Famous Traders

Hello everyone

I was at the library over the long weekends, i borrowed this book "Reminiscences of a Stock Operator". This book is like the classic must read for all traders. This book was written in early 1900s about jesse livermore, one of the best trader during that time. Some of the stuffs written in the book still holds even till today.maybe some will say that the market had not change as it is build on men fear and hope and greed. but i would think that it is the way to cheat the everyday joe's money is still the same. Brokers earns from customers losses. in the book the bucket shops calls the customers "Suckers"

a quote from jesse livermore
True suckers thought they can actually beat the game by winning consistently, the reality was that they lost everything in a short time and never came back to a market that they never understood in the first place" A sad truth, many ppl are blind by their ego and tink they "know" what they are doing. It is very hard to get out of the grey area unless you are able to accept the truth and with a open mind.




ok lets talk more abt jesse livermore, ok since he is such a great trader that had won millions. he should be living in luxury and leading a good life rite? WRONG! Livermore gained and lost several multi-million dollar fortunes. It was never disclosed to anyone what happened to the great fortune he had made in the crash of 1929, but he had lost it all. On November 28, 1940, Livermore shot and killed himself.



now lets talk about other famous speculators. the most famous currency speculator is of coz George Soros, "the man who broke the Bank of England".George Soros will always be remembered for his almost $2 billion profits made when he shorted the British Pound. But not too many seem to recall George Sosros's horrific 60%+ losses in his funds when he was caught in the 1987 crash! In fact, Soros even admits that he is rarely more than half right!



ok now guys you heard of the "turtle traders"?. In 1983, Richard Dennis and Bill Eckhardt pondered the idea of whether being a great trader was a nature skills or whether it could be taught. Dennis believed that one could be trained while Eckhardt thought it was an innate skill. In order to settle this bet. Richard Dennis and Bill Eckhardt recruited 21 men and 2 women with little trading experience and taught them a trading system that made Dennis and Eckhardt famous in the industry. When his experiment ended five years later, his Turtles reportedly had earned an aggregate profit of $175 million.

now everyone must think that Richard Dennis must be a great trader ? WRONG again. Dennis managed pools of capital for others in the markets for a while, but withdrew from such management in the spring of 1988 after his clients suffered heavy losses. In the Black Monday stock market crash of 1987, he reportedly lost $10 million, with a total of $50 million reportedly lost in 1987-88. He also managed funds for some time in the mid and late 1990s, closing these operations after losses in the summer of 2000.



another trader call Nicolas Darvas wrote the book "How I Made 2,000,000 in the Stock Market". In the book he describe a Box system based on support/resistent. even though he is trained as a economist in school, he is a professional dancer. New York Attorney General had 'thrown the book' at Darvas charging that his story was 'unqualifiedly false' and that it could find 'ascertainable' profits of only $216,000. Did he continue to trade? No. Later, He went on to explore other fields, the fashion industry,theatrical producing, real estate are just a few. His method is now known as "classic" and wont work in current times. you can try it out yourself if you dont believe hehe.



Here are some more quotes from famous traders/investors

In this business if you're good, you're right six times out of ten. You're never going to be right nine times out of ten.
Peter Lynch

Most of the time common stocks are subject to irrational and excessive price fluctuations in both directions as the consequence of the ingrained tendency of most people to speculate or gamble... to give way to hope, fear and greed.
Benjamin Graham

The financial markets generally are unpredictable. So that one has to have different scenarios.. The idea that you can actually predict what's going to happen contradicts my way of looking at the market.
George Soros

Before this century is over, the Dow Jones Industrial Average will probably be over one million versus around 10,000 now. So for the long-term, the outlook is tremendously bullish if you buy stocks blindly to keep for a century.
John Templeton

Even famous investor guru warren buffet does have huge losses. Both Alan Greenspan and ben bernanke belives that nobody can profits from the markets constantly. Referring to Alan Greenspan's famous remark about the "irrational exuberance" of the market, "Traders think, ‘No one can beat the market — but I can,'" Will i suffer the same fate as the "famous traders"? I hope not! wish me luck guys !!!!