Edwin Lefèvre - Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (1923)

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" I am carrying so much cotton that I can't sleep thinking about it. It is wearing me out. What can I do?"
" Sell down to the sleeping point," answered the friend.

Edwin Lefèvre
It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It was always my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight!

Edwin Lefèvre
When the man who ought to want a stock doesn't want it, why should I want it?

Edwin Lefèvre
" Oh, Mr. Wolff, what do you think of Balzac? "
Josh politely ceased to masticate, swallowed and answered,
" I never trade them Curb stocks! "

Edwin Lefèvre
It takes a man a long time to learn all the lessons of all of his mistakes. They say there are two sides to everything. But there is only one side to the stock market; and it is not the bull side or the bear side, but the right side. It took me longer to get that general principle fixed firmly in my mind than it did most of the more technical phases of the game of stock speculation.

Edwin Lefèvre
One of the most helpful things that any body can learn is to give up trying to catch the last eighth - or the first. These two are the most expensive eighths in the world.

Edwin Lefèvre
Nowhere does history indulge in repetitions so often or so uniformly as in Wall Street.

Edwin Lefèvre
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.

Edwin Lefèvre
The speculators deadly enemies are: Ignorance, greed, fear and hope. All the statute books in the world and all the rules of all the Exchanges on earth cannot eliminate these from the human animal.

Edwin Lefèvre
As a matter of fact I trade in accordance to my means and always leave myself an ample margin of safety.

Edwin Lefèvre
No man can always have adequate reasons for buying or selling stocks daily - or sufficient knowledge to make his play an intelligent play.

Edwin Lefèvre
It didn't require a Sherlock Holmes to size up the situation.

Edwin Lefèvre
People who look for easy money invariably pay for the privilege of proving conclusively that it cannot be found on this sordid earth.

Edwin Lefèvre
The public never is independently responsive to news.

Edwin Lefèvre
As I have said a thousand times, no manipulation can put stocks down and keep them down.

Edwin Lefèvre
There is no question that advertising is an art, and manipulation is the art of advertising through the medium of the tape.

Edwin Lefèvre
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. No diagnosis, no prognosis. No prognosis, no profit.

Edwin Lefèvre
TIPS! How people want tips! They crave not only to get them but to give them.

Edwin Lefèvre
In fact, of all hoodoos in Wall Street I think the resolve to induce the stock market to act as a fairy godmother is the busiest and most persistent.

Edwin Lefèvre
If a man didn't make mistakes he'd own the world in a month.
But if he didn't profit by his mistakes he wouldn't own a blessed thing.

Edwin Lefèvre
That is one trouble about trading on a large scale.
You cannot sneak out as you can when you pike along.

Edwin Lefèvre
And for a sucker play a man gets sucker pay; for the paymaster is on the job and never losses the pay envelope that is coming to you.

Edwin Lefèvre
The big money in booms is always made first by the public - on paper.
And it remains on paper.

Edwin Lefèvre
There is nothing like losing all you have in the world for teaching you what not to do. And when you know what not to do in order not to lose money, you begin to learn what to do in order to win. Did you get that? You begin to learn!

Edwin Lefèvre
A battle goes on in the stock market and the tape is your telescope. You can depend upon it seven out of ten cases.

Edwin Lefèvre
History repeats itself all the time on Wall Street.

Edwin Lefèvre
To subordinate my judgment to his desires was the undoing of me.

Edwin Lefèvre
A stock operator has to fight a lot of expensive enemies within himself.

Edwin Lefèvre
When you find that it fails to respond adequately to your buying you don't need any better tip to sell.

Edwin Lefèvre
When it comes to selling stocks, it is plain that nobody can sell unless somebody wants those stocks.
If you operate on a large scale you will have to bear that in mind all the time.

Edwin Lefèvre