Soul Strut

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<blockquote> a good place to start in terms of reading would be reminiscinces of a stock operator by edwin lefevre. it's sort of an autobiography - really quick and interesting read - but he lays down a lot of the basics in that book. get those down cold before you start exploring specific theories about trading. </blockquote> This book is authored by Edwin Leferve, but is really written by Jesse Livermore. I'm not sure if he told the story to Leferve or if Leferve is a pen name for Livermore. Livermore is considered to be one of the all time great traders on Wall Street (and is also in my "heroes" list on my myspace page) and operated around the great depression times. The book is not easy to read because it uses a lot of 1920's era terminology. If you have a good handle on how the market operates you can understand what he is talking about. Dude went flat broke two or three times, but also was so wealthy at times that once he came close to collapsing the stock market with a short bet and was personally contacted by them asking him to not trade that day for the good of the country. That's juice. Another good thing to read is "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds". It's THICK and written in the 1800's, but is the best thing I can think of to learn about...well, to learn about extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds. It's crowd psychology basically. Goes into the tulip bulb craze, and other times in history where people got so caught up in crowd hype that they behaved irrationally with their finances, and of you bet against them you would eventually become rewarded. Case in point...the bursting of the internet bubble a few years ago; people bidding up anything.com to totally ridiculous levels. If you were patient and smart and took a position against the hype you are a rich motherfucker these days. Another recent example is the stock Taser. Got bid ridiculous last year and eventually crashed when the smarter money prevailed. Check the chart..TASR. I worked with a guy who got rich through this thinking (also called contrarianism). I remember when the Nasdaq crossed 4000, I asked him how soon he thought it would be before it crossed 5000, he said "Matty I don't know, but if it's within 6 months I'm gonna short that baby and ride it all the way down". He probably made a couple million, then retired and moved upstate somewhere. There's another book I have which is written by Michael Parness, called "Rule The Freaking Markets". It's one of the easiest books to read for a beginner, and is a solid introduction into how to trade trends. I made a ton of money off of a couple of things I got from that book. Dude runs a website called trendfund.com, but I've never looked at it. Here's the thing with financial books. They all have a lot to say, but it's hard to digest and absorb every little thing in the book. I got to where I am today by reading anything I could get my hands on and taking at least one or two things from the book. If you only read one book and only learn one method, what are you going to do when that method isn't working for you anymore? Better to have a whole arsenal at your fingertips. -Sween.

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