Jesse Livermore, aka the Boy Plunger, aka the Great Bear of Wall Street, is one of the great American stock traders. He made (and lost) several million dollar fortunes buying and short selling stocks in the early 20th century and traded through the great Wall Street crashes of 1907 and 1929.
His book ‘Reminiscences of a Stock Operator‘ is one of the all time best trading books and contains many of Jesse’s best trading rules.
Jesse Livermore Trading Rules & Quotes
1. Always sell what shows you a loss and keep what shows you a profit.
2. Money cannot consistently be made trading every day or every week during the year.
3. A man must believe in himself and his judgement if he expects to make a living in this game. That is why I don’t believe in tips.
4. Don’t trust your own opinion and back your judgment until the action of the market itself confirms your opinion.
5. Prices are never too high to begin buying or too low to begin selling.
6. Remember, don’t fight the tape!
7. Never buy a stock because it has had a big decline from its previous high.
8. Nobody can catch all the fluctuations.
9. The human side of every person is the greatest enemy of the average investor or speculator.
10. It is not good to be too curious about all the reasons behind the price movements.
11. If you cannot make money out of the leading active issues, you are not going to make money out of the stock market as a whole.
12. Never sell a stock because it seems high-priced.
13. Do not become completely bearish or bullish on the whole market because one stock in some particular group has plainly reversed its course from the general trend.
14. No diagnosis, no prognosis. No prognosis, no profit.
15. Wishful thinking must be banished.
16. Fear keeps you from making as much money as you ought to.
17. One should never permit speculative ventures to run into investments.
18. Never average losses.
19. The money lost by speculation alone is small compared with the gigantic sums lost by so-called investors who have let their investments ride.
20. I was bearish in a bear market. That was wise. I had sold stocks short. That was proper. I had sold them too soon. That was costly.
21. As long as a stock is acting right, and the market is right, do not be in a hurry to take profits.
22. The cotton showed me a loss and I kept it. The wheat showed me a profit and I sold it out. It was an utterly foolish play…
23. Nothing new ever occurs in the business of speculating or investing in securities and commodities.
24. Markets are never wrong. Opinions often are.
I hope you enjoyed some of these quotes. If you haven’t read Reminiscences of a Stock Operator make sure to pick it up because it’s a great entertaining read too.
By the way, these prints are available to buy! Just click on the one you are interested in. They would look good in any trading office 😉
