paperback]

Fred Kelly (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1962

A successful, non-professional speculator tells how Wall Street paid back to him more than he entrusted to it. This book is both a personal history and a valuable study of crowd reaction to market fluctuations - the adventures of an "outsider" who found the greatest enemies to stock market success. He shows you how to recognize them and how to avoid becoming a loser because of them. "Vanity", "Greed" and "The Will to Believe" are just a few of eight instructive chapters. Completely non-technical; anyone can understand and act on this book about money-making stocks. First published in 1930. Paperback. 177 pages.

Product Details

• Paperback: 177 pages
• Publisher: Fraser Publishing Co. (June 1, 1962)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0870340026
• ISBN-13: 978-0870340024
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 4.6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,254,149 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Goes down easily, and may save you from yourself someday..., January 21, 2002

By 

aseclyst (New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Why You Win or Lose (Paperback)

Originally written in 1930 by Fred C. Kelly, notably in the wake of the 1929 Crash, this work was first brought back into publication by contrarian specialists James L. Fraser and his mentor Humphrey B. Neill in 1962. The work is a prominent example of the "second generation" of writers to apply human psychology and crowd behavior specifically to the stock market, with the "first generation" being G.C. Selden's pamphlet "Psychology of the Stock Market" of 1912.

The book is quite small. Although with its tiny 4-1/2" x 6-1/4" paperback pages it runs to 177 pages, if it had been a more "normal" sized hardcover it might be 50 pages long. The writing is devoid of so many of the formulae and equations that have multiplied in the investing world in the last 25 years, and in its place substitutes commonsense observations about human behavior and helpful stock market lore.

There were more than a half a dozen observations in this little book that seemed directly applicable to today's market. In the final analysis Mr. Kelly does not give you rigid laws to live by, but instead encourages you to think for yourself. Let your mind run with the crowd at your peril!

Each chapter has a different focus:

Chapter One - My Adventure in Topsy-Turvy Land: The importance of paper trading (as a form of practice) before investing actual money, and the dangers of margin.

Chapter Two - How Our Vanity Makes Us Lose: How a willingness to take losses can save you lots of money in the long term.

Chapter Three - High Costs of Greed: The imperative of setting target sell prices for your stocks in advance and sticking to them.

Chapter Four - Perils of the Will to Believe: It's critical to try to see the world as it is, not as you want it to be.
(A quote from page 41: "Not every optimist is a sucker, but most suckers seem to be optimists").

Chapter Five - Where Being Illogical is Wisdom: The importance of establishing a truly independent thinking pattern towards the market, as opposed to so-called "logical" investment wisdom which covers the front pages of financial magazines.

Chapter Six - There's a Pool in It!: Ways that technical patterns can fool you if you don't know a stock in depth.

The final two chapters Seven and Eight, "Win By Being Contrary" and "About Watching One's Step", are confidence-builders giving the would-be investor strategies for survival (as opposed to just warnings which dominate the previous pages).

On the second-to-last page a footnote gave me among the most encouragement, as an individual investor:

"In certain respects then a person who plays the market in a small way has great advantages over a big operator. Granted that he has equal intelligence and skill, he can make more money, for the amount used, than if his transactions were on a grand scale -- for he can buy low and sell high without disturbing the market."

Highly recommended, even for those who have just 15 minutes at lunch to read.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How to understand being an individual, April 10, 2000

By 

Wilie Harris Jr. (Abilene, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Why You Win or Lose (Paperback)

Fred C. Kelly gives his own view of the stock market during his era. He laid down the basic principles of contrary thinking. You learn for yourself to analyze, study probabilities, and do the opposite from what others are doing. This won't be the shortcut most are looking for when they buy stock books... but this is a look into a man's thought process of the whole free market system. Something worth thinking about while you are planning your next move in the market.