75 Quotes by Jesse Livermore
Jesse Livermore, a pioneer of stock trading, is remembered as a complex and enigmatic figure who revolutionized the world of finance in the early 20th century. His life story is one of extraordinary highs and lows, marked by his uncanny ability to predict market trends and make massive profits, as well as his tragic downturns that led to financial ruin. Livermore's understanding of market psychology and his innovative trading techniques earned him the nickname "The Boy Plunger." He was among the first to recognize the power of momentum and the importance of understanding human emotions in the stock market. His insights into fear and greed as driving forces in trading continue to be studied by investors and traders to this day. Livermore's legacy is one of both triumph and tragedy, serving as a cautionary tale about the perils of unchecked risk-taking in the financial world.
Jesse Livermore Quotes
The game of speculation is the most uniformly fascinating game in the world. But it is not a game for the stupid, the mentally lazy, the person of inferior emotional balance, or the get-rich-quick adventurer. They will die poor.
Just remember, without discipline, a clear strategy, and a concise plan, the speculator will fall into all the emotional pitfalls of the market - jump from one stock to another, hold a losing position too long, and cut out of a winner too soon, for no reason other than fear of losing profit. Greed, Fear, Impatience, Ignorance, and Hope will all fight for mental dominance over the speculator. Then, after a few failures and catastrophes the speculator may become demoralised, depressed, despondent, and abandon the market and the chance to make a fortune from what the market has to offer.
Don't take action with a trade until the market, itself, confirms your opinion. Being a little late in a trade is insurance that your opinion is correct. In other words, don't be an impatient trader.
After spending many years in Wall Street and after making and losing millions of dollars I want to tell you this: It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight!
It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting.
To anticipate the market is to gamble. To be patient and react only when the market gives the signal is to speculate.
The stock market is never obvious. It is designed to fool most of the people, most of the time.
The market does not beat them. They beat themselves, because though they have brains they cannot sit tight.
A prudent speculator never argues with the tape. Markets are never wrong, opinions often are.
Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon.
Disregarding the big swing and trying to jump in and out was fatal to me. 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 general conditions and not tips or special factors affecting individual stocks.
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.
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.
It isn't as important to buy as cheap as possible as it is to buy at the right time.
Wall Street never changes, the pockets change, the suckers change, the stocks change, but Wall Street never changes, because human nature never changes.
Remember this: When you are doing nothing, those speculators who feel they must trade day in and day out, are laying the foundation for your next venture. You will reap benefits from their mistakes.
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.
It is foolhardy to make a second trade, if your first trade shows you a loss. Never average losses. Let this thought be written indelibly upon your mind.
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.
Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon. I found it one of the hardest things to learn. But it is only after a stock operator has firmly grasped this that he can make big money.
It takes a man a long time to learn all the lessons of all his mistakes.
There is only one side to the stock market; and it is not the bull side or the bear side, but the right side
Money is made by sitting, not trading.
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.
When I'm 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 a rising scale. I don't buy long stocks on a scale down, I buy on a scale up.
There are times when you should be completely out of the market, for emotional as well as economic reasons.
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.
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.
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.
A loss never bothers me after I take it. I forget it overnight. But being wrong - not taking the loss - that is what does damage to the pocketbook and to the soul.
People who look for easy money invariable pay for the privilege of proving conclusively that it cannot be found on this earth.
If a man is both wise and lucky, he will not make the same mistake twice. But he will make any one of ten thousand brothers or cousins of the original.
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.
It took me five years to learn to play the game intelligently enough to make big money when I was right.
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.
Never buy at the bottom, and always sell too soon. (Meaning)
A market does not culminate in one grand blaze of glory. Neither does it end with a sudden reversal of form. A market can and does often cease to be a bull market long before prices generally begin to break.
When everyone thinks alike, there isn't much thinking taking place. Get out when you can, not when you have to.
The desire for constant action irrespective of underlying conditions is responsible for many losses on 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 one ever went broke by taking a profit. (Meaning)
Instead of hoping he must fear and instead of fearing he must hope. He must fear that his loss may develop into a much bigger loss, and hope that his profit may become a big profit.
I cannot fear to be wrong because I never think I'm wrong until I am proven wrong. In fact, I am uncomfortable unless I am capitalizing my experience.
At long as a stock is acting right, and the market is right, do not be in a hurry to take profits. One should never permit speculative ventures to run into investments.
It isn't a hunch but the subconscious mind, which is the creative mind, at work. That is the mind which makes artists do things without their knowing how they came to do them. Perhaps with me it was the cumulative effect of a lot of little things individually insignificant but collectively powerful.
There is time to go long, time to go short and time to go fishing.
A man must study general conditions, to seize them so as to be able to anticipate probabilities.
Never try to sell at the top. It isn't wise. Sell after a reaction if there is no rally.
If you can't sleep at night because of your stock market position, then you have gone too far. If this is the case, then sell your position down to the sleeping level.
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.
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.
Professional traders have always had some system or other based upon their experience and governed either by their attitude towards speculation or by their desires.
I never argue with the tape. To be angry at the market because it unexpectedly or even illogically goes against you is like getting mad at your lungs because you have pneumonia.
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. In a bear market all stocks go down and in a bull market they go up.
"I can't sleep" answered the nervous one.
"Why not?" asked the friend.
"I am carrying so much cotton that I can't sleep thinking about. It is wearing me out. What can I do?"
"Sell down to the sleeping point", answered the friend."
I did precisely the wrong thing. The cotton showed me a loss and I kept it. The wheat showed me a profit and I sold it out. Of all the speculative blunders there are few greater than trying to average a losing game. Always sell what shows you a loss and keep what shows you a profit.
The market always does what it should do, but not always when
A man must believe in himself and his judgement if he expects to make a living at this game. That is why I don't believe in tips."
The only thing to do when a man is wrong is to be right by ceasing to be wrong.
It is what people actually did in the stock market that counted - not what they said they were going to do.
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.
I began to realize that the big money must necessarily be in the big swing.
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. Where I should have made twenty thousand dollars I made two thousand. That was what conservatism did for me.
Trends come like a series of ocean waves, bringing the high tide when things are good and, as conditions recede, the low tide appears. These trends come unexpectedly, unpredictably, and they have to be weathered with temperance, poise, and patience- good or bad.
I don't know whether I make myself plain, but I never lose my temper over the stock market. I never argue with the tape. Getting sore at the market doesn't get you anywhere.
I have always played a lone hand. It is the way my mind works. I have to do my own seeing and my own thinking. But I can tell you that after the market began to go my way I felt for the first time in my life that I had allies - the strongest and truest in the world: underlying conditions. They were helping me with all their might.
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. They have cost stock traders, in the aggregate, enough millions of dollars to build a concrete highway across the continent.
"If I buy stocks on Smith's tip I must sell those same stocks on Smith's tip. I am depending on him. Suppose Smith is away on a holiday when the selling time comes around?
If somebody had told me my method would not work I nevertheless would have tried it out to make sure for myself, for when I am wrong only one thing convinces me of it, and that is, to lose money. And I am only right when I make money. That is speculating.
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.
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.
He will risk half his fortune in the stock market with less reflection that he devotes to the selection of a medium-priced automobile.
Don't give me timing, give me time
I was utterly free of speculative prejudices. The bear side doesn't appeal to me any more than the bull side, or vice versa. My one steadfast prejudice is against being wrong.
When a man is right he wants to get all that is coming to him for being right.
Ignorance at twenty-two isn't a structural defect.
― Jesse Livermore Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
