Memoirs of a stock speculator. Lefebvre Edwin

Dedicated to Jesse Lauriston Livermore
Preface.
I interviewed more than thirty of the most prominent stock market players of our time and asked each of them several of the same questions [The interview was published in the collections "Market Wizards" and "New Market Wizards" ("Market Wizards", New York Institute of Finance, 1989; "The New Market Wizards, HarperBusiness, 1992). — Hereinafter, the translator's notes.]. Among them was this: “Has there been a book in your life that has had a strong influence on you that you would like to recommend to aspiring traders?” Most of those questioned pointed to Memoirs of a Stock Operator, a book published in 1923!
What makes these "Memories ..." timeless? I believe that this is the accuracy with which the peculiarities of the thinking of a stock trader are reproduced here, the mistakes made, the lessons learned and insights are described. Readers who have their own experience of working on the exchange find in it a lot of recognizable and understandable. They are close to the thoughts and experience of the hero of the book, Larry Livingston, whose prototype was Jesse Livermore. Many, and perhaps most readers of the book are sure that the name of the author of the book, Edwin Lefevre, is the pseudonym behind which Livermore disappeared,
But it's not. Lefebvre is a real figure. He was a journalist, newspaper columnist, author of novels and short stories. (Before Reminiscences of a Stock Operator appeared in book form, it was published in the weekly The Saturday Evening Post.) The reader of this book finds it hard to believe that Lefebvre never worked on the stock exchange himself. But he was a skilled writer who had a rare ability to bring people to light. His son recalls that many different people (bank clerks, taxi drivers, etc.), entering into everyday, business contacts with his father, became incredibly frank and willingly talked about themselves and their lives. Lefebvre devoted several weeks to questioning Livermore, and yet he never observed the latter's trading operations. This book is the result of those conversations.
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is full of precious insights into markets and trading. Some of the stories told here have long since become part of Wall Street's oral folklore. Here, for example: "Prices are not are neither too high to start buying nor too low to start selling. The book is so good that it's hard to choose an example to quote. Nevertheless, I want to make the following reasoning: “I did everything exactly the opposite. Cotton brought me losses, and I kept it. Wheat showed a profit, and I sold it. There is no worse mistake for a speculator than to cling to a lost game. You should always sell what creates a loss and keep what makes a profit.”
Any experienced trader will easily find similar situations in their own experience, and any beginner can learn a lot. And there's a lot in the book that you can—and should—learn. Readers who can absorb and follow the lessons abundantly taught in this book will greatly improve themselves as merchants. The rest will get the joy of getting to know a smart and well-made book.
What is a classic? In my opinion, a classic is a book that, because of its unique content or style, continues to be read and appreciated by generations of readers after its publication. Sometimes this public interest persists for centuries. In that sense, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is a true classic. First published in 1923, it is still one of the most popular books in the field of financial literature, and you can be sure that it will be read and learned from it well into the 21st century. Moreover, if I were asked what books on finance would be read at the end of the 21st century, I would not hesitate to put Memoirs of a Stock Operator at the top of the list.
Jack Schweiger

Chapter 1
I started working right after graduating from high school. I found a job in a brokerage [meaning a semi-legal shop equipped with a telegraph connection to stock and commodity exchanges and taking bets on changes in the price of securities and commodities (sugar, copper, steel, rubber, etc.). The American name bucket shops arose due to the fact that initially in such establishments, alcoholic beverages were sold in packages (boxes, baskets - bucket). Hereinafter: brokerage house, provincial brokerage house, gambling houses.]. I counted well. At school, I completed a three-year arithmetic course in a year. I was especially good at counting in my mind. My business was big quotation board in the trading floor. Usually one of the customers sat next to the telegraph machine and read out the prices. I have always been able to write. I have always had a good memory for numbers. No problem.
There were many other employees in the office. Naturally, I had friends among them, but with an active market, I was so busy from ten in the morning until three in the afternoon that there was almost no time for chatter. Anyway, it didn't annoy me, at least during working hours.
But the bustle of the market did not prevent me from thinking about work. For me, the quotes were not the prices of stocks - so many dollars apiece. They were just numbers. Of course they meant something. They were constantly changing. And that was all I was interested in—change. Why did they change? I didn't know this. Yes, I wasn't interested. I did not think about that. I just saw that they change all the time. That was the only thing I thought about for five hours on weekdays and two hours on Saturday - that they are constantly changing.
That's how I first became interested in the behavior of prices. I had an excellent memory for numbers. I remembered in detail how prices behaved the day before - before they began to rise or fall. My love for mental counting came in very handy.
I noticed that right before they started to rise or fall, stock prices usually behaved in a certain way, so to speak. This kind of situation was repeated constantly, and I began to look closely at them. I was only fourteen, but when the coincidences in price behavior went into the hundreds, I began to analyze them and began to compare today's stock movements with those of previous days. It took me a little time to learn how to predict price movements. My only guide, as I said, was their behavior in the past. All the "dossier" I kept in mind. I was looking for patterns in price movements, "clocking" them. Well, you understand what I mean.
You can detect the moment when buying brings only slightly more profit than selling. There is a battle going on in the stock exchange, and the ticker tape serves as a spyglass to watch it. Seven times out of ten, you can rely on her data.
Another lesson I learned early on was that Wall Street is always the same. There can be nothing new, because speculation is as old as this world. What is happening today on the stock exchange is what has happened before and what will happen again. This I remember forever. It seems to me that I Now I can remember when and how I understood it. This is my way of gaining experience.
I was so carried away by my game and so recklessly sought to guess the rise and fall of active stock prices that I even started a notebook. I started writing down my observations. It wasn't a record of imaginary million-dollar deals that so many who don't risk getting rich or going to a homeless shelter amuse themselves with. I just recorded when I guessed and when I missed; I was most interested in the accuracy of my observations and estimates, whether I was right or wrong.
After examining the daily fluctuations in the prices of active stocks, I concluded that prices behaved exactly as they always did before an eight or ten point jump. Then on Monday I wrote down the price of certain stocks and, remembering what happened in the past, wrote down what the price should be on Tuesday and Wednesday. And then I compared my guesses with what the exchange telegraph tape brought.
This is how my interest in price information came into my life. From the very beginning, I was interested in price increases and decreases. There is always a reason for such movements, but the ticker tape does not say why or why. When I was fourteen, I didn't ask the tape why; I do not ask this question even now, when I am forty. It may take two or three days, two or three weeks or months before the reasons why certain stocks have behaved this way today are known. But what the hell is the difference? You need to respond to the tape today, not tomorrow. Reasons can wait. And you must act now or stay away. All this unfolded before me time after time. You just remember that somehow Hollow Tube went down three points. And on the next Monday, it turned out that the directors had squeezed dividends. This was the reason. They knew what they were going to do, and even if they themselves did not sell shares of their company, they certainly did not buy them. The company did not support the price of its shares, how could it not fall?
That's how I continued to record for half a year. When my work day ended, instead of going home, I wrote down the