Edwin Lefèvre Quotes

“A battle goes on in the stock market and the tape is your telescope. You can depend upon it seven out of ten cases.”

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

“A man may see straight and clearly and yet become impatient or doubtful when the market takes its time about doing as he figured it must do. That is why so many men in Wall Street, who are not at all in the sucker class, not even in the third grade, nevertheless lose money. The market does not beat them. They beat themselves, because though they have brains they cannot sit tight.”

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

“A professional gambler is not looking for long shots, but for sure money. Of course long shots are fine when they come in.”

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

“A trader, in addition to studying basic conditions, remembering market precedents and keeping in mind the psychology of the outside public as well as the limitations of his brokers, must also know himself and provide against his own weaknesses.”

“After a boom the public is positive that nothing is going up. It isn’t that buyers become more discriminating, but that the blind buying is over. It is the state of mind that has changed. Prices don’t even have to go down to make people pessimistic. It is enough if the market gets dull and stays dull for a time.”

“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 today has happened before and will happen again. I've never forgotten that. I suppose I really manage to remember when and how it happened. The fact that I remember that way is my way of capitalizing experience.”

“As a matter of fact I trade in accordance to my means and always leave myself an ample margin of safety.”

“As I have said a thousand times, no manipulation can put stocks down and keep them down.”

“Before I can solve a problem I must state it to myself. When I think I have found the solution I must prove I am right. I know of only one way to prove it; and that is, with my own money.”

“Being broke is a very efficient educational agency.”

“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.”

“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.”

“He must fear that his loss may develop into a much bigger loss, and hope that his profit may become a big profit. It is absolutely wrong to gamble in stocks the way the average man does.”

“I did precisely the wrong thing. The cotton showed me a loss and I kept it. The wheat showed me a profit and I sold it out. Of all the speculative blunders there are few greater than trying to average a losing game. Always sell what shows you a loss and keep what shows you a profit.”

“I have been in the speculative game ever since I was fourteen. It is all I have ever done. I think I know what I am talking about. 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! A man may make money out of individual deals in cotton or grain, but no man can beat the cotton market or the grain market. It's like the track. A man may beat a horse race, but he cannot beat horse racing.”

“I knew that some day I would find out what was wrong and I would stop being wrong.”

“I noticed that in advances as well as declines, stock prices were apt to show certain habits, so to speak. There was no end of parallel cases and these made precedents to guide me.”

“I quite cold-bloodedly reached the conclusion that I would never be able to accomplish anything useful so long as I was worried.”

“I repeat that I never argue with the tape.”

“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.”

“If a stock doesn’t act right don’t touch it; because, being unable to tell precisely what is wrong, you cannot tell which way it is going. No diagnosis, no prognosis. No prognosis, no profit.”

“If the unusual never happened there would be no difference in people and then there wouldn't be any fun in life. The game would become merely a matter of addition and subtraction. It would make of us a race of bookkeepers with plodding minds. It's the guessing that develops a man's brain power. Just consider what you have to do to guess right.”

“If you do not know who you are, the stock market is an expensive place to find out.”

“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.”

“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 is surprising how many experienced traders there are who look incredulous when I tell them that 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. It would not be so difficult to make money if a trader always stuck to his speculative guns that is, waited for the line of least resistance to define itself and began buying only when the tape said up or selling only when it said down. He should accumulate his line on the way up. Let him buy one-fifth of his full line. If that does not show him a profit he must not increase his holdings because he has obviously begun wrong; he is wrong temporarily and there is no profit in being wrong at any time. The same tape that said 'up' did not necessarily lie merely because it is now saying 'not yet'.”

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