'It was the change in my own attitude that was of supreme importance to me. If he pushes his confidence to its logical limit he is bound to go broke.' 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. 'I should say that a chart helps those who can read it or rather who can assimilate what they read. 'If a stock doesn't act right don't touch it because being unable to tell precisely what is wrong you cannot tell which way it is going.' 'The game of speculation isn't all mathematics or set rules, however rigid the main laws may be.' And when you know what not to do in order to lose money, you begin to learn what to do in order to win. 'There is nothing like losing all you have in the world for teaching you what not to do. Let your winners run and cut your losses quickly.' No stock is too high to buy or too low to sell. Some other rules to live by that were introduced in LeFevre's book are: -The trend is your friend. Where did the comparison between greed and fear first originate? You'll find it on page 130. If you have ever wondered where the trading rule 'Never average down' came from, just turn to page 154.

This is the book from which almost every subsequent general trading book is derived. These are the trading rules that have been passed down from mothers to daughters, fathers to sons, mentors to students, winners to losers.

'Although a sizeable portion of the book vividly describes the highs and lows of Livingston's exciting life, the meat of the book comes in the form of trading commandments that every successful trader can likely repeat even while asleep. Had Livingston been alive today he would certainly be a momentum/price action based trader.' He knew that he could get rich by following a defined trend and thus calmly waited on the sidelines when the market was directionless. Livingston never traded out of boredom or solely for the sake of the excitement it brought to him. He didn't believe in picking tops or bottoms he waited for a trend to be confirmed and then jumped in, thus never fighting the tape. His approach was to figure out what the path of least resistance was and then go with the flow. He didn't mind being long or short, he just wanted to be correct. 'Livingston never considered himself an investor he was a speculator. I so desperately wish I had read this book a year ago.

This book 90 year old book confirmed a lot of my good habits and grew many more. After very successfully trading the ups and downs of the last few weeks, my dad (a former daytrader) bought me 'Reminiscences of a Stock Operator' - by Edwin Lefèvre

Reminiscences of a stock operator pdf