Jesse Livermore came to conclude from tape reading that day trading or short term trading is not the way to finance riches and went on to become a trend follower.
In reference to Mr. Partridge, "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."
It still works. You dont need a blackbox to trade: I know quite a few people that simply watch the market and their current issues of interest and refer to a chart. They do very well. I also know others that use huge amounts of computing power and surround themselves with monitors and TV's: Funny thing is, they both make money and the experienced person with a simple chart and quote feed often makes more than the people that invested tens or hundreds of thousands on "smart" systems and overcapacity hardware. Experience still counts in this business and cant be completely replaced by programming: just keep that in mind .....
I disagree, Few people or organizations, individually or collectively can affect any market. Liquidity prevails in most markets. Asset allocation prevailed in financial planning ad nauseum. It is being replaced nowadays but not because everyone used it, but because it is not viable relative to competion with othr better strategies. I have not changed my basic approach since 1957. a lot od things have happened since then and I do not notice things coming and going but moreso that many things operate side by side. I track about 12 methodologies to give consideration as to how a given thing could improve their performance. The vaste array of successful methods seems to continue apace and rarely are improvements made. They seem to maintain a relative ranking that is unchanging.
Program trading appears to be such a signficant factor that many of the specialists ( on the NYSE ) simply back away, especially on these low volume days like today . . . Could be like this until Friday's Unemployment Data or the release of Intel's Mid-Quarter Update after the close tomorrow. Right now, the NYSE will be lucky to do 1.3 million shares today!
Yes, I vaguely recall that general reference in the "Reminiscences" book, and I also think there is something to igOr's reply to your post. However, it is interesting to note that Mr. Livermore was more consistently profitable before he apparently went for the big moves. If memory serves (I last read the book a few years ago) he may have made more money later on when he apparently adopted a longer term view. However, that is also the time he ran into greater financial difficulty from which he eventually was not able to extricate himself. Perhaps there is no causal relationship between the two, but at the very least it is an interesting coincidence. I wonder if subscribing to a longer term view may potentially have a blinding effect resulting from a bias. Who knows. It seems that, at times, some people make money and others don't. Each then justifies the outcome as he or she sees fit. And so it goes.
i still read the tape... not as much as before but its still practiced... most of the newbucks that come into this do not have either... technology or experience... just fueled on false hope and greed for the most part... IMO.
<font color=green>From Livermore Market Key by Jesse Livermore Many years of my life had been devoted to speculation before it dawned upon me that nothing new was happening in the stock market, that price movement were simply being repeated, that while there were variation in different stocks the general price pattern was the same. The urge fell upon me, as I have said to keep price records that might be a guide to price movements. This I undertook with some zest. Then I began striving to find a point to start from in helping me to anticipate future movements. That was no easy task. Now I can look back on those initial efforts and understand why they were not immediately fruitful. Having then a purely speculative mind, I was trying to devise a policy for trading in and out of the market all the time, catching the small intermediate moves. This was wrong, and in time I clearly recognized the fact. I continued keeping records, confident that they had a genuine value which only awaited my discovery. At length the secret unfolded. The records told me plainly that they would do nothing for me in the way of intermediate movements. But if I would but use my eyes, I would see the formation of patterns that would foretell major movement..................</font>