Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

published

2012-01-16

rating

2

This is a fictionalized biography of a securities speculator named Jesse Livermore. The first-person narrative focuses entirely on the adventures in market speculation in the life of Jesse Livermore, wasting no time on other personal details. It describes the emotions, mistakes, lessons, and results of many episodes. Sometimes it even goes into so much detail that it quotes exact prices. The key point is that it is 100% about speculation, not investing, which naturally means that it is not a reliable way to make money. The narrator himself lost all his money several times. There is some advice for traders, mostly psychological, but nothing that I felt was valuable. His methods are all about technical analysis, market sentiment, market feedback (the price response he sees after buying or selling), and inside information. Above all, the main problem is that the story is just boring. There is only one real character and a long list of play-by-play descriptions of money-making and money-losing without any real explanatory basis.