How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market

by Nicolas Darvas

Simultaneously, I tried to train my emotions. I worked it this way: Whenever I bought a stock, I wrote down my reason for doing so. I did the same when I sold it. Whenever a trade ended with a loss, I wrote down the reason I thought caused it. Then I tried not to repeat the same mistake.

I started to see that stocks have characters just like people. This is not so illogical, because they faithfully reflect the character of the people who buy and sell them. Like human beings, stocks behave differently. Some of them are calm, slow, conservative. Others are jumpy, nervous, tense. Some of them I found easy to predict. They were consistent in their moves, logical in their behavior. They were like dependable friends.