Reminiscences of a Stock Operator quotes

Another lesson I learned early is that there is nothing new in Wall Street. There can’t be because speculation is as old as the hills. Whatever happens in the stock market to-day has happened before and will happen again.

They say there are two sides to everything. But there is only one side to the stock market; and it is not the bull side or the bear side, but the right side.

And right here let me say one thing: 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. It was always my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight!

A loss never bothers me after I take it. I forget it overnight. But being wrong--not taking the loss--that is what does the damage to the pocketbook and to the soul.

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

The desire for constant action irrespective of underlying conditions is responsible for many losses in Wall Street even among the professionals, who feel that they must take home some money every day, as though they were working for regular wages.

A stock operator has to fight a lot of expensive enemies within himself.

No man can always have adequate reasons for buying or selling stocks daily--or sufficient knowledge to make his play an intelligent play.

A man must believe in himself and his judgment if he expects to make a living at this game.

Always sell what shows you a loss and keep what shows you a profit.

And the conclusion that I have reached after nearly thirty years of constant trading, both on a shoestring and with millions of dollars back of me, is this: A man may beat a stock or a group at a certain time, but no man living can beat the stock market!

Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon. I found it one of the hardest things to learn.

A man has to have experience and he has to pay for it.

When the men who ought to want a stock don’t want it, why should I want it?

“Sell down to the sleeping point,” answered the friend.

I think it was a long step forward in my education when I realized at last that when old Mr. Partridge kept on telling the other customers, “Well, you know this is a bull market!” 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.

Nobody can catch all the fluctuations.

A man must know himself thoroughly if he is going to make a good job out of trading in the speculative markets. To know what I was capable of in the line of folly was a long educational step. I sometimes think that no price is too high for a speculator to pay to learn that which will keep him from getting the swelled head.

If a man didn’t make mistakes he’d own the world in a month. But if he didn’t profit by his mistakes he wouldn’t own a blessed thing.

No, sir, nobody can make big money on what someone else tells him to do.

Without faith in his own judgment no man can go very far in this game. That is about all I have learned--to study general conditions, to take a position and stick to it.