Edwin Lefèvre (1871–1943) was an American journalist, writer, and diplomat most noted for his writings on Wall Street business.
Fear and hope remain the same; therefore the study of the psychology of speculators is as valuable as it ever was. Weapons change, but strategy remains strategy, on the New York Stock Exchange as on the battlefield. I think the clearest summing up of the whole thing was expressed by Thomas F. Woodlock when he declared: “The principles of successful stock speculation are based on the supposition that people will continue in the future to make the mistakes that they have made in the past. ”
In fact, of all hoodoos in Wall Street I think the resolve to induce the stock market to act as a fairy godmother is the busiest and most persistent.
No man can always have adequate reasons for buying or selling stocks daily - or sufficient knowledge to make his play an intelligent play.
The principles of successful stock speculation are based on the supposition that people will continue in the future to make the mistakes that they have made in the past.
TIPS! How people want tips! They crave not only to get them but to give them.
The game taught me the game.
Nowhere does history indulge in repetitions so often or so uniformly as in Wall Street.
And for a sucker play a man gets sucker pay; for the paymaster is on the job and never losses the pay envelope that is coming to you.
One of the most helpful things that any body can learn is to give up trying to catch the last eighth - or the first. These two are the most expensive eighths in the world.
A battle goes on in the stock market and the tape is your telescope. You can depend upon it seven out of ten cases.
As I have said a thousand times, no manipulation can put stocks down and keep them down.
The speculator is not an investor.
The public always wants to be told.
It takes a man a long time to learn all the lessons of all of his mistakes. 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. It took me longer to get that general principle fixed firmly in my mind than it did most of the more technical phases of the game of stock speculation.
When the man who ought to want a stock doesn't want it, why should I want it?
A stock operator has to fight a lot of expensive enemies within himself.
It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight! It is no trick at all to be right on the market. You always find lots of early bulls in bull markets and early bears in bear markets. I've known many men who were right at exactly the right time, and began buying or selling stocks when prices were at the very level which should show the greatest profit. And their experience invariably matched mine--that is, they made no real money out of it. Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon.
It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It was always my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight!
When you find that it fails to respond adequately to your buying you don't need any better tip to sell.
That is one trouble about trading on a large scale. You cannot sneak out as you can when you pike along.