32 Jesse Lauriston Livermore Quotes

Jesse Lauriston Livermore quotes

1. 'In a bull market your game is to buy and hold until you believe that the bull market is near its end.'

2. 'My dear boy,' said old Partridge, in great distress 'my dear boy, if I sold that stock now I'd lose my position; and then where would I be?'

3. 'It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight!'

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

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

6. '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.'

7. 'Obviously the thing to do was to be bullish in a bull market and bearish in a bear market.'

8. 'When your security is acting right, you can safely add to your line from then forward!'

9. 'When I buy stocks for a rise I like to pay top prices and when I sell I must sell low or not at all.'

10. 'When this happens I sell the stock short that is, technically. In other words, I sell more stock than I actually hold.'

11. 'Experience has proved to me that real money made in speculating has been in commitments in a stock or commodity showing a profit right from the start.'

12. 'It is literally true that millions come easier to a trader after he knows how to trade, than hundreds did in the days of his ignorance.'

13. 'If my stock does not act as I anticipated, I immediately determine that the time is not yet ripe - so I close out my commitment.'

14. 'The price pattern reminds you that every movement of importance is but a repetition of similar price movements, that just as soon as you can familiarize yourself with the actions of the past, you will be able to anticipate and act correctly and profitably upon forthcoming movements.'

15. 'From my point of view, the investors are the big gamblers. They make a bet, stay with it, and if all goes wrong, they lose it all.'

16. 'A great many smashes by brilliant men can be traced directly to the swelled head - an expensive disease everywhere to everybody, but particularly in Wall Street to a speculator.'

17. 'There is only one side to the stock market; and it is not the bull side or the bear side, but the right side'

18. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre, the source work from which most of these quotations are taken. This is a newly edited and updated version for ease of online reading, with fully restored typography conventions and author's phrasing to accurately reflect intended meaning of the original published work. Hyperlinks to external references have been introduced to help clarify unfamiliar terminology and offer background context about key personalities and events mentioned in the text.

1. Money is made by sitting, not trading.

2. My main life lesson from investing: self-interest is the most powerful force on earth, and can get people to embrace and defend almost anything.

3. 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.

4. The only thing to do when a man is wrong is to be right by ceasing to be wrong.

5. Never try to sell at the top. It isn't wise. Sell after a reaction if there is no rally.

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

7. 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.

8. To anticipate the market is to gamble. To be patient and react only when the market gives the signal is to speculate.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. Ignorance at twenty-two isn't a structural defect.

13. 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.

14. There is the plain fool who does the wrong thing at all times anywhere, but there is the Wall Street fool who thinks he must trade all the time.