Reminiscences of a Stock Operator Book Summary

Reminiscences Of A Stock Operator Ebook

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator: With New Commentary and Insights on the Life and Times of Jesse Livermore. Related; Information; Close Figure Viewer. Return to Figure.

I went to work when I was just out of grammar school. I got a job as quotation-board boy in a stock.
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre The all time classic book on stock trading is a must-have for every trader’s libraryOr buy the book on CD, so you can listen in your car on.

Note: This summary is made up of my notes, thoughts and highlights of important passages while reading the book. I keep updating the summary when I revisit it, and occasionally may edit it to reduce summary length. Don’t be surprised if it has changed between visits. The author’s words are in normal font, while my interpretations are in italics.

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 to-day has happened before and will happen again.

Your business with the tape is now – not tomorrow. The reason can wait. But you must act instantly or be left.

In fact, I always made money when I was sure I was right before I began. 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.

Chapter II

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.

No man can always have adequate reasons for buying or selling stocks daily – or sufficient knowledge to make his play an intelligent play.

The desire for constant action irrespective of underlying conditions is responsible for many losses in Wall Street.

Chapter III

It takes a man a long time to learn all the lessons of all his mistakes.

They say there are two sides to everything. 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.

I have been flat broke several times, but my loss has never been a total loss. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here now.

A man must believe in himself and his judgment if he expects to make a living at this game.

I know from experience that nobody can give me a tip or a series of tips that will make more money for me than my own judgment. It took me five years to learn to play the game intelligently enough to make big money when I was right.

Chapter IV

When a man is right he wants to get all that is coming to him for being right.

The beauty of doing business with a crook is that he always forgives you for catching him, so long as you don’t stop doing business with him.

There is nothing like losing all you have in the world for teaching you what not to do. And when you know what not to do in order not to lose money, you begin to learn what to do in order to win.

Chapter V

The game of speculation isn’t all mathematics or set rules, however rigid the main laws may be.

If a stock doesn’t act right don’t touch it; because, being unable to tell precisely what is wrong, you cannot tell which way it is going.

No diagnosis, no prognosis. No prognosis, no profit.

The only thing that didn’t lie because it simply couldn’t was mathematics.

A chart helps those who can read it or rather who can assimilate what they read.

Not even a world war can keep the stock market from being a bull market when conditions are bullish, or a bear market when conditions are bearish. And all a man needs to know to make money is to appraise conditions.

Before I can solve a problem I must state it to myself.

When I think I have found the solution I must prove I am right. I know of only one way to prove it; and that is, with my own money.

There was as much to learn from partial victory as from defeat.

They say you never grow poor taking profits. No, you don’t. But neither do you grow rich taking a four-point profit in a bull market.

In big bull markets the plain unadulterated sucker, utterly ignorant of rules and precedents, buys blindly because he hopes blindly.

The amateur, or gratuitous, tipster always thinks he owns the receiver of his tip body and soul, even before he knows how the tip is going to turn out.

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.

It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It was always my sitting.

It is no trick at all to be right on the market. You always find lots of early bulls in bull markets and early bears in bear markets.

Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon.

Millions come easier to a trader after he knows how to trade than hundreds did in the days of his ignorance.

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.

The market does not beat them. They beat themselves, because though they have brains they cannot sit tight.

Nobody can catch all the fluctuations.

In a bull market your game is to buy and hold until you believe that the bull market is near its end. To do this you must study the general conditions and not tips or special factors affecting individual stocks. Then get out of all your stocks; get out for keeps!

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.

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.

If I learned all this so slowly it was because I learned by my mistakes, and some time always elapses between making a mistake and realizing it, and more time between realizing it and exactly determining it.

Being broke is a very efficient educational agency.

Chapter VI

The bull forces were at work, and the public never is independently responsive to news. You see that all the time.

If there is a solid bull foundation, for instance, whether or not what the papers call bull manipulation is going on the same time, certain news items fail to have the effect they would have if the Street was bearish.

Chapter VII

I never hesitate to tell a man that I am bullish or bearish. But I do not tell people to buy or sell any particular stock.

The average man doesn’t wish to be told that it is a bull or a bear market. What he desires is to be told specifically which particular stock to buy or sell. He wants to get something for nothing. He does not wish to work. He doesn’t even wish to have to think.

People don’t seem to grasp easily the fundamentals of stock trading. I have often said that to buy on a rising market is the most comfortable way of buying stocks. Now, the point is not so much to buy as cheap as possible or go short at top prices, but to buy or sell at the right time.

When I am bearish and I sell a stock, each sale must be at a lower level than the previous sale. When I am buying, the reverse is true. I must buy on rising scale. I don’t buy long stock on a scale down, I buy on a scale up.

I never buy stocks cheap. Of course I always try to buy effectively—in such a way as to help my side of the market. When it comes to selling stocks, it is plain that nobody can sell unless somebody wants those stocks.

He has to sell when he can, not when he wants to.

Reminiscences Of A Stock Operator Quotes

Remember that stocks are never too high for you to begin buying or too low to begin selling. But after the initial transaction, don’t make a second unless the first shows you a profit. Wait and watch.

Chapter VIII

My one steadfast prejudice is against being wrong.

I always got my own meanings out of such facts as I observed. It is the only way in which the meaning reaches me. I cannot get out of facts what somebody tells me to get.

I do not allow my possessions – or my prepossessio

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator Book Summary

Reminiscences Of A Stock Operator Ebook

Chapter II​​

Chapter III​​

Chapter IV​​

Chapter V​​

Chapter VI​​

Chapter VII​​