Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

back to index

description: book by Edwin Lefèvre

39 results

Trend Commandments: Trading for Exceptional Returns
by Michael W. Covel
Published 14 Jun 2011

For a third and final example, let us introduce Jesse Livermore, a very central figure in the history of trend following, about whom more will be said later. Here is a significant quote from him: “…the big money is not in the individual fluctuations but in the main movements—that is, not in reading the tape but in sizing up the entire market and its trend.”3 This last quote is from Edwin Lefèvre’s “Reminiscences of a Stock Operator,” a series of articles from the Saturday Evening Post in 1922-1923, reprinted in book form many times. Although the speaker is stated to be Larry Livingston, it is generally agreed, based on known biographical information, that Lefèvre’s interviewee was Jesse Livermore. The quotation, in turn, is Livermore’s interpretation of an oft-repeated statement made by “Old Partridge,” a brokerage-house acquaintance of Livermore’s, that “It’s a bull market, you know.”

See http://www.criticalthinking.org/aboutCT/define_critical_thinking.cfm. Origins 1. James Grant, The Great Metropolis, second series volume II (London, 1837), p. 81. 2. Arthur W. Cutten, “The Story of a Speculator.” Saturday Evening Post (December 3, 1932), p.13. 3. Edwin Lefèvre, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. Garden City, New York: The Sun Dial Press, 1923, p. 54. 4. Ibid., p. 54. 5. Ibid., p. 115. 6. Henry Clews, Twenty-eight Years in Wall Street. New York: Irving Publishing, 1888, p. 20. 7. Robert R. Prechter, Jr., R. N. Elliott’s Masterworks: The Definitive Collection. Gainsville: New Classics Library, 1994, p. 50. 8.

Richard D. Wyckoff, Studies in Tape Reading. New York: Financial Guardian Publishing Company, 1924, p. 7. 11. Richard D. Wyckoff, Stock Market Technique Number 2. Fraser Publishing Company, 1989, reprint of 1934 edition, p. 197. 12. Wyckoff, Studies in Tape Reading. p. 131. 13. Lefèvre, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. p. 101. 14. Ibid., p. 213. 262 Tre n d C o m m a n d m e n t s 15. Jesse L. Livermore, How to Trade in Stocks: The Livermore Formula for Combining Time Element and Price. New York: Duel, Sloan & Pearce, 1940, p. 20. 16. Ibid., p. 24. 17. Alfred E. Cowles III and Herbert E. Jones, “Some a Posteriori Probabilities in Stock Market Actions.”

pages: 268 words: 81,811

Flash Crash: A Trading Savant, a Global Manhunt, and the Most Mysterious Market Crash in History
by Liam Vaughan
Published 11 May 2020

We used to call him ‘The Chav.’ ” For eight weeks, Nav’s group was taken through the theoretical underpinnings of trading in IDT’s pokey classroom. A former Liffe trader led classes on economics, markets, financial products, and risk management, and set homework assignments reading classic texts like Market Wizards, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, and Steidlmayer on Markets. Goldberg gruffly explained the nuts and bolts of placing and canceling trades using the trading software. Paolo regaled the group with war stories. They learned how to read charts and gauge market profile, and discussed the importance of psychology by examining the crowd effect, the history of various market crashes, and seventeenth-century Holland’s tulip mania.

Eventually, he snuck in and spent the rest of the night hiding from the doormen. For old-school traders like Paolo, who proudly displayed their success, it was bewildering. What was the point of making all that money if you were never going to spend it? The closest thing to a bible for traders is Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre. Published in 1923, it recounts the early life and wisdom of Jesse Livermore, a trading guru who went from watching prices on a bucket shop ticker tape at fourteen to making and losing a fortune many times over. At Futex, wet-behind-the-ears graduates and grizzled veterans alike mined well-thumbed copies for insights.

Outside of my own reporting, I relied extensively on the work of academics, authors, lawyers, finance professionals, and fellow journalists, particularly in the sections on HFT and the Flash Crash. They are cited in the notes. Before I wrote a word I read Michael Lewis’s Flash Boys, Scott Patterson’s Dark Pools and The Quants, John Sussex’s Day One Trader, and Edwin Lefevre’s Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, which all proved invaluable. When I embarked on this project at the start of 2018, Nav had already pleaded guilty to spoofing and wire fraud. As part of his plea deal he agreed to provide the U.S. government with ongoing assistance in building other cases, and his sentencing was delayed.

pages: 650 words: 204,878

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
by Edwin Lefèvre and William J. O'Neil
Published 14 May 1923

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Lefèvre, Edwin, 1871-1943. Reminiscences of a stock operator : with new commentary and insights on the life and times of Jesse Livermore / Edwin Lefèvre.—Annotated ed. / by Jon D. Markman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. eISBN : 978-0-470-59322-6 1. New York Stock Exchange. 2. Speculation. 3. Livermore, Jesse L. (Jesse Lauriston), 1877-1940. 4.

The author apparently viewed the trader’s little-known rags-to-riches story as an ideal vessel into which he could mix his own views about all that was deceitful, wretched, and corrupt, yet also energizing and transcendent, about Wall Street. Although Livermore was reclusive and shy, he proved more than willing to share his life’s story with someone of such rich creative talent. The tale that emerged—Reminiscences of a Stock Operator—was without doubt far greater than either could have told alone. In fact, Livermore later wrote his own book about trading, and Lefevre wrote another book centered on a single trader, and neither of those efforts came close to the glory that they had found when teaming together. First published as a series of illustrated articles appearing in the Saturday Evening Post throughout 1922, the work in your hands became a classic for its pitch-perfect dialogue, insightful epigrams, daring raids, and heart-breaking failures.

Moreover, the book may start with the protagonist’s innocent attempts to make money as a gambler in bucket shops and as an increasingly cagey trader in equity and commodity markets, but the last half centers on his efforts as a stock “operator”—a term of art for a market pro hired by investment pools to manipulate a moribund stock for the benefit of insiders. It is not quite right to call this fraud, because it was mostly legal at the time, but Lefevre lets us know that the fine art of ripping off the public was not exactly admirable. Most readers of Reminiscences of a Stock Operator today do not realize that while the Livingston name is fiction, about 90 percent of the other proper names of people and places in the book are real. The fact that the book can be appreciated without knowing anything about its historical context and its cast of characters is a testament to the strength of the central narrative.

Alpha Trader
by Brent Donnelly
Published 11 May 2021

I hope you can use some of these tactics and fold some of my ideas into your process. I could say this 100 times and it would not be enough: The number one rule of trading is: avoid ruin. Before we hit Chapter 12, let’s take a little detour here to talk about Jesse Livermore and the book Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. END OF CHAPTER DETOUR : A QUICK BOOK REVIEW KINDA THING Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is a quintessential (and slightly misunderstood) piece of trading literature. This 1923 classic is a slightly fictionalized biography of Jesse Livermore written by Edwin Lefèvre. Livermore was a famous speculator and Bobby-Axelrod-style celebrity-rich-guy.

I think perhaps algorithms which are less emotional and react less predictably to news, are partly to blame for the decline in the importance of price action, but there could also be the simple fact that everyone knows about this style of analysis, so it has lost its edge. The current generation of 30-to 45-year-old traders were all brought up on Reminiscences of a Stock Operator and Market Wizards and thus we are always scouring the price action for a signal. Throw in the massive price distortions from non-price sensitive central bank buying of various assets and it’s not hard to see how whatever signal price action might have carried in the past has been destroyed by central banks, and arbitraged away by speculators who all learned from the same books and interviews.

And thank you reader, for dedicating the time to read my book. I appreciate it. Special thanks to Stephen K. Donnelly, for all the hours he poured into editing this project. Good luck. Be nimble. New Canaan, Connecticut 2021 APPENDIX A FURTHER READING BOOKS Trading classics Market Wizards (series), Jack Schwager (1989) Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Edwin Lefèvre (1923) Luck vs. skill, process vs. outcome The Success Equation, Michael Mauboussin (2012) Thinking in Bets, Annie Duke (2018) Be disciplined Willpower, Baumeister and Tierney (2012) The Science of Self-Discipline, Peter Hollins (2017) The Disciplined Trader, Mark Douglas (1990) Behavioral finance bibles Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman (2011) Irrational Exuberance, Robert Shiller (2000) Get organized The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey (1988) The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande (2009) The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg (2012) Be self-aware The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle (1997) Breath, James Nestor (2020) The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, John Coates (2012) Get quantitative Fortune’s Formula, William Poundstone (2005) Superforecasting, Dan Gardner and Philip Tetlock (2015) Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Taleb (2001) Fooled by Technical Analysis, Michael Harris (2015) A Man for All Markets, Edward Thorp (2017) Risk, Dan Gardner (2008) How to Lie with Statistics, Darrell Huff (1954) BLOGS, PODCASTS AND NEWSLETTERS Aspen Trading daily and intraday trading newsletter, Dave Floyd Epsilon Theory website, podcast and newsletter, Ben Hunt and Rusty Guynn Exante blog on Substack, Jens Nordvig et al.

pages: 295 words: 66,824

A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market
by John Allen Paulos
Published 1 Jan 2003

Unfortunately, since there are always rumors of every conceivable and contradictory sort (sometimes posted by the same individual), one cannot conclude anything from their existence except that they’re likely to contribute to feelings of hope, fear, anger, and anxiety. Pump and Dump, Short and Distort The rumors are often associated with market scams that exploit people’s normal psychological reactions. Many of these reactions are chronicled in Edwin Lefevre’s 1923 classic novel, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, but the standard “pump and dump” is an illegal practice that has gained new life on the Internet. Small groups of individuals buy a stock and tout it in a misleading hyperbolic way (that is, pump it). Then when its price rises in response to this concerted campaign, they sell it at a profit (dump it).

Gilovich, Thomas, How We Know What Isn’t So, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1991. Hart, Sergiu, and Yair Tauman, “Market Crashes Without Exogenous Shocks,” The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Center for Rationality DP-124, December 1996 (forthcoming in Journal of Business). Kritzman, Mark P., Puzzles of Finance, New York, John Wiley, 2000. Lefevre, Edwin, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, New York, John Wiley, 1994 (orig. 1923). Lo, Andrew, and Craig MacKinlay, A Non-Random Walk Down Wall Street, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1999. Malkiel, Burton, A Random Walk Down Wall Street, New York, W. W. Norton, 1999 (orig. 1973). Mandelbrot, Benoit, “A Multifractal Walk Down Wall Street,” Scientific American, February 1999.

Petersburg paradox stock-newsletter scam based on stock options and probability theory progressive taxation psychology anchoring effect availability error behind buying more stock as price drops confirmation bias counterproductive behavior endowment effect scandal cover-ups status quo bias trying to outguess the masses publicly available information. see also common knowledge accounting scandals and Efficient market hypothesis and pump and dump strategy put options. see also stock options buying/selling puts on S&P as hedge against decline of stock selling strategies for using valuation tools for pyramid schemes quarterly estimates RagingBull railroads, depression of Ramsey, Frank random events appearance of order in Efficient market hypothesis and investing with meaning vs. predictability random sequences A Random Walk Down Wall Street (Malkiel) random walk theory rate of return arithmetic mean outstripping geometric mean Beta (B) values and determining expected excess return fixed, with treasury bills IPO purchases/sales and median vs. average minimizing risk without reducing “single index model” and standard deviation and stocks vs. bonds ratio of the excess return on a portfolio reality, inability to model reforms, accounting practices regression to the mean as contrarian measure Sport Illustrated cover jinx as illustration of widespread examples of Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (Lefevre) resistance levels risks aversion, illustrated by online chatrooms diversification and graphing against expected value (Markowitz optimal portfolios) market-related and stock-related mathematics of minimizing without hurting rate of return options and rate of return and selling short and stocks vs. bonds taking unnecessary Roschach blots Ross, Sheldon roulette rules. see trading strategies rules of thumb, as time saving device rumors conclusions based on not being able to ignore when considering investments S-shaped curve, P/E ratio S&P 500, buying/selling puts Salomon Smith Barney Samuelson, Paul scaling laws. see power law scams card tricks Ponzi schemes, chain letters, and pyramid schemes sports betting scam stock-newsletter scam scandals. see accounting scandals; fraud Scholes, Myron script, sports scam secrecy complexity resulting from lack of investment strategies and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charging WorldCom of inflated earnings decimalization reforms parable of common knowledge and Security Analysis (Graham and Dodd) self-fulfilling beliefs selling on the margin. see short selling sensitive dependence, nonlinear systems sequences complexity of (mathematics of) random sequences random walk theory and share price, P/E ratio. see also prices, of stocks Sharpe, William Sherra, Jesse Shiller, Robert short selling short-term investors shorting and distorting strategy Shubik, Martin Sidgmore, John Siegel, Jeremy “single index model” (Sharpe) six sigma performance Slovic, Paul Sluggish Market Hypothesis Smith, Adam socially regressive funds Spitzer, Eliot Sport Illustrated spread, making money on St.

pages: 467 words: 154,960

Trend Following: How Great Traders Make Millions in Up or Down Markets
by Michael W. Covel
Published 19 Mar 2007

When Livermore was in his 20s, he moved to New York City to speculate in the stock and Chapter 2 • Great Trend Followers 91 commodities markets. After 40 years of trading, he developed a knack for speculating on price movements. One of his foremost rules was, “Never act on tips.” The unofficial biography of Livermore was Reminiscences of a Stock Operator first published in 1923 and written by journalist Edwin Lefevre. Readers likely guessed Lefevre as a pseudonym for Livermore himself. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator went on to become a Wall Street classic. Numerous quotations and euphemisms from the book are so embedded in trading lore that traders today don’t have the slightest idea of their origination. I’ve selected a few of his best:108 1.

Futures Industry Association Review: Interview: Money Managers. See www.fiafii.org. 106. Barbara S. Dixon, Discretionary Accounts. Managed Account Reports. Report No. 20, No. 14, 5. 107. Barbara S. Dixon, Discretionary Accounts. Managed Account Reports. Report No. 20, No. 14, 5. 108. Edwin Lefevre. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. New York: George H. Doran Company, 1923. 109. Andrew Leckey, Dabble, Don’t Dive, in Futures. Chicago Tribune, October 2, 1986, C1. 110. Dickson G. Watts, Speculation as a Fine Art. Reprint. Flint Hill, Virgina: Fraser Publishing Co., 1997. Chapter 3 1. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “A Scandal in Bohemia” in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998. Krauland, and P.C. Mabon. Going Once, Going Twice. Discover (August 2002). Bibliography Le Bon, Gustave. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. Atlanta: Cherokee Publishing Company, 1982. Lefevre, Edwin. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. Canada: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1994. Lerner, Robert L. The Mechanics of the Commodity Futures Markets, What They Are and How They Function. Mount Lucas Management Corp., 2000. Liebovitch, L. S. Fractals and Chaos Simplified for the Life Sciences. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

pages: 499 words: 148,160

Market Wizards: Interviews With Top Traders
by Jack D. Schwager
Published 7 Feb 2012

Are you largely a self-taught trader, or did other traders teach you lessons that were worthwhile? I would say I am self-taught. What is really amazing is how little published literature there is on trading. Is there anything you can recommend to people who are interested in trading? I think Edwin Lefevre’s Reminiscences of a Stock Operator [reputedly a semifictionalized biography of Jesse Livermore, the legendary stock trader] is interesting and captures the feel of trading pretty well, but that book was written sixty-five years ago. Are there some key trading strategies that you can talk about without revealing any secrets?

One client made about $15 million and decided to withdraw his money and manage it himself; another made over $10 million and decided to buy a house on the beach and retire. What source did you learn from before designing your first system? I was inspired and influenced by the book Reminiscences of a Stock Operator and also by Richard Donchian’s five- and twenty-day moving average crossover system and his weekly rule system. I consider Donchian to be one of the guiding lights of technical trading. What was your first trading system? My first system was a variation of Donchian’s moving average system.

Essential reading on top of the list is O’Neil’s book, How to Make Money in Stocks (McGraw-Hill, New York, NY 1988). Another book that is must reading is How I Made Two Million Dollars in the Stock Market by Nicholas Darvas (Lyle Stuart, Inc., Secaucus, NJ, 1986). A lot of people laugh at that title, but it is fun reading and you learn a ton. Another book I would recommend is Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre [reputedly about Jesse Livermore]. Livermore himself wrote a very good thin volume, How to Trade in Stocks (Institute for Economic & Financial Research, Albuquerque, NM, 1986). Any others? A good one on what to look for in individual stocks is Super Performance Stocks by Richard Love (Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1977).

Hedgehogging
by Barton Biggs
Published 3 Jan 2005

Guys I know who are professional commodity traders effusively offered advice, most of which was to buy strength and sell weakness, in other words to go with the flow. They unabashedly told me their short-selling trading tactic invariably was “Don’t fight a losing position. If it doesn’t show you a profit, cover it.” Not very helpful, because we were and are value investors. In my agony, I took out and reread passages from my trading bible, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre. The book was first published in 1923 and is long out of print, but it can be bought from time to time on the Internet.There is little doubt that the stock operator who is the narrator in the book was the legendary Jesse Livermore. The late Gerald Loeb, who wrote The Battle for Investment Survival (“Put all your eggs in one basket and then watch the basket”), and who often acted as Livermore’s broker, told me that Livermore had used Lefevre as his scribe for Reminiscences.

“Right now the markets are telling me that they are going higher, that Asia is a tiger again, and that the U.S. economy is coming on, so I want to own stocks. Maybe the markets know something about the world economy we don’t. I want to own stocks with strong cyclical earnings streams.” ccc_biggs_ch10_133-148.qxd 136 11/29/05 7:02 AM Page 136 HEDGEHOGGING Listening to Dave, I couldn’t help but think of similar comments in Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, which I wrote about in Chapter 3.The protagonist, the Old Turkey, who describes himself as a momentum trader and a student of greed, at one point in the narrative, gave this advice when suddenly stocks stop responding to good news: When the market leaders begin to lose relative strength even though the news is still very good, and buying strength and selling weakness no longer works, get out of stocks in general because the game is over.

Actually the procedure one should follow is to sell the bad position and keep the good position. ccc_biggs_ch14_192-203.qxd 11/29/05 7:04 AM Page 197 Great Investment Managers Are Disciplined Maniacs 197 Baruch wrote that one of his most important rules of investing was to “learn how to take your losses quickly and cleanly.” In Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre, Jesse Livermore says over and over again that you should buy on a scale-up and sell on a scale-down. “Never make a second transaction in a stock,” he writes,“unless the first shows you a profit.Always sell what shows you a loss. Only suckers buy on declines.” Livermore did not have a hard-and-fast rule on when to eliminate a losing position, arguing instead that the timing depends on the feel of the stock and the market.

pages: 198 words: 53,264

Big Mistakes: The Best Investors and Their Worst Investments
by Michael Batnick
Published 21 May 2018

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013), 7. 2. Tom Rubython, Jesse Livermore – Boy Plunger (Dorset, England: Myrtle Press, 2015), 24. 3. Ibid., 49. 4. Ibid., 51–53. 5. Edwin Lefèvre, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley), 2006. 6. Rubython, Jesse Livermore, 61. 7. Lefèvre, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. 8. Ibid. 9. Rubython, Jesse Livermore, 169. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. CHAPTER 3 Mark Twain Don't Get Attached If you get into anybody far enough, you've got yourself a partner. —Mark Twain When dollars are transferred from our pocket to an investment, the expectation is that they'll be worth more in the future.

Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom
by van K. Tharp
Published 1 Jan 1998

It is the process of looking at every part of a situation as if it were a diamond slowly turning on a pedestal so you can observe all of its facets and see them as unique rather than the same. It belongs to those of you who love to solve the impossible riddle. Edwin Lefèvre, in the book Reminiscence of a Stock Operator,12 describes what happened in the early 1920s with the advent of the telephone. All stock quotes from the New York Stock Exchange were sent out by teletyping houses that we now know as bucket shops. It was very similar to off-track betting. The shops allowed a person to know a quote and then place an order to buy or sell.

An old AFL team won the 1998 Super Bowl, and you also know how much the market went up in 1998–1999. In 2000 and 2001 an old NFL team won, and you know how much the market fell in those years. 11. John Murphy, Intermarket Technical Analysis (New York: Wiley, 1986). 12. Edwin Lefèvre, Reminiscence of a Stock Operator (New York: Wiley Investment Classics, 2006; first published in 1923). 13. Louis B. Mendelsohn is president and chief executive officer of Market Technologies, LLC, in Wesley Chapel, Florida, and the developer of VantagePoint Intermarket Analysis Software. He also is involved in a free educational Web site at www.TradingEducation.com.

Of Permanent Value: The Story of Warren Buffett. Birmingham, Ala.: AKPE, 1996. Fun reading. LeBeau, Charles, and David W. Lucas. The Technical Traders’ Guide to Computer Analysis of the Futures Market. Homewood, Ill: Irwin, 1992. One of the best books ever written on systems development. Lefèvre, Edwin. Reminiscence of a Stock Operator. New York: Wiley Investment Classics, 2006. New edition of an old classic first published in 1923. Lowe, Janet. Warren Buffett Speaks: Wit and Wisdom from the World’s Greatest Investor. New York: Wiley, 1997. Fun reading with great wisdom. Lowenstein, Roger. Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist.

Unknown Market Wizards: The Best Traders You've Never Heard Of
by Jack D. Schwager
Published 2 Nov 2020

Here I was going through all the trouble of getting charts faxed every day and trading every day, and then I make far more money because I am away in Africa and can’t see or do anything. That experience had a significant effect on me. It was like Jesse Livermore used to say, “You make your money in the sitting.” [Shapiro was referring to a quote in the book Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre, whose unnamed protagonist is widely assumed to be based on Jesse Livermore. The specific quote is: “After spending many years in Wall Street and after making and losing millions of dollars, I want to tell you this: it never was my thinking that made the big money for me.

So if you didn’t get the text, or if you had been several minutes slower in getting your orders through, you would have given back almost all your profits on the remaining position. Yes, that was probably a $700,000 text message. What had caused the abrupt, enormous crash in the stock price? To me, it seemed to be like a play straight out of Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. [This classic book on speculation, whose protagonist is widely assumed to be Jesse Livermore, is set in the financial backdrop of an age replete with bucket shops and market manipulation.] The insiders owned 750 million shares. Two months earlier, they couldn’t even have sold 100 million shares at one penny.

If you get stopped out of a trade, will you look to reenter it if conditions are right? It’s easy for me to buy it again. I have no qualms about buying higher. Did any books influence the way you trade? It probably took more than a year of trading before I read my first financial book. Which book? Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. Did that book influence your trading, and if so, how? It reinforced what I was already doing—most importantly, placing large bets when you had the right set up, and keeping bets small when you didn’t. My winning percentage on trades is way less than 50%, but I still do well because I can recognize the one or two times a year when all the pieces of the puzzle are in place, and I need to bet big on a trade.

pages: 272 words: 19,172

Hedge Fund Market Wizards
by Jack D. Schwager
Published 24 Apr 2012

The loose end, of course, is how the court jester happens to know so much about how markets work—and how he happens to know how to express what he knows in an effective way. While we may never know the answer for sure, my personal hunch is that the court jester makes frequent visits to the royal library and reads Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre, The Crowd by Gustav LeBon, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay, and the entire Market Wizards series by Jack Schwager. Trading, it turns out, is the solution to most economic problems; free markets, sanctity of trading, and healthy economy are all ways to say the same thing.

Now Hedge Fund Market Wizards extends, enhances, and perfects the tradition. Traders regularly use passages and chapters from Schwager’s books as a reference for their own methods and to guide their own trading. His work is an inseparable part of the consciousness and language of trading itself. Some 30 years ago, Jack reads Reminiscences of a Stock Operator and notices its meaningfulness and relevance, even 60 years after its publication. He adopts that standard for his own writing. I notice that books that actually meet that standard tend to wind up in the libraries of traders and court jesters alike, on the same shelf with Reminiscences, The Crowd, and Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

Readers who are seeking to improve their own trading abilities, however, should find much that is useful in the following interviews. I believe the trading lessons and insights shared by the traders are timeless. I believe that although markets are always changing, because of constancies in human nature, in some sense, they are also always the same. I remember, when first reading Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre nearly 30 years ago, being struck by how relevant the book remained more than 60 years after it was written. I do not mean or intend to draw any comparisons between this volume and Reminiscences, but merely to define the goal I had in mind in writing this book—that it still be meaningful and useful to readers trading the market 60 years from now. 1All the performance statements made in reference to hedge funds as an investment category implicitly assume hedge fund of funds data.

pages: 236 words: 77,735

Rigged Money: Beating Wall Street at Its Own Game
by Lee Munson
Published 6 Dec 2011

For me it was a lesson in pragmatism. Pit Bull by Martin “Buzzy” Schwartz: A fairly accurate account of the personal toll that becoming a successful trader takes on a person. If you want to learn how to have a life-work balance, you have to learn from somebody who struggled with it for 20 years. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre: This is not on my recommended reading list for you to buy a copy to put on your bookshelf. Read it for real. Make somebody give you a test on it. I have never seen a book purchased by so many and read by so few. Thank goodness it makes my life easier as a trader. If you want to understand the crowds, a word to the wise is sufficient.

See Section 28(e) penny stocks pension pension manager Philip Morris pie charts bar charts versus Pit Bull play-it-safe investment portfolio, moderate risk premium price compression price discovery The Price Is Right price, best prime broker prognostication reports Q QQQ. See NASDAQ 100 ETF R A Random Walk Down Wall Street rebalancing Registered Investment Adviser (RIA) reinvestment Reminisces of a Stock Operator research firms, independent research purpose third-party Revenue Act of 1978 RIA. See Registered Investment Adviser risk budgeting risk, level Rule 19b–3 S S&P 500, volatility versus San Francisco Earthquake scenarios, investment Schwab Affiliate Funds Schwager, Jack Schwartz, Martin Buzzy SEC.

pages: 385 words: 128,358

Inside the House of Money: Top Hedge Fund Traders on Profiting in a Global Market
by Steven Drobny
Published 31 Mar 2006

I never really thought about it in terms of success. I just found the markets absolutely fascinating and challenging. I guess I’m still doing it, so I would appear to have some kind of edge. Are there any books that you recommend to your traders? My favorite book in relation to the market is Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, by Edwin Lefevre. I’ve probably read it four or five times, and I love it every time I read it. He talks about everything, about risk, about hubris, about passion, everything. What worries you with traders who work for you? I used to be worried about having a rogue trader on the team, but my view on that is if you ever lose sleep, then the guy shouldn’t be there.

There were also the classic management mistakes, such as having parking slots for the officers of the company but not the workers. After a while, I started thinking, “Is this what I want to do with my life?” I looked at my friends’ careers, and the people who liked their lives the most were the proprietary traders. I started spending my spare time in upstate New York reading finance stuff: Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Bonfire of the Vanities, Market Wizards, Money Masters—anything I could get my hands on. My game plan was to go to business school; get a job in proprietary trading; work 10 years on the sell side developing my knowledge, experience, contacts, and track record; and then make a move to the buy side.

See also Siva-Jothy, Christian Protectionism, 44 Putin,Vladimir, 237–238 Put options, 63–64, 77, 85, 236, 331, 334 Quantitative analysis, 346 Quantum Endowment, 28 Quantum Fund, 28, 30, 184, 217, 271, 273, 277–278 RAROC (risk-adjusted return on capital), 39 Raw material boom, 239 Reading recommendations, 92, 158–159 INDEX Real estate, 62–63, 242. See also Home builders; Housing bubble Real estate investment trusts (REITs), 63, 290 Real money, 53, 62, 70 Recession, 14, 115, 264 Redemptions, 58, 69 Relative value (RV), 25, 68, 126–127, 141–142, 147–148, 156, 173, 310–311, 330, 336, 337, 346 Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (Lefevre), 92, 244 Researcher. See Drobny,Andres, Dr. Return(s), 55, 99, 254, 344–346. See also Absolute returns Reverse repurchase agreements, 51 Reward/risk ratio, 174 Reward-to-volatility ratio, 342 Risk-adjusted returns, 254, 344–346 Risk arbitrage, 33, 80–81. See also Arbitrage Risk aversion, 107, 115 Risk capital, 24 Risk curve, 328 Risk-free rate, 196, 342 Risk management strategies, 7–8, 25, 32, 50, 53–54, 61–62, 131, 137–138, 172, 192, 204, 206, 213–214, 285, 293–294, 333–334 Risk premium, 55 Risk/reward analysis, 98, 110–111, 126, 296 Risk-to-return ratio, 62 Robertson, Julian, xi, 8, 10, 21, 23, 27–28, 245–247, 277 Roditi, Nick, 269, 278 Rogers, Jim, 8, 210, 217–221, 223–239, 269–271, 278 Rogers International Commodity Index, 218 Rubin, Robert, 32, 245 Rumors, 249, 268 Russia/Russian rubles, 22–23, 49–50, 64–65, 203–204, 211, 237–238, 277, 280, 283, 286, 289, 290 Russian crisis 1998, 10, 21–23, 26, 54, 64, 80, 292–294, 299–300, 310 Russian Equity Index, 65 Russian stock market index (RTSI$), 22 INDEX S&P 500 index, 27–28, 193, 212–213, 217, 273–274, 282 Safe harbor, 205 Salomon Brothers, 24 Samuelson, Paul, 9 Scholes, Myron, 24, 207 Secular trends, 234 Sell-offs, 20, 118, 175, 295, 302 SemperMacro, 71, 72 Seykota, Ed, 9 Sharpe ratio, 62, 342–343 Short-dated volatility, 55 Short positions, xii, 58.

pages: 537 words: 144,318

The Invisible Hands: Top Hedge Fund Traders on Bubbles, Crashes, and Real Money
by Steven Drobny
Published 18 Mar 2010

He learned the ropes taking true, directional macro risks, then going on to work with some of the biggest names in the hedge fund business, and ultimately striking out on his own, where he now sits atop a multibillion dollar macro-hedge fund. How did you get into the markets? I read Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre when I was 17, which was in 1987, the year the stock market crashed. It proved to be a formative experience. I read the book in the summer, the stock market crashed in the fall, and as I watched television, I realized that many people were not making much sense. I began to read everything I could about financial markets and joined a bank straight out of college, which was when I started trading.

Have the courage to be different, the courage to risk the ire of others for the sake of being right; to fight rather than embrace compromises everywhere. We have to encourage rebellious notions such as playfulness and curiosity. There is no one correct way of doing things that is set in stone. Periodically managers should be open to trying different approaches. If you read Edwin Lefèvre’s book, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, the fictionalized version of the early years of Jesse Livermore, he gives a great account of this kind of behavior. Livermore goes long before he goes short. That’s genius. He would buy because he wanted to experience the thrill of owning something. Taking a position changes the chemical balance of the body and the brain and you start to understand what it is you were missing.

See Risk premia payment Price/earnings (P/E) multiples, exchange rate valuation (relationship) Primary Dealer Credit Facility, placement Prime broker risk Princeton University (endowment) Private equity cash flow production tax shield/operational efficiency arguments Private sector debt, presence Private-to-public sector risk Probability, Bayesian interpretation Professor, The bubble predication capital loss, avoidance capital management cataclysms, analysis crowding factor process diversification efficient markets, disbelief fiat money, cessation global macro fund manager hedge fund space historical events, examination idea generation inflation/deflation debate interview investment process lessons LIBOR futures ownership liquidity conditions, change importance market entry money management, quality opportunities personal background, importance portfolio construction management positioning process real macro success, personality traits/characteristics (usage) returns, generation risk aversion rules risk management process setback stocks, purchase stop losses time horizon Titanic scenario threshold trades attractiveness, measurement process expression, options (usage) personal capital, usage quality unlevered portfolio Property/asset boom Prop shop trading, preference Prop trader, hedge fund manager (contrast) Protectionism danger hedge process Public college football coach salary, public pension manager salary (contrast) Public debt, problems Public pensions average wages to returns endowments impact Q ratio (Tobin) Qualitative screening, importance Quantitative easing (QE) impact usage Quantitative filtering Random walk, investment Real annual return Real assets Commodity Hedger perspective equity-like exposure Real estate, spread trade Real interest rates, increase (1931) Real macro involvement success, personality traits/characteristics (usage) Real money beta-plus domination denotation evolution flaws hedge funds, differentiation impacts, protection importance investors commodity exposure diversification, impact macro principles management, change weaknesses Real money accounts importance long-only investment focus losses (2008) Real money funds Commodity Hedger operation Equity Trader management flexibility frontier, efficiency illiquid asset avoidance importance leverage example usage management managerial reserve optimal portfolio construction failure portfolio management problems size Real money managers Commodity Investor scenario liquidity, importance long-term investor misguidance poor performance, usage (excuse) portfolio construction valuation approach, usage Real money portfolios downside volatility, mitigation leverage, amount management flaws Rear view mirror investment process Redemptions absence problems Reflexivity Rehypothecation Reichsmarks, foreign holders (1922-1923) Relative performance, inadequacy Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (Lefèvre) Renminbi (2005-2009) Repossession property levels Republic of Turkey examination investment rates+equities (1999-2000) Reserve currency, question Resource nationalism Returns forecast generation maximization momentum models targets, replacement Return-to-worst-drawdown, ratios (improvement) Reward-to-variability ratio Riksbank (Sweden) Risk amount, decision aversion rules capital, reduction collars function positive convexity framework, transition function global macro manager approach increase, leverage (usage) measurement techniques, importance parameters Pensioner management pricing reduction system, necessity Risk-adjusted return targets, usage Risk assets, decrease Risk-free arbitrage opportunities Risk management Commodity Hedger process example game importance learning lessons portfolio level process P&L, impact tactic techniques, importance Risk premia annualization earning level, decrease specification Risk/reward trades Risk-versus-return, Pensioner approach Risk-versus-reward characteristics opportunities Roll yield R-squared (correlation) Russia crisis Russia Index (RTSI$) (1995-2002) Russia problems Savings ratio, increase Scholes, Myron Sector risk, limits Securities, legal lists Self-reinforcing cycles (Soros) Sentiment prediction swings Seven Sisters Sharpe ratio increase return/risk Short-dated assets Short selling, ban Siegel’s Paradox example Single point volatility 60-40 equity-bond policy portfolio 60-40 model 60-40 portfolio standardization Smither, Andrew Socialism, Equity Trader concern Society, functioning public funds, impact real money funds, impact Softbank (2006) Soros, George self-reinforcing cycles success Sovereign wealth fund Equity Trader operation operation Soybeans (1970-2009) Special drawing rights (SDR) Spot price, forward price (contrast) Spot shortages/outages, impact Standard deviation (volatility) Standard & Poor’s 500 (S&P500) (2009) decrease Index (1986-1995) Index (2000-2009) Index (2008) shorting U.S. government bonds, performance (contrast) Standard & Poor’s (S&P) shorts, coverage Stanford University (endowment) State pension fund Equity Trader operation operation Stochastic volatility Stock index total returns (1974-2009) Stock market increase, Predator nervousness Stocks hedge funds, contrast holders, understanding pickers, equity index futures usage shorting/ownership, contrast Stops, setting Stress tests, conducting Subprime Index (2007-2009) Sunnies, bidding Super Major Survivorship bias Sweden AP pension funds government bond market Swensen, David equity-centric portfolio Swiss National Bank (SNB) independence Systemic banking crisis Tactical asset allocation function models, usage Tactical expertise Tail hedging, impact Tail risk Take-private LBO Taleb, Nassim Tax cut sunset provisions Taxes, hedge Ten-year U.S. government bonds (2008-2009) Theta, limits Thundering Herd (Merrill Lynch) Time horizons decrease defining determination shortening Titanic funnel, usage Titanic loss number Titanic scenario threshold Topix Index (1969-2000) Top-line inflation Total credit market, GDP percentage Total dependency ratio Trade ideas experience/awareness, impact generation process importance origination Traders ability Bond Trader hiring characteristics success, personality characteristics Trades attractiveness, measurement process hurdle money makers, percentage one-year time horizon selection, Commodity Super Cycle (impact) time horizon, defining Trading decisions, policy makers (impact) floor knowledge noise level ideas, origination Tragedy of the commons Transparency International, Corruption Perceptions Index Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) trade Triangulated conviction Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) Turkey economy inflation/equities (1990-2009) investment rates+equities (1999-2000) stock market index (ISE 100) Unconventional Success (Swensen) Underperformance, impact Undervaluation zones, examination United Kingdom (UK), two-year UK swap rates (2008) United States bonds pricing debt (1991-2008) debt (2000-2008) home prices (2000-2009) hyperinflation listed equities, asset investment long bonds, market pricing savings, increase stocks tax policy (1922-1936) trade deficit, narrowing yield curves (2004-2006) University endowments losses impact unlevered portfolio U.S.

pages: 348 words: 83,490

More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places (Updated and Expanded)
by Michael J. Mauboussin
Published 1 Jan 2006

Mauboussin, “Revisiting Market Efficiency: The Stock Market as a Complex Adaptive System,” Journal of Applied Corporate Finance 14, no. 4 (Winter 2002): 47-55. 6 See Joseph de la Vega’s Confusion de Confusiones (1688), Charles MacKay’s Extraordinary Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841), and Edwin Lefevre’s Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (1923). 7 Warren E. Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway Annual Letter to Shareholders, 1987, http://berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1987.html. 8 Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd, Security Analysis (New York: McGraw Hill, 1934), 11. 9 Irving Lester Janis, Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1982). 38.

Lee, Youngki, Luís A. Nunes Amaral, David Canning, Martin Meyer, and H. Eugene Stanley. “Universal Features in the Growth Dynamics of Complex Organizations.” Physical Review Letters 81, no. 15 (October 1998): 3275-3278. http://polymer.bu.edu/hes/articles/lacms98.pdf. Lefevre, Edwin. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. 1923. Lessand, Donald. “The Soft Revolution: Achieving Growth By Managing Intangibles.” The Journal of Applied Corporate Finance 11, no. 2 (Summer 1998): 8-27. Lev, Baruch. Intangibles: Management, Measurement, and Reporting. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2001. Lewellen, Jonathan.

pages: 321

Finding Alphas: A Quantitative Approach to Building Trading Strategies
by Igor Tulchinsky
Published 30 Sep 2019

Security analysis, popularized by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd in their 1934 classic investing tome (2009), is the in-depth study of these statements on a per company basis to gauge the potential for excess returns based on a company’s underlying qualities. This analysis is used by fundamental value investors, Warren Buffett being the most famous practitioner. It contrasts with studying the movements and order flow of stock prices, as discussed by Edwin Lefèvre in Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (2006), or other technical analysis approaches, such as momentum-­ based strategies, which make bets based on an expectation that price trends will continue into the future (see Chan et al. 1996 and references therein). Financial statement analysis attempts to systematically measure the effect of factors computed using these statements and to determine their ability to predict future returns; investors can use it to rank, sort, and filter companies to seek to create a portfolio with improved financial strength.

McGraw-Hill Book Company. References285 Huber, P. and Ronchetti, E. (2009) Robust Statistics (2nd edition). Wiley. Hull, J. (2008) Options, Futures and Other Derivatives. Pearson Prentice Hall. Kahneman, D. (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Lefèvre, E. (2006) Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. Wiley. Maronna, R., Martin, D., and Yohai, V. (2006) Robust Statistics: Theory and Methods. Wiley. Mertz, D. (2006) Text Processing in Python. Addison Wesley. Also available from Gnosis Software: http://gnosis.cx/TPiP Nicholas, J.G. (2004) Hedge Fund of Funds Investing: An Investor’s Guide.

pages: 303 words: 84,023

Heads I Win, Tails I Win
by Spencer Jakab
Published 21 Jun 2016

And of course he would earn multiples of that charging a 2 percent fee and 20 percent of profits as hedge funds do for managing other people’s money. Naturally, no hedge fund ever has made triple-digit returns with any consistency. An entertaining and practical explanation of why traders with relatively little money have extremely short careers can be found in my favorite investing book of all, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. Nominally a piece of fiction and a great read, it’s actually a thinly disguised biography of speculator Jesse Livermore (Larry Livingston) written by Edwin Lefèvre. In the early part of the book, Livingston gets his start in what were called bucket shops, which were eventually outlawed, before the turn of the twentieth century.

., 29–30 Baron Rothschild card game, 35–36, 38 Barron’s, 144, 231–32, 240 Bartiromo, Maria, 248 bear market, 22, 32, 35, 38, 46–47, 54–56, 61, 63, 93, 117, 120, 184–85, 237–38, 242, 245, 250 Bear Stearns, 40, 126, 199 Beardstown Ladies, 18–19, 31 behavioral finance, 21–22, 41–42, 70–72, 245 Berkshire Hathaway, 3, 157, 170–71, 235 Berman, Ken, 213 Bernstein, Richard, 145 Bespoke Investment Group, 46, 135 beta (market return), 105, 172, 193, 224 Betterment, 83 Black, Fischer, 240 Black Monday, 39, 240–41 Black Tuesday, 51, 240–41 Blodget, Henry, 88 Bloomberg, 138, 144 Bogle, John, 23, 156–58, 222, 224 bonds, 3, 14–15, 26, 35–36, 58, 62–63, 72–77, 82–83, 95, 145, 153, 158, 165, 175, 189, 205–8, 248 books All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (Fulghum), 150 The Beardstown Ladies’ Common-Sense Investment Guide, 18–19 Confusión de Confusiones (Vega), 234 Conquer the Crash: You Can Survive and Prosper in a Deflationary Depression (Prechter), 125, 238 Contrarian Investment Strategies: The Psychological Edge (Dreman), 129 Dow 100,000: Fact or Fiction, 70, 238 Dow 36,000 (Hassett and Glassman), 69–74, 84, 238 Dow 40,000, 70, 238 The Education of a Speculator (Niederhoffer), 169 Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (Mackay), 241 Financial Reckoning Day, 238 The Great Depression Ahead, 238 The Half-Life of Facts (Arbesman), 102 The Intelligent Investor (Graham), 235–36 Liar’s Poker (Lewis), 165 Manias, Panics, and Crashes (Kindleberger), 245 Market Wizards (Schwager), 108 Money Masters of Our Time (Train), 108 The Next Great Bubble Boom, 238 One Up on Wall Street (Lynch), 148–50, 192–93 Proofiness: How You’re Being Fooled by the Numbers (Seife), 125 A Random Walk Down Wall Street (Malkiel), 106, 146–47, 158, 193–94 Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (Lefèvre), 212 Security Analysis (Graham and Dodd), 158, 194, 218–19, 232 The Stock Trader’s Almanac, 42 Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment (Swensen), 81–82 Where Are the Customers’ Yachts?: Or, A Good Hard Look at Wall Street (Schwed), 149–50 You Can Be a Stock Market Genius (Greenblatt), 192 Brandes Institute, 194–95 Bridgewater Associates, 172 brokerage accounts/firms, 2, 19, 23, 32, 56, 83, 143, 196–97, 207, 209–11, 216–17, 228, 257 Brown Brothers Harriman, 90 Buckingham, John, 128–29 Buffett, Warren, 3, 30, 160 advice of, 34, 157–58, 161–62, 235–36 and bet with Seides, 171, 174–75 criticizes hedge funds, 169–71 and Graham-and-Doddsville, 218–19, 223 inspired by Graham, 194, 218–19, 232 and value investing, 113, 157–58, 220 bull market, 32, 38, 42–43, 46, 51–52, 55–61, 70, 75, 88, 90–92, 117, 124, 149, 214 Bureau of Economic Analysis, 57 Burns Advisory Group, 151 BusinessWeek, 126, 144, 213, 238 CalPERS, 186–87 Capital Decimation Partners, 164, 168, 172 Carlson, Ben, 30–31, 44, 61 CGM Focus Fund, 111 Charles Schwab, 83 Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), 239–40 Clipper Fund, 105 Cohen, Abby Joseph, 128 Columbia University, 108, 217–18 commissions, 18, 135, 156, 181, 197, 202, 209, 211, 217 commodity investing, 73, 81, 205–6, 251 compound annual return, 19, 52–54, 64, 67, 95, 111, 219 average return, 75–76, 110 interest, 2, 4, 14, 30–31, 44, 91 contango phenomenon, 205–6 Cook, Michael, 154 Countrywide Financial, 109 Courtney, Tim, 150–52 Cramer, Jim, 118, 128 crashes, 76, 234, 242 of 1929, 39, 51, 54, 92–93, 123–24, 232–33, 236, 238, 240–41, 243 of 1973–74, 75, 237 of 1987, 33, 39–40, 51, 125–26, 233, 236, 240–41 of 1998, 33, 166–67, 238 of 2008, 33, 40, 47, 50, 61, 84, 126, 174–75, 236, 239, 241–42 Credit Suisse, 181 CXO Advisory Group, 128–29 cyclically adjusted P/E (CAPE), 92–95 Dalbar, 13–14, 16, 32–33, 37, 74 decision markets, 146 DiMaggio, Joe, 98, 102, 104 Direxion Daily Small Cap Bull & Bear 3x ETF, 204 dividend investing, 54, 216–17, 226–29 Dodd, David, 194, 218–19 dot-com boom, 132, 179, 186, 193, 195, 237, 242 Dow Jones Industrials, 42, 251 beating it, 219 dividend-yielding stocks of, 192 drops in, 33, 45, 52, 125–26 increases in, 46, 88 and mutual funds, 152 predictions of, 121, 123–26 Dreman, David, 128–29 Drudge Report, The, 46–47 Eastman Kodak, 101, 109 economic contractions, 50, 52–54 growth, 49, 52, 57, 71 recessions, 47–52, 56–58, 143–44, 232 statistics, 57, 59–60 Economist, 30 efficient market theory, 98, 108, 112, 146, 149, 158, 219, 225 Einhorn, David, 173 Einstein, Albert, 30, 44 Elliott, Ralph Nelson, 124 emerging markets, 83, 86, 135, 187, 238 emotional investing, 18, 21, 180, 200, 223, 234–36, 249–50 Employee Benefit Research Institute, 80 endowments, 81–82, 174, 187 energy companies/stocks, 100, 104, 109, 200.

pages: 420 words: 94,064

The Revolution That Wasn't: GameStop, Reddit, and the Fleecing of Small Investors
by Spencer Jakab
Published 1 Feb 2022

Saunders could have shrugged it off, as so many other executives should have, but didn’t when subject to short bets. Instead, he waged war and nearly won, but lost everything. Saunders hired the famed speculator Jesse Livermore, known in his youth as “the boy plunger” and the real character behind Larry Livingston in the semiautobiographical Wall Street classic Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, to engineer a corner. Livermore bought about half of the two hundred thousand available shares for Saunders at around $40 apiece, and the campaign soon pushed Piggly Wiggly’s price to around $70, inflicting some paper losses on the short sellers. But Livermore then dropped out of the fight, not seeing a way that the corner would work.

., 150–52, 154, 156 Raytheon, 153–54 RC Ventures LLC, 114 Reagan, Ronald, 156, 234 Reddit, xi, xii, 11–12, 19, 22, 23, 25, 36–39, 41, 42, 107, 122, 125, 162, 164, 199 founding of, 37–38 Gill’s influence on, 141–42; see also Gill, Keith; WallStreetBets karma on, 47, 141–42 mechanics and demographics of, and GameStop, 37 offensive subreddits on, 38 r/ClassActionRobinHood, 196 r/GMEbagholders, 140 r/investing, ix, 46 r/wallstreetbets, see WallStreetBets Super Bowl ad of, 12 Volkswagen squeeze and, 78 Reddit Revolution, xv, 41, 42, 75, 99, 152, 170, 192, 206, 211, 219, 220, 230, 246, 261 see also GameStop, GameStop short squeeze; WallStreetBets rehypothecation, 80, 92 reinforcement learning, 35 Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (Lefèvre), 78 Renaissance Technologies, 237 retail trading, xiii, xiv, xvi, 4, 7, 9–14, 49, 56–59, 63–64, 66, 67, 81, 98, 140–41, 143, 169–70, 178, 181, 183, 186, 194, 218, 237, 238, 244, 247 retirement accounts and pension funds, 5, 13, 27, 31–32, 41, 69, 76, 77, 81, 171, 182, 234, 235, 245, 252, 255, 256 Rise of the Planet of the Apes, 135–36 RiskReversal Advisors, 192 Ritter, Jay, 63, 65 Roaring Kitty (Gill’s YouTube persona), 2, 18, 45, 48–49, 92, 130, 133, 144, 171, 174–75, 191, 211, 213 Roaring Kitty LLC, 171 Robinhood, xi, xiii, xv, 4–6, 13–14, 19, 22–35, 41–42, 50, 53, 55, 57, 61, 66, 70, 81, 98, 139, 141, 153, 154, 157, 158, 161, 176, 178, 183, 184, 187–90, 193, 194, 195–210, 212–13, 219, 237–38, 243, 245, 246, 259 account transfer fees of, 54 average revenue per user of, 66–67 Buffett on, 240–41 call options and, 97–98 Citadel and, 10, 11 clearinghouse of, 187 commissions and, 49, 50 customer loan write-offs of, 205 daily average revenue trades of, 59 daily deposit requirement of, 205 former regulators hired by, 239–40 founding of, 3, 23–25, 90 funding crisis of, 187–88, 193, 198, 203, 205–6 gamification and, 29–31 Gold accounts, 32, 58, 97, 202 growth of, 25–26, 50 herding events and, 238 Hertz and, 61 hyperactive traders and, 193, 202, 207, 236 initial public offering of, 200–201, 219 Instant accounts, 32 Kearns and, 103–4 lawsuits against, 196 margin loans of, 58–59, 205 median account balances with, 50, 54 options and, 34–35, 102–4, 106, 108–9 payment for order flow and, 10, 33, 196, 206–9 revenue from securities lending, 73 risky behavior encouraged by, 202–3 Robintrack and, 53, 61 SPACs and, 64 stimulus checks and, 56 Super Bowl ad of, 28, 30, 200 technical snafus by, 53–54 Top 100 Fund and, 61 trading restricted by, 187–89, 194, 195–200, 203, 206, 209 valuation of, 49 WallStreetBets and, 22–23 wholesalers and, 33–35, 49, 104, 106 Robin Hood (charitable foundation), 196–97 robo-advisers, xv, 27, 257–58 Betterment, 27, 54, 183, 193, 242, 257, 258, 261 SoFi, 27, 56, 57, 158 Rockefeller, John D., 9 Rodriguez, Alex, 64 Rogers, Will, 163 Rogozinski, Jaime, 23, 39, 46, 50, 53, 55, 70–71, 97, 122, 138, 144, 190, 231 Roper, Barbara, 29–30, 35, 54, 185, 241 Rozanski, Jeffrey, 46 Rukeyser, Louis, 156 Russell 2000 Value Index, 125, 191 S S3 Partners, 76, 81, 130, 133, 170, 217 SAC Capital Advisors, 7, 110 Sanders, Bernie, 65–66, 198 S&P (Standard & Poor’s), 83 S&P Dow Jones Indices, 70, 254 S&P 500, 76 Sanford C.

pages: 385 words: 106,848

Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall
by Zeke Faux
Published 11 Sep 2023

As Caroline Ellison, then Alameda’s co-CEO, explained in a March 2021 post on Twitter: “The way to really make money is figure out when the market is going to go up and get balls long before that.” She added that she’d learned the strategy from the classic market-manipulation memoir, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. Her co-CEO said in another tweet that a profitable strategy was buying Dogecoin because Elon Musk tweeted about it. I couldn’t believe it. This was more or less the trading tactic my friend Jay had recommended I pursue with what he called “doggie coin.” Just multiplied by about a billion.

See also Celsius Network; Mashinsky, Alex; Tether Pope, Alexander, 50 Potter, Phil banks and Tether, 52 Bitfinex’s movement of money and, 60 Devasini and purchase of Tether, 38 payment for Noble, 57 Realcoin and, 36 Protos, 74 Puerto Rico, 115–116 “pump-and-dump” schemes, 49–50, 237 Q QuadrigaCX, 48, 61 Quigan, Ryan, 126, 127 Quigan, Shiela, 126–127 R ransomware, 101 Ray, John, III, 223 “Razzlekhan.” See Morgan, Heather Realcoin, 36 Reddit, 9–10, 103 Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, 225 “the repugnant conclusion” argument, 81 Ripps, Ryder, 156–157 Rong, Yawn, 133 RR/BAYC, 157 S Samani, Kyle, 135–136 Sanders, Rich, 180–182 Saturday Night Live, 17 Saylor, Michael, 22–23, 167 scam compounds (Cambodian), 182–188, 190, 193 Scaramucci, Anthony, 129–130 Schumer, Amy, 153 Scott, Seann William, 32 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 64, 213, 238 Sellars, Craig, 36 Sequoia Capital, 21 Shallcross, Chapman “Chappy,” 168 Shallcross, Zach, 168 Shaulov, Michael, 103 Shiba Inu, 5, 10 Shimao Group, 68 Shyamalan, M.

pages: 741 words: 179,454

Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk
by Satyajit Das
Published 14 Oct 2011

In the end, Groucho spends $6 on the master code book and a set of four Breeder’s Guides to decipher the master code book. By the time he has assembled his library of literary material on horses, the race Groucho wanted to bet on is over. As I leave the seminar, Mary and Greg are signing up for ST’s trading system. I think of the famous speculator Jesse Livermore, immortalized in Edwin Lefèvre’s Reminiscences of a Stock Operator: The sucker play is always the same: To make easy money. That is why speculation never changes. The appeal is the same: Greed, vanity, and laziness. The merchant who would not dream of buying and selling stockings or percales on the advice of fools goes to Wall Street and cheerfully risks his money on the say so of men whose interest is not his interest, or tipsters who have not grown rich at the game they want him to play.

Quoted in John Kay “A stakeholding society—what does it mean for business?” (1997) Scottish Journal of Political Economy 44/4: 425–36. 5. John Kenneth Galbraith (1975) The Great Crash 1929, Penguin Books, London: 187. 6. Quoted in “The pop star and the private equity firms” (26 June 2009) New York Times. 7. Edwin Lefèvre (2005) Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, John Wiley, New Jersey: 12. 8. F. Scott Fitzgerald (1973) The Great Gatsby, Penguin Books, London: 188. 9. Alain de Botton (2002) The Art of Travel, Penguin Books, London: 40. 10. Ibid: 57. 11. Quoted in Andrew Ross Sorkin “A ‘bonfire’ returns as heartburn” (24 June 2008) New York Times.

Amielle Lake, Andrew Kakabadse and Nada Kakabadse (2008) The Elephant Hunters: Chronicles of the Moneymen, Palgrave Macmillan, London. John Lanchester (2010) Whoops! Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay, Allen Lane, London. Randall Lane (2010) The Zeroes: My Misadventures in the Decade Wall Street Went Insane, Scribe Publications, Melbourne. Edwin Lefèvre (2005) Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, John Wiley, New Jersey. Michael Lewis (1989) Liar’s Poker: Two Cities, True Greed, Hodder & Stoughton, London. Michael Lewis (1991) The Money Culture, Penguin Books, New York. Michael Lewis (1999) The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story, Coronet, London. Michael Lewis (ed.) (2008) Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity, Penguin Books, London.

The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World (Hardback) - Common
by Alan Greenspan
Published 14 Jun 2007

Maybe it was because my father was on Wall Street, or maybe it was my affinity for numbers, but what aroused my curiosity was business and finance. One of the first books I read was about the British stock market—I was fascinated to discover that they used exotic terminology like "ordinary shares." I read Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, a book by Edwin Lefevre about Jesse Livermore, a famous 1920s speculator whose nickname was the Boy Plunger of Wall Street. Legend had it that he made $100 million by short-selling on the eve of the 1929 crash. He got rich and went broke three times before finally committing suicide in 1940.

The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. N e w York: Harcourt, Brace, 1936. Klein, Joe. The Natural: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton. N e w York: Coronet, 2 0 0 2 . Lazear, Edward P. "Teacher Incentives." Swedish Economic Policy Review 10 (2003): 179-214. Lefevre, Edwin. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2005. Locke, John. The Second Treatise of Civil Government. London: A. Millar, 1764. w w w .constitution.org/jl/2ndtreat.htm (accessed April 6, 2007). Luce, Edward. In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India. London: Little, Brown, 2 0 0 6 .

(Herbert Greenspan), 21 Regan, Don, 9 2 - 9 3 , 98 regulation, 370-76, 388, 4 3 0 - 3 1 , 491-92 AG's rules of t h u m b for, 374-75 counterparty surveillance, 3 7 0 - 7 1 , 373, 489 economic future and, 467, 468, 4 8 9 - 9 3 , 502 government, 15, 256, 264-65, 273, 279, 280, 291,292,372-76,489,502 Reinhart, Vincent, 377 religion, 17, 140n, 252, 271, 272 Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (Lefevre), 28 Republicans, Republican Party, 58, 75, 86, 96, 1 1 1 13, 122, 148, 158, 208, 211, 221, 222, 2 3 3 ^ 8 , 504 budget surplus and, 184, 185 F O M C a n d , 152 Republic Steel, 45, 47 Reserve Bank of Australia, 292, 293 Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC), 116-17, 290 retirement, 174, 406, 409-22, 482, 504 age at, 413n defined-benefit pensions and, 419-22 extension of labor force participation vs., 411 ratio of dependent elderly to workers and, 409-10 see also Medicare; pensions, pension funds; Social Security Reuss, Henry, 70 Revolutionary War, 480 Reynolds, 49, 50 risk taking, risk, 140, 256, 272-73, 276, 356, 365, 434, 488-89, 492, 498, 503 aversion to, 17, 273, 360, 365 moral hazard and, 189 profits and, 3 6 8 - 7 0 Rivers, Larry, 27 Rivlin, Alice, 145, 162, 173, 176 Rockefeller, David, 8 1 , 84 Rockefeller, John D., 444, 449 Rockefeller, Nelson, 80 Rogers, John H., 361 n Roosa, Robert, 84 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 3 1 , 159, 246, 337, 431, 439 New Deal and, 2 1 , 30, 279, 504 Roosevelt, Theodore, 336 Roth, William, 92 Rove, Karl, 223 Royal Dutch Shell, 336, 339n, 438 Rubin, Robert, 7, 145, 146, 157-62, 170, 210, 220, 405 Asian contagion and, 188, 189-90, 195 budget surplus and, 185 Russian crisis and, 193 stock market and, 174-75, 179 Rubinomics, 161, 236 rule of law, 15, 16, 255-56, 297, 365, 396, 502 economic future and, 467, 468, 469-70, 503 in Europe, 277, 287 in Russia, 190, 327, 331-32, 500 Smith and, 261 in United States, 52, 278 Rumsfeld, Donald, 62, 64, 209, 210 Russia, 135-36, 139-40, 259, 275, 293, 310, 3 2 2 23, 334n debt default of, 190-96, 250, 328, 331 future of, 500 market capitalism in, 123-24, 139-40, 323-27, 503 oil and gas in, 190, 3 2 4 - 3 1 , 440, 443 oligarchs in, 139, 140, 190, 324, 326 property rights in, 139-40, 190, 327, 331-32, 389, 500 shock therapy in, 138—40 technology in, 3 3 1 , 388 see also Soviet Union Safire, William, 57 Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 259n-60n Samuelson, Robert, 230 S&P 500, 207, 224, 426n, 465 Sao Tome and Principe, 258-59 Sarbanes, Paul, 154-55, 2 2 1 , 478 Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002), 374, 430-31 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 288, 500 Saudi Arabia, 79-80, 334n, 351, 438n oil of, 79, 438n Saudi Aramco, 79, 439, 440, 442 savings, 12, 138, 185, 270, 348-52, 362, 369, 3 8 4 88, 4 7 8 , 4 9 9 cross-border, 348, 352, 484 in developing vs. industrialized countries, 13, 386, 484 domestic, current account balance and, 348—49, 350 excess of, 13-14 future standards of living and, 413 investment vs., 348-49, 385, 386-87 savings accounts, 114, 115 savings and loans (S&Ls), 6, 114-17, 290, 357n SBC Communications, 229 Scargill, Arthur, 283 Scholes, Myron, 193 527 More ebooks visit: http://www.ccebook.cn ccebook-orginal english ebooks This file was collected by ccebook.cn form the internet, the author keeps the copyright.

pages: 195 words: 63,455

Damsel in Distressed: My Life in the Golden Age of Hedge Funds
by Dominique Mielle
Published 6 Sep 2021

The Tulip mania of 1637, the first record of a speculative bubble, when prices of tulips in Holland soared and then collapsed for reasons still uncertain today; the Great Depression of 1929; Black Monday in 1987; the dot-com bubble in 2000—they all had the same root causes. One of the oldest books about Wall Street, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre, which recounts the life of stock trader Jesse Livermore around 1890 to 1920, said it categorically a hundred years ago: “There is nothing new on Wall Street. There can’t be, because speculation is as old as the hills. Whatever happens in the stock market today has happened before and will happen again.”

pages: 1,239 words: 163,625

The Joys of Compounding: The Passionate Pursuit of Lifelong Learning, Revised and Updated
by Gautam Baid
Published 1 Jun 2020

Vartak, SageOne Investment Advisors Letter, August 10, 2017, http://sageone​investments.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/SageOne-Investor-Memo-Aug-2017.pdf. 8. Morgan Housel, “The Agony of High Returns,” Motley Fool, February 9, 2016, https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/02/09/the-agony-of-high-returns.aspx. 9. Edwin Lefèvre, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2006). 10. Peter Lynch, One Up on Wall Street: How to Use What You Already Know to Make Money in the Market (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000). 27. Updating Our Beliefs in Light of New Evidence 1. Michael Rothschild, Bionomics: Economy as Business Ecosystem (Beard Books, 1990). 2.

Wall Street Journal, March 20, 2008. https://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2008/03/20/bull-and-bear-markets-according-to-oaktrees-howard-marks. LeBaron, Dean, and Romesh Vaitilingam. Dean LeBaron’s Treasury of Investment Wisdom: 30 Great Investing Minds. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2001. Le Bon, Gustave. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2002. Lefèvre, Edwin. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2006. Leo, Jacqueline. Seven: The Number for Happiness, Love, and Success. New York: Twelve, 2009. Lev, Baruch, and Feng Gu. The End of Accounting. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2016. “Leverage.” Investment Masters Class. http://mastersinvest.com/leveragequotes. Levy, Steven.

pages: 232 words: 70,835

A Wealth of Common Sense: Why Simplicity Trumps Complexity in Any Investment Plan
by Ben Carlson
Published 14 May 2015

Morgan Housel, “Growing Economy Doesn't Guarantee Stock Gains,” Wall Street Journal, November 7, 2014,http://online.wsj.com/articles/a-growing-economy-doesnt-guarantee-stocks-will-rise-1415372093. 6. John Templeton, “16 Rules for Investment Success,” Franklin Templeton Investments, 1993. 7. Howard Marks, The Most Important Thing (New York: Columbia Business School Publishing, 2011). 8. Edwin Lefevre, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2010). 9. William Bernstein, The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010). 10. Rob Arnott, “The Biggest Urban Legend in Finance,” Research Affiliates, March 2011, www.researchaffiliates.com/Our%20Ideas/Insig hts/Fundamentals/Pages/F_2011_March_The_Biggest_Urban_Legend.aspx. 11.

Day One Trader: A Liffe Story
by John Sussex
Published 16 Aug 2009

Floor brokers would speak at length with dealers from investment funds and bank proprietary trading desks about the ebb and flow of the markets. This gave them an intimate knowledge of the behaviour of various financial instruments and the impact of economic and geopolitical events on dealing at major exchanges. But these dealers were still novices when it came to trading with their own money. Edwin Lefèvre’s classic tome Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, which was first published in 1923, summed up the difficulties such ‘ghost gamblers’ had when their own money was put on the line. ‘It is like the old story of the man who was going to fight a duel the next day,’ wrote Lefèvre. His second asked him, ‘Are you a good shot?’ ‘Well,’ said the duelist, ‘I can snap the stem of a wineglass at twenty paces,’ and he looked modest.

pages: 240 words: 73,209

The Education of a Value Investor: My Transformative Quest for Wealth, Wisdom, and Enlightenment
by Guy Spier
Published 8 Sep 2014

Four other books that deserve to be read and reread many times are Seth Klarman’s Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor; Joel Greenblatt’s You Can be a Stock Market Genius: Uncover the Secret Hiding Places of Stock Market Profits; The Aggressive Conservative Investor by Martin J. Whitman, Martin Shubik, and Gene Isenberg; and John Mihaljevic’s The Manual of Ideas: The Proven Framework for Finding the Best Value Investments. Before I discovered value investing, I was also captivated by two other investment classics: Edwin Lefèvre’s Reminiscences of a Stock Operator and The Alchemy of Finance by George Soros. Heroes, Mentors, and Role Models Roger Lowenstein’s biography Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist was the first book that I consciously used to help me “model” Warren Buffett. Other seminal works on Buffett include Alice Schroeder’s The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life and Tap Dancing to Work: Warren Buffett on Practically Everything, 1966–2013 by his friend Carol Loomis, a renowned writer who worked at Fortune for 60 years.

pages: 249 words: 77,342

The Behavioral Investor
by Daniel Crosby
Published 15 Feb 2018

‘Well,’ said the duelist, ‘I can snap the stem of a wineglass at twenty paces,’ and he looked modest. ‘That’s all very well,’ said the unimpressed second. ‘But can you snap the stem of the wineglass while the wineglass is pointing a loaded pistol straight at your heart?’ ” — Edwin Lefèvre, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator It can now be said that you are among the best-educated people in the world with respect to the ins and outs of behavioral investing. But the most important part of being a well-educated behavioral investor is understanding just how little education matters. The world is full of well-educated people who have made stupid choices, a phenomenon referred to by scientists as “dysrationalia.”

pages: 245 words: 75,397

Fed Up!: Success, Excess and Crisis Through the Eyes of a Hedge Fund Macro Trader
by Colin Lancaster
Published 3 May 2021

Just as with subprime, people saw it, but if they weren’t careful; they got carried out before the bubble burst. US house prices peaked in 2005. Everyone knew that fucking NINJA loans were an accident waiting to happen, but they still had to wait three years for the market to discount reality. One of the first books on markets that I read was Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. In that book, Edwin Lefevre chronicles how Jesse Livermore, one of the first great short sellers, struggled in the late innings of a bubble. This was in the early 1900s. He nearly went broke after multiple failed attempts. Livermore said, “I simply had to be sure, the next time I tried … The public with their eyes fixed on the stock market, saw little that week.

pages: 305 words: 98,072

How to Own the World: A Plain English Guide to Thinking Globally and Investing Wisely
by Andrew Craig
Published 6 Sep 2015

New York: Atlantic Monthly, 2005. Lanchester, John. Whoops!: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay. London: Allen Lane, 2010. Lee, John. How to Make a Million Slowly: My Guiding Principles from a Lifetime of Successful Investing. FT Publishing International, 2013. Lefèvre, Edwin. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2006. Levitt, Steven D., and Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. New York: William Morrow & Company, 2006. ———. Superfreakonomics. HarperCollins Canada, 2009. Lewis, Michael. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine.

pages: 464 words: 117,495

The New Trading for a Living: Psychology, Discipline, Trading Tools and Systems, Risk Control, Trade Management
by Alexander Elder
Published 28 Sep 2014

Kaufman, Josh, The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything … Fast! (New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2013). Kaufman, Perry, Trading Systems and Methods (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2013) Larsen, Max, SpikeTrade Reunion presentation, 2007. LeBon, Gustave, The Crowd (1897) (Atlanta, GA: Cherokee Publishing, 1982). Lefevre, Edwin, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (1923) (Greenville, SC: Traders Press, 1985). Mackay, Charles, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841) (New York: Crown Publishers, 1980). McMillan, Lawrence G., Options as a Strategic Investment (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2012). Mellon, Andrew J., Unstuff  Your Life (New York: Avery/Penguin, 2010).

pages: 402 words: 110,972

Nerds on Wall Street: Math, Machines and Wired Markets
by David J. Leinweber
Published 31 Dec 2008

The basic manipulations were largely unchanged from de la Vega’s time. The coffeehouse of seventeenth-century Amsterdam was replaced with Harry’s Bar or the Fraunces Tavern on Wall Street. Once again, to have an effect, the manipulator had to go from bar to bar repeating the rumors, as described in Edwin Lef èvre’s classic Reminiscences of a Stock Operator concerning the trading of Jesse Livermore in the early twentieth century. Newspapers, telephones, telegraphy, and television all allowed gullible players to be reached faster, and in greater numbers. There are 260 Nerds on Wall Str eet numerous examples. For instance, the classic boiler room of Wall Street used the telephone to cold-call thousands of investors, much as the broker of de la Vega’s time spread rumors in coffeehouses.

pages: 314 words: 122,534

The Missing Billionaires: A Guide to Better Financial Decisions
by Victor Haghani and James White
Published 27 Aug 2023

This is especially important in a time of great uncertainty in asset prices, interest rates, inflation, taxation, and even individual longevity. I believe this book is destined to become a Wall Street classic, to be passed down by generations of trading floor veterans who are passionate about markets and thoughtful about risk. I hope it will serve as an antidote to the stories of wild risk‐taking glorified in Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, a dog‐eared copy of which was handed down to me when I was just starting out. I also expect The Missing Billionaires will become an important gift from parents to their children, and beyond. Victor and James are skilled at explaining difficult concepts in a down‐to‐earth, intuitive fashion, providing a practical toolkit that readers can use to organize their financial lives.

pages: 1,164 words: 309,327

Trading and Exchanges: Market Microstructure for Practitioners
by Larry Harris
Published 2 Jan 2003

If both attempt to do so, however, their efforts probably will cancel out, and both will lose. * * * ▶ Jesse Livermore’s Manipulation of Some Bucketeers Jesse Livermore was a famous turn-of-the-century speculator. He collaborated with Edwin Lefèvre to write an autobiography titled Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. The book is a classic about trading. The book describes a number of manipulations in which Livermore participated, as either victim or perpetrator. One such manipulation occurred while he was trading in some illegal bucketeering shops. A bucketeer is essentially a bookie who allows his customers to bet on stocks.

See speculative margins regulators, 60–66 and block trading, 333 by country, 62 competition among, 63 definition of, 59–60 and extreme volatility, 572–78 international, 62, 66 miscellaneous private, 65 politics of intervention, 578–81 power allotted to, 540 self-regulatory organizations, 63–65 and specialists, 510–11 U.S. agencies, 60–63 REITS. See real estate investment trusts relative performance evaluations, 445 relative return, 447–48 relative spread, 312 relative value trades, 348 Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (Livermore and Lefevre), 136 repayment, 178 replication, 188, 253, 316, 563 required rate of return, 208 reserve orders. See undisclosed orders residual risk, 349 resiliency, 400 responsive traders, 323–24 retail trading, 11–15, 517–18, 520, 522 retirement, 179 return smoothing, 469–70 Reuters, 59 REV.

pages: 504 words: 139,137

Efficiently Inefficient: How Smart Money Invests and Market Prices Are Determined
by Lasse Heje Pedersen
Published 12 Apr 2015

Lamont, Owen (2012), “Go Down Fighting: Short Sellers vs. Firms,” Review of Asset Pricing Studies 2, 1–30. Lamont, Owen, and Richard H. Thaler (2003), “Can the Stock Market Add and Subtract? Mispricing in Tech Stock Carve-Outs,” Journal of Political Economy 111(2), 227–268. Lefèvre, E. (1923), Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, John Wiley & Sons, New York. Lin, Hai, Junbo Wang, and Chunchi Wu (2011), “Liquidity Risk and Expected Corporate Bond Returns,” Journal of Financial Economics 99, 628–650. Liu, H. (2004), “Optimal Consumption and Investment with Transaction Costs and Multiple Assets,” Journal of Finance 59, 289–338.

How I Became a Quant: Insights From 25 of Wall Street's Elite
by Richard R. Lindsey and Barry Schachter
Published 30 Jun 2007

His lessons I think of everyday, and have taught them myself to at least a hundred others. Gary was an avid reader and market historian and he got us all reading these neat old books published by early-twentieth-century market JWPR007-Lindsey April 30, 2007 16:14 Andrew J. Sterge 321 operators. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre was a given. But we also got into more unusual works like Philip Carret’s The Art of Speculation, Tape Reading and Market Tactics by Humphrey B. Neill, and several by Richard D. Wyckoff, such as Wall Street Ventures and Adventures Through Forty Years.3 Many years later, running Cooper Neff, I imitated Gary’s approach with my employees.

pages: 1,242 words: 317,903

The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan
by Sebastian Mallaby
Published 10 Oct 2016

The other band members would sneak upstairs to the Walgreens drugstore during offstage interludes and smoke dope in the phone booths; Greenspan, for his part, would study books about finance. In the unlikely setting of the Childs’ restaurant, Greenspan began his education about banking and markets. He learned about the life of John Pierpont Morgan, the financier who had shaped America’s corporate behemoths before World War I. He devoured Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, the classic account of the speculator Jesse Livermore, who bet successfully against the market on the eve of the 1929 crash. And he resolved that once he tired of music, his next move would be to Wall Street. In a strange kind of way, the hands of both Greenspan’s parents lay behind his abrupt change of direction.

(Greenspan, Herbert), 18 Reed, John S., 360, 522–25, 530, 560 Reed, Thomas, 242 Regan, Donald, 222, 256, 263, 271, 275, 283, 286, 289, 297, 299–300, 307–10, 375 regression analysis, 37 Regulation Q caps, 129–30, 134–36, 138, 148–51, 427, 544, 616 Reich, Robert, 547 Reis, Ricardo, 646–47 Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (Livermore), 24, 54 Republican Party, 3, 93–95, 102, 110, 114, 120–25, 155, 167, 170, 181, 204, 224–26, 235–37, 359 and 1988 election, 330, 338, 365–67, 371–74 and congressional elections, 273, 297 conventions of, 243–48, 274, 373, 389–90 Dream Ticket of, 242–51 and the Fed, 314–15 and Fed chairmanship, 286, 291, 309–10 and Greenspan, 248, 255, 274, 286, 338, 377, 415–16, 424, 478, 486, 500, 562–63, 567 and Mexico bailout, 475–76 and midterm elections, 459–60, 608 presidential campaigns of, 241–59 and Social Security reform, 273, 275–81 and taxes, 215–17, 257, 390 Reserve Primary Fund, 661–62 Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC), 405 Reuters, 494, 504 Review of Financial Studies, 363 Richmond Federal Reserve, 540, 636 Riegle, Don, 350, 402 riots, 109–10, 114–16, 118–19, 123–24, 185–86.

pages: 559 words: 155,372

Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley
by Antonio Garcia Martinez
Published 27 Jun 2016

Somehow, brewing in a spirit of good fellowship, and the hilarity of drenching the CEO’s desk, had produced a better product than the strained group celebration of the IPO. Initial Public Offering: A Reevaluation Prices, like everything else, move along the line of least resistance. They will do whatever comes easiest. —Edwin Lefèvre, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator MAY 18, 2012 The news coverage surrounding the IPO, even from the supposedly savvy tech and financial press, was a reminder of that harsh lesson of life: there are those who write headlines about money for a living, and then there are those who make money. “Facebook IPO Blunder” announced Fortune; “Mark Zuckerberg’s Big Facebook Mistake,” thundered Forbes; “Facebook Disappoints on Its Opening Day” intoned VentureBeat, a Valley insider rag that should have known better.

pages: 512 words: 162,977

New Market Wizards: Conversations With America's Top Traders
by Jack D. Schwager
Published 28 Jan 1994

As Linda Raschke said, “If you ever find yourself tempted to seek out someone else’s opinion on a trade, that’s usually a sure sign that you should get out of your position.” 18. THE VIRTUE OF PATIENCE Waiting for the right opportunity increases the probability of success. You don’t always have to be in the market. As Edwin Lefevre put it in Market Wiz(ar)dom / 469 his classic Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, “There is the plain fool who does the wrong thing at all times anywhere, but there is the Wall Street fool who thinks he must trade all the time.” One of the more colorful descriptions of patience in trading was offered by Jim Rogers in Market Wizards: “1 just wait until there is money lying in the corner, and all I have to do is go over there and pick it up.”