Jesse Lauriston Livermore

Attributed

• "In a bull market your game is to buy and hold until you believe that the bull market is near its end."

• "My dear boy," said old Partridge, in great distress "my dear boy, if I sold that stock now I'd lose my position; and then where would I be?"

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

• "Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon."

• "The market does not beat them. They beat themselves, because though they have brains they cannot sit tight."

• "He really meant to tell them that the big money was 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."

• "Obviously the thing to do was to be bullish in a bull market and bearish in a bear market."

• "When your security is acting right, you can safely add to your line from then forward!"

• "When I buy stocks for a rise I like to pay top prices and when I sell I must sell low or not at all."

• "When this happens I sell the stock short that is, technically. In other words, I sell more stock than I actually hold."

• "Experience has proved to me that real money made in speculating has been in commitments in a stock or commodity showing a profit right from the start."

• "It is literally true that millions come easier to a trader after he knows how to trade, than hundreds did in the days of his ignorance."

• "If my stock does not act as I anticipated, I immediately determine that the time is not yet ripe – so I close out my commitment."

• "The price pattern reminds you that every movement of importance is but a repetition of similar price movements, that just as soon as you can familiarize yourself with the actions of the past, you will be able to anticipate and act correctly and profitably upon forthcoming movements."

• "From my point of view, the investors are the big gamblers. They make a bet, stay with it, and if all goes wrong, they lose it all."

• "A great many smashes by brilliant men can be traced directly to the swelled head — an expensive disease everywhere to everybody, but particularly in Wall Street to a speculator."

• "There is only one side to the stock market; and it is not the bull side or the bear side, but the right side"

• Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre, the source work from which most of these quotations are taken. This is a newly edited and updated version for ease of online reading, with fully restored typography conventions and author's phrasing to accurately reflect intended meaning of the original published work. Hyperlinks to external references have been introduced to help clarify unfamiliar terminology and offer background context about key personalities and events mentioned in the text.