ZF Capital

All through time, people have basically acted and reacted the same way in the market as a result of: greed, fear, ignorance, and hope. That is why the numerical (technical) formations and patterns recur on a constant basis.

– Jesse Livermore, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

Tips! How people want tips! They crave not only to get them but to give them. There is greed involved, and vanity. It is very amusing, at times, to watch really intelligent people fish for them. And the tip-giver need not hesitate about the quality, for the tip-seeker is not really after good tips, but after any tip. If it makes good, fine! If it doesn’t, better luck with the next.

– Jesse Livermore, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

Nothing new occurs in the business of speculating or investing in securities.

Years pass; bull markets come and go. Yet the basics are still the same: Price, volume, and crowd behavior set the stage for all else.

– Jesse Livermore, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

Money cannot consistently be made trading every day or every week during the year.

In other words, overtrading is a great way to lose money. Standing aside is the right call more often than not.

– Jesse Livermore, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

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. 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.

– Jesse Livermore, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

The speculator’s chief enemies are always boring from within. It is inseparable from human nature to hope and to fear. In speculation when the market goes against you you hope that every day will be the last day—and you lose more than you should had you not listened to hope—to the same ally that is so potent a success-bringer to empire builders and pioneers, big and little. And when the market goes your way you become fearful that the next day will take away your profit, and you get out—too soon.

Fear keeps you from making as much money as you ought to. The successful trader has to fight these two deep-seated instincts. He has to reverse what you might call his natural impulses. Instead of hoping he must fear; 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. It is absolutely wrong to gamble in stocks the way the average man does.

– Jesse Livermore, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

A man may beat a stock or group at a certain time, but no man living can beat the stock market.

– Jesse Livermore, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator