HOW TO TRADE
IN STOCKS:
The Livermore Formula For
Combining Time Element and Price
INTRODUCTION
This classic book, first published in 1940, sets forth the specific trading techniques and methods used by the legendary Jesse Livermore. It has been out of print for many years and generally unavailable to the trading public. It completes the trilogy of books by and about Livermore (Reminiscences of A Stock Operator; Jesse Livermore: Speculator King; and How To Trade In Stocks). Anyone who has read the former two books about this famous and fascinating trader will doubtless want to complete his reading on Livermore with this volume. All three of these books are now published and maintained in print by
TRADERS PRESS.
TRADERS PRESS specializes in the publication and sale of books of Interest to the stock and commodity trader. To receive free sample commodity charts from our other publications and a copy of our current catalogue of over 200 books for traders, write us today at P.O. Box 6206, Greenville, S.C. 29606.
Greenville, S.C.
May 1991
/4LQ
Oi444P1
Edward D. Dobson
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface 11
I The Challenge of Speculation 15
II When Does a Stock Act Right’? 27
III Follow the Leaders 33
IV Money in the Hand 38
V The Pivotal Point 43
VI The Million Dollar Blunder 52
VII The Three Million Dollar Profit 59
VIII The Livermore Market Key 66
IX Explanatory Rules 72
X Charts and Explanations for the
Livermore Market Key 79
PREFACE
Even though more than a quarter-century has gone by since his death-by-suicide in 1940, .Jesse Livermore frequently comes to “live” today in conversations occurring in the board-rooms and the back-offices located along that man-made — and fascinating — canyon known as “Wall Street.”
This is quite understandable; for of all the colorful figures in stock market history Jesse Lauriston Livermore was the only operator who ever made and lost four stock market fortunes—each running into millions of dollars. What makes his roller- coaster financial past even more of a Wall Street wonder is the startling knowledge that every time Livermore went bankrupt, his “hard-hearted” creditors (in the main, conservative—and dispassionate
—stockbrokers) promptly let him off.
Tradition has it that the reason Livermore’s creditors absolved him from his debts was simply that they couldn’t afford to lose the commission business generated by his activities. But in any event such was his reputation that brokers and traders alike firmly believed Livermore to be the kind of genius who needed only a small bankroll, a stock ticker and a telephone to recoup his lost millions.
Jesse Livermore had more than just a reputation. He was a gifted man whose rare talents were busily employed for one unyielding purpose: the exciting business of speculation (profits from price changes).
To understand how Livermore came to be obsessed by the all-pervasive urge for wealth from price fluctuations, it is fitting to refer to his youth.
Born in South Acton, Massachusetts, in 1877, young Jesse (son of a poor plain-dirt farmer) speedily resented the aches and callouses of bucolic labors.
Hammered upon the forge of poverty, he began to dream of becoming rich—and famous. But most of all, he hungered to escape from the morass of the commonplace. He wanted to be a somebody.
To promote his ambitions, this farm boy at fifteen) ran off to Boston, where he wound up as a board boy in Paine Webber’s office. There, for a few dollars a week, he diligently chalked the ever changing prices of stocks, bonds, and commodities onto a blackboard.
At first, these prices and their changes were quite meaningless to Jesse Livermore. But when he came to realize that every time a price changed somebody made money, he became solidly hooked on the concept of mastering the forecasting of such changes. It. was not too long before he put his theories to the test. At lunch hour he began to haunt the local bucket shops (emporiums where bets were made on the price action of stocks and commodities, without of course the actual purchase or sale of the involved items). And soon he found himself scalping small profits, while often being “wiped out” with small losses.
One day Jesse’s supervisor warned him to stay away from those “dens of iniquity”; or else. Jesse chose the “or else”—and was promptly fired. Thus ended the first—and the last—job he ever had. For the next forty-eight years Livermore operated as a lone wolf, selfishly seeking his own aggrandizement.
Shortly after he was fired, Jesse did so well in the Boston bucket shows that he was banned from doing business in that city. Thereupon he went out of town, where he hurt the bucketshop operators so badly they dubbed him with the sobriquet, “Boy Wonder.” A few years after the turn of the century, JC Livermore (then in his twenties) told himself he was ready for the “big-time.” Quietly he moved into New York City to prepare for his first big killing. This came along in the spring of 1906, when Livermore, on a tip from Boston Lawson, went short of Union Pacific.
Tall, slim, blond-haired—and as dignified-looking as a college president—the icy-eyed Mr. Livermore hardly batted an eyelash as the price of Union Pacific inexorably began to rise—and he began to be seriously squeezed. Obviously, the well-intentioned tip he had received seemed to be turning sour, but Livermore, trapped, with remarkable naivete, stoically held his ground.
Luckily for Livermore, his first large-scale speculation worked out handsomely only because of a miracle. In April of 1906, the world was shocked by the San Francisco earthquake. The market broke badly. And two days thereafter, Livermore covered his shorts for a profit of more than a quarter-million.
The financially happy outcome of what at first appeared to be a tragedy from a tip taught Livermore his first important lesson: “Never act on tips.” The experience also taught him to seek a more sensible approach to the business of assuming market risk. He began to experiment along the lines of working out a thinking-man’s stock market system.
During the decades that followed, Jesse Livermore sharpened his market tools, concentrating on an accurate method of price-analysis as a basis for price-prediction. Painfully, he learned from his own mistakes—and from the mistakes of other large- scale operators. For many years he stubbornly fought off publishers and tout-sheet operators alike, who pleaded with him to publish the secrets of his stock market methods. Meanwhile, Livermore patiently perfected his “key”—with the thought in mind that when it had proved to be successful at least 60% of the time he would then air it to the investment world.
What motivated him, in 1939, to finally share his secrets with his fellow men was more than the money he hoped to realize from the sale of his book. For all during the years that Livermore worked on his Key system he yearned desperately to make his life meaningful: not only to himself, but also to his fellow Americans—people Who he knew played the stock market against professionals holding marked cards. And so Jesse Livermore wrote the revealing book that follows.
Man’s most powerful weapon for self-betterment is the intelligent application of the lessons of personal experience, Jesse Livermore knew this just as he also knew that learning and knowledge are not sold in the same store. For almost fifty continuous years, day-in and day-out, lie absorbed lessons from stock market activity. Trenchantly lie processed them inside ii mind that any sharp Yankee trader would have been proud to own. And he set down his findings in a readable fashion—so that all could understand what he was trying to say.
Whether or not risk-takers reading this work will make money by applying the lessons of Jesse Livermore to today’s markets is of course a debatable question. But every reader of this book will be enriched by its wisdom, its sensible “rules”—and the signposts in it pointing up the dangers to risk-capital as represented by changing prices. Chances are this book’s readers will turn to it time and again, as if to an old friend, for its richly informative pages can often be comforting—and consoling. Assuredly, it will help make anyone’s stock market approach more pleasurable.
PAUL SARNOFF
I
THE CHALLENGE OF SPECULATION
The game of speculation is the most uniformly fascinating game in the world. But it is not a game for the stupid, the mentally lazy, the man of inferior emotional balance, nor for the get-rich-quick adventurer. They will die poor.
Over a long period of years I have rarely attended a dinner party including strangers that someone did not sit down beside me and after the usual pleasantries inquire:
“How can I make some money in the market?” In my younger days I would go to considerable pains to explain all the difficulties faced by the one who simply wishes to take quick and easy money out of the market; or through courteous evasiveness I would work my way out of the snare. In later years my answer has been a blunt ‘I don’t know.”
It is difficult to exercise patience with such people. In the first place, the inquiry is not a compliment to the man who has made a scientific study of investment and speculation. It would be as fair for the layman to ask an attorney or a surgeon:
“How can I make some quick money in law or surgery?”
I have come to the conviction, however, that larger numbers of people interested in stock-market investment and speculation would be willing to
work and study to attain sensible results, if they had a guide or signpost pointing the right direction. And it is for them that this book is written.
It is my purpose to include some of the highlights of a lifetime of speculative experience—a record of some of the failures and successes and the lessons that each has taught. Out of it all emerge