Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (A Marketplace Book Book 173)

by Edwin Lefèvre

But if something was coming and I didn’t know where from, I couldn’t be on my guard against it. That being the case I’d better be out of the market.

They say you never grow poor taking profits. No, you don’t. But neither do you grow rich taking a four-point profit in a bull market.

Suppose a man’s line is five hundred shares of stock. I say that he ought not to buy it all at once; not if he is speculating.

The way to make money is to make it. The way to make big money is to be right at exactly the right time.

Let him buy one-fifth of his full line. If that does not show him a profit he must not increase his holdings because he has obviously begun wrong; he is wrong temporarily and there is no profit in being wrong at any time.

Of all speculative blunders there are few greater than trying to average a losing game. My cotton deal proved it to the hilt a little later. Always sell what shows you a loss and keep what shows you a profit.

The money a man loses is nothing; he can make it up. But opportunities such as I had then do not come every day.

“The principles of successful stock speculation are based on the supposition that people will continue in the future to make the mistakes that they have made in the past.”

The chap who is compelled to lug a corpse a year or two always loses more than the original cost of the deceased; he is sure to find himself tied up with it when some really good things come his way.