The Jessie Livermore - Site

[fxfox]

I dont understand why livermore cant count as a very good trader cause he commited suicide. The one thing has nothing to do with the other. Maybe a doctor told him, he has cancer and will live only for 2 more months?

 

He was a genius.

 

MAXX,

"I consider him a great trader with one minor flaw, he was totally addicted to the game. He couldn't quit. If I could only make one of his fortunes I'd be done."

 

no, you will not. Once you made monster style money with trading you will trade again and again. You will never ever quit trading the stock market. Stocks are like cocaine.

[machinehead]

That is quite right, fxfox. If you run up a million to a hundred million, it will occur to you that another hundred-fold multiplication will take you to ten billion, which would rank as one of the world's great fortunes.

 

But trying for another hundred-fold pop instead might send you on a round trip back to where you came from. If you regroup, you can do it again. Jesse Livermore did it at least three times.

 

"The wheel in the sky keeps on turning."

[Slothrop]

Fxfox: I think the personality disorder that led the man along the riches/poverty cycle also had something to do with the suicide. I can't emulate him as "the greatest trader that ever lived" if any of the twisted mind that made him a great trader also contributed to the "now I've got to kill myself" mentality.

 

Besides which, my man Larry Williams has a better record and appears to be mentally healthy as well.

[DrStool]

The game ended when they put in the uptick rule.

 

Pretty clear Jesse was manic depressive.

 

"Reminiscences" is a great book.

[anotherone]

He did puty a significant sum into annuities, so he didn't die broke. Broken, perhaps, but not broke.

 

Some people get too wrapped up in one thing and it becomes their life/identity. For example, men who die within a year or two of retiring becuase they had no interests other than work. Look at the authors, musicians who keep writing book after book or recording albumn after albumn despite having said all they really had to say early on in their careers. It's a sobering thought. Better to tend a garden.

[Charmin]

Jesse admitted he made the most just sitting tight:

 

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 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. I've known many men who were right at exactly the right time, and began buying or selling stocks when prices were at the very level, which should show the greatest profit. And their experience invariably matched mine -- that is, they made no real money out of it. 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.

 

I like the online version of Jesse.

[BAREister]

Well if u sit tight u damned well bettahhh'd be RITE!!! or say, GOOD NITE!

 

Maybe HRFF is JPD (just plain DUMB) butt he's sat tight on shorts all through this decline, the pASSt several years, rarely, if ever having gone NET long. Now, he's relinquished a small FURtune thrice or at least twice with URPIX, as it spiked and crashed butt he's sat tight thru this IDIOTIC JAMJOB. And he thinks Russell and Inger and all those bullish MAROONS ass Wollie (who is THE maroon of bullish maroon's with his DJIA 16,000 "moon rocket" theory, BTW) would say, are going to get their HEADS handed to 'em by Ms. Market. He's sat on a large short position thru this late fall/early winter jamjob, and just increased it, FURday by nearly 50%.

 

His theory is quite simple: luck no matter what kind, usually changes, unless it wipes you out, kills or maims you, FURst, that is. And these bulls have had a quarter century of luck, now it's turning and they think they're entitled to still MORE, after only a brief/fleeting hiatus, or, at least a resumption of it. It's an idiotic notion on it's face. And it's SNOT being borne out by funnymentals, either, to put it rather drily.

 

We won't even THINK that we, the Boomers and our PARENTS are the LUCKIEST generations to walk the face of the earth, EVER, and what a change in THAT may portend. No. We WON'T.

 

Humpty Dumpty is falling or had it, already. All the King's horses and men are rushing about, madly trying to put him together again.

 

Lettuce hope they succeed. The alternatives are too dreadful FUR our PAMPERED minds to THINK ABOUT, let alone ENDURE.

[BAREister]

"Maybe a doctor told him, he has cancer and will live only for 2 more months?"

 

No. Wrong PICTURE SHOW. That was Papa (Hemmingway).

 

Mr Macho, who lied about things, like his WWI experiences, couldn't face it, per someone who told HRFF that. But then the person (a very young bartender) who told HRFF that himself died of same, ironically.