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

by Nicolas Darvas

They might know all about their company but they did not know about the attitude of the market in which their stock was sold.

I spent six months in Japan before I finally became a well-known figure in the cable offices of most of the major cities. They even began cheerfully to accept my cables without a special signature. The word had gone around among the Japanese that I was a mad, but apparently harmless, European who kept sending and receiving telegrams containing financial gibberish.

If one horse is going to win, it will win, even if thousands of onlookers are cheering for another one.

I tried to detect those stocks that resisted the decline. I reasoned that if they could swim against the stream, they were the ones that would advance most rapidly when the current changed.

I would marry my technical approach to the fundamental one. I would select stocks on their technical action in the market, but I would only buy them when I could give improving earning power as my fundamental reason for doing so.

techno-fundamentalist theory,

The truth was that as my pocket had strengthened, my head had weakened. I became over-confident, and that is the most dangerous state of mind anyone can develop in the stock market.