<i>"I posted this on another Livermore thread a while back..... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote from Pabst: Several of the post's on this thread are the most asinine, judgmental BS I've read in many a moon. Someone's going to say with a straight face that a high school dropout quote boy who parlayed a few dollars into at one point perhaps nine figures, wasn't talented? LMFAO."</i> I don't know if anyone ever said Livermore wasn't talented... that's irrelevant. As a trader, he sucked. He sucked dirty canal water as a trader. Nothing Livermore did was remarkable... same stuff has been done by literally 1,000s of traders and gamblers for eons. There are traders in the market right now building bankrolls off non-repeatable circumstance. Same is true for card players in Vegas. What's that prove? Can they keep what they have or more importantly, repeat the process? If not, they are merely victims of circumstance, nothing more. A successful trader by any reasonable definition does not rely on crooked schemes and manipulation of situations. Those events are not duplicatable. If Livermore had quit early, he still wouldn't have been a great trader. He would have been a great robber baron by definition. I've said this in other threads, too: Livermore may have been the finest person to ever breathe air. May have helped widows & orphans in all his spare time. As a person, he may have been wonderful. As a trader of financial securities using superior skills on a level playing field? He ate horse s(tuff) and called it filet mignon. His posthumous biography is compiled of quotes others thought they recalled him saying. How much of that was manufactered by other writers (the author?) long past his burial? Talented? Yes. Great trader? No.
AustinP ;"Nothing Livermore did was remarkable... same stuff has been done by literally 1,000s of traders and gamblers for eons." Why did he then became so famous ? you sound a little jealous
My first thought is that he did not like the politics... Traders talking it up with all the derogatory comments about the late Mr. Livermore...it's like talkin' bad about Babe Ruth... He was a trader that I would have liked to meet in person. (I would even tip my hat to his relatives) Michael B.
The usual suspect: http://www.amazon.com/Reminiscences...=pd_bbs_2/103-4891983-9835817?ie=UTF8&s=books By the way, his useage of clerks on a giant board putting up numbers/trends is equivalent of today's computers. So basicly he was a few decades ahead of his time... I also liked this book, about the Crash, with additional info on Jesse: http://www.amazon.com/Day-Bubble-Bu...ef=sr_1_3/103-4891983-9835817?ie=UTF8&s=books
"By the way, his useage of clerks on a giant board putting up numbers/trends is equivalent of today's computers. So basicly he was a few decades ahead of his time..." As I recall from the book, he had his own codes and symbols. Not much written about that. I wonder where all his trading notes and papers went? His brokerage records, etc. It would be fascinating to view.
Quote from austinp: As a trader, he sucked. He sucked dirty canal water as a trader. He must have. After all he lived all his adult life in extreme wealth, and fucked young girls until his 60s... And before you mention his passing away, only a fool would die rich. What's the point in that? P.S.: He also "accidentally" shorted 2 of the greatest crashes of his time. Some luck, I guess...
What was the reason he lost it all several times ? too much concentration in a few stocks, not using stoplosses ?
I think he was the founder of technical analysis. In my opinion he was most likely manic-depressive and probably a little gambling addiction that caused him to lose money. When people mention his loses, they forget that he always came back from it. And as I mentioned, he was a financial gentleman, always paying back his creditors, even when he was not obligated to do so. A short bio with his trading philosophies: http://www.marketthoughts.com/jesse_livermore.html Another reason for his loses could be the changing market and not being able to adopt fast enough. He died at 63, and started to trade at 15. That means he was a trader for almost 5 decades!!! Of course markets change in such a long timeframe. But it is really hard to tell without knowing the actual trades....