“All my life I have made mistakes, but in losing money I have gained experience and accumulated a lot of valuable don’ts.”.It is very easy to be a plunger that way.” Sometimes these ghost gamblers make millions. “I have heard of people who amuse themselves conducting imaginary operations in the stock market to prove with imaginary dollars how right they are.It took me longer to get that general principle fixed firmly in my mind than it did most of the more technical phases of the game of stock speculation.” But there is only one side to the stock market and it is not the bull side or the bear side, but the right side. They say there are two sides to everything. “It takes a man a long time to learn all the lessons of all his mistakes.Getting sore at the market doesn’t get you anywhere.” “I don’t know whether I make myself plain, but I never lose my temper over the stock market.“A stock operator has to fight a lot of expensive enemies within himself.”.“The desire for constant action irrespective of underlying conditions is responsible for many losses in 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.”.No man can always have adequate reasons for buying or selling stocks daily-or sufficient knowledge to make his play an intelligent play.” “There is the plain fool, who does the wrong thing at all times everywhere, but there is the Wall Street fool, who thinks he must trade all the time.And that is precisely what beats so many men in Wall Street who are very far from being in the main sucker class.” There is a time for all things, but I didn’t know it. “What beat me was not having brains enough to stick to my own game-that is, to play the market only when I was satisfied that precedents favored my play.This seldom cost the bucket shop more than a couple of points on a few hundred shares, and they made thousands of dollars.” On bucket shop practices: “In the old days whenever a bucket shop found itself loaded with too many bulls on a certain stock it was a common practice to get some broker to wash down the price of that particular stock far enough to wipe out all the customers that were long of it.

Whatever happens in the stock market to-day has happened before and will happen again.” There can’t be because speculation is as old as the hills. “Another lesson I learned early is that there is nothing new in Wall Street.It shares the timeless principles around trading in markets while warning of the biggest obstacle that plague speculators and investors alike - human nature. If there was easy money lying around, no one would be forcing it into your pocket.Edwin Lefèvre’s fictionalized account of Jesse Livermore is a classic. Do not become completely bearish or bullish on the whole market because one stock in some particular group has plainly reversed its course from the general trend.The leaders of today may not be the leaders of two years from now.If you cannot make money out of the leading active issues, you are not going to make money out of the stock market as a whole.It is much easier to watch a few than many.It is not good to be too curious about all the reasons behind price movements.The human side of every person is the greatest enemy of the average investor or speculator.I become a buyer as soon as a stock makes a new high on its movement after having had a normal reaction.Never sell a stock because it seems high-priced.Never buy a stock because it has had a big decline from its previous high.The money lost by speculation alone is small compared with the gigantic sums lost by so-called investors who have let their investments ride.One should never permit speculative ventures to run into investments.At long as a stock is acting right, and the market is right, do not be in a hurry to take profits.The real money made in speculating has been in commitments showing in profit right from the start.Markets are never wrong – opinions often are.Don’t trust your own opinion and back your judgment until the action of the market itself confirms your opinion.Money cannot consistently be made trading every day or every week during the year.Nothing new ever occurs in the business of speculating or investing in securities and commodities.

Reminiscences of a stock operator pdf