Everyone seems to agree that this is one of the best books ever written on the market... I'm curious to hear just why people think this is so(i.e., what key points are driven home in it that have made a big difference in their trading).
Practically everything that's been written during the past fifty years has been a restatement of Wyckoff, Livermore, and Schabacker. One of the most important lessons I learned from all three was to trade what you see, not what you think. --Db
The key with any real insightful book is the teachings of the mind, thought process and decisions made by the trader. It's not the system of trade that makes a successful trader, but rather how the trader comes about making decisions and how they control their perception. So when you place 95% of your time trying to figure out a trading system, odds favor you will then fall into the 90% static of those who fail. Just my opinion.
It teaches Realism..at least it did to me. The market does this, you do that. You can't control the market, you can't outsmart it, you can't rule it, whatever. Realistically, all you can do is make your decision and implement it with all the blame for profits and losses on yourself, not "them" or "they". Anything and everything that could ever happen in the market has already happened. Realistically, all we can do is repeat those same occurences, not from a hope/ego/emotional, etc. mindset, but from a realistic one meaning my opinions don't matter, it's market action that should dictate trading decisions..and your ability to read that price action through a clear understanding of deep tape reading principles. Just my thoughts on this book that really helped me to turn a corner in my perception of market reading. Chris
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 time⦠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.
a subset of those previously mentioned, but they really hit home with me... 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 59 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 68 It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was sitting. Got that? My sitting tight! 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.
"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." this is so true.
The way in which someone chooses to end their life doesn't change the wisdom of the lessons taught by the stories shared during their life before they chose to end it. Now if it had been a book about how to life a happy and fulfilling life, I might agree with you.