Quote from Avalanche:
The best of Remincecents of a Stock Operator.
Page 10
Another lesson I learned early is that there is nothing new in Wall Street. There canât be because speculation is as old as the hills. Whatever happens in the stock market today has happen before and will happen again.
Page 11
The reason for what a certain stock does today may not be known for two or there days, or weeks, or months⦠But you must act instantly or be left.
Page 21
What beat me was not having brains enough to stick to own gameâthat is , to play the market only when I was satisfied that precedents favored my play. There is a time for all things, but I didnât know it.
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.
Page 22
The Desire for constant action irrespective of underlying conditions is responsible for many losses in Wall Street even among the professionals, who feel that they must take home some money everyday, as though they were working for regular wages.
Page 36
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.
A man must believe in himself and his judgment if he expects to make a living at this game.
Page 39
We not only ran into an era of industrial consolidations and combinations of capital that had beaten anything we had up to that time, but the public went stock mad.
Page 59
I was twenty when I made my first ten thousand and I lost that. But I knew how and why- because I traded out of season all the time; because when I couldnât play according to my system, which was based on study and experience, I went and gambled. I hoped to win instead of knowing that I ought to win on form.
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 not to do in order to win. Did you get that? You begin to learn.
Page 60
If a stock doesnât act right donât 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.
Page 61
âI should say that a chart helps those you can read it or rather who can assimilate what they read. The average chart reader, however, is apt to become obsessed with the notion that the dips and peaks and primary and secondary movements are all there is to stock speculation. If he pushes his confidence to its logical limit he is bound to go broke.
Page 62
I didnât expect to do as well as I did in the bucket shops, but I though after a while I would do much better because I would be able to swing a much heavier line. Yet I can see now that my main trouble was failure to grasp the vital difference between stock gambling and stock speculating.
Page 63
It was the change in my own attitude that was of supreme importance to me. It taught me, little by little, the essential difference between betting on fluctuations and anticipating inevitable advances and declines, between gambling and speculating.
Page 68
I think it was a long step forward in my trading education when I realized at last that that when old Mr. Partridge kept on telling the other the other customers, âWell, you know this is a bull market!â he really meant to tell them that the big money was not in the individual fluctuations but in the main movements â 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 always was sitting. Got that? My sitting tight!
⦠It is no trick at all to be right on the market⦠Iâve known many men who were right at exactly the right time and began buying or selling stocks at exactly the right timeâ¦
And there experience invariably matched mineâthat is, they made no real money out of it.
Page 69
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 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.
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 must study general conditions and not tips or special factors affecting individual stocks. Then get out of all your stocks; get out for keeps!
Page 77
âThe tape doesnât lie, does it?â âIt doesnât always tell the truth on the instant,â I said
Page 83
It was not that all I needed to learn was not to take tips but follow my own inclination. It was that I gained confidence in myself and I was able finally to shake off the old method of trading.
Page 84
But the average man doesnât 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 doesnât even wish to think.
Well I wasnât that lazy but I found it easier to think of individual stocks than of the general market and therefore of individual fluctuations rather that than of general movements. I had to change that and I did.
Page 109
The big men of the Street are prone to wishful thinkers as the politicians or the plain suckers. In a speculator such an attitude is fatal.
Page 111
For a sucker play a man gets sucker pay.
Page 123
At 164 prices looked mighty high, but as I told you before, stocks are never too high to buy or too low to sell.
Page 126
âDo you wish to gamble blindly in the hope of getting a great big profit or do you wish to speculate intelligently and get a smaller but much more probable profit?â
Page 130
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 his loss may develop into a much bigger loss, and hope that his profit may become a much bigger profit.
Page 180
Nowhere does history indulge it repetitions so often or so uniformly as is Wall Street.
And there is anther thing to remember, and that is that a market does not culminate in one grand blaze of glory. Neither does it end with a sudden reversal of form.
Page 183
Never try to sell at the top. It isnât wise. Sell after a reaction if there is no rally.
Page 184
As I said before, in a bear market it is always wise to cover if complete demoralization suddenly develops.
Page 247
The first step in a bull movement in a stock is to advertise the fact that there is a bull movement on.
No need to read or buy the book anymore, is there?
