Jesse Livermore on Market Psychology

And the funniest thing was that not later than ten days after the Cosmopolitan people tried to double-cross me a New York operator did them out of over seventy thousand dollars. This man, who was quite a market factor in his day and a member of the New York Stock Exchange, made a great name for himself as a bear during the Bryan panic of '96. He was forever running up against Stock Exchange rules that kept him from carrying out some of his plans at the expense of his fellow members. One day he figured that there would be no complaints from either the Exchange or the police authorities if he took from the bucket shops of the land some of their ill-gotten gains. In the instance I speak of he sent thirty-five men to act as customers. They went to the main office and to the bigger branches. On a certain day at a fixed hour the agents all bought as much of a certain stock as the managers would let them. They had instructions to sneak out at a certain profit. Of course what he did was to distribute bull tips on that stock among his cronies and then he went in to the floor of the Stock Exchange and bid up the price, helped by the room traders, who thought he was a good sport Being careful to pick out the right stock for that work, there was no trouble in putting up the price three or four points. His agents at the bucket shops cashed in as prearranged.

That is how I came back to Wall Street for a third attempt. I had been studying, of course, trying to locate the exact trouble with my system that had been responsible for my defeats in A. R. Fullerton & Co.'s office. I was twenty when I made my first ten thousand, and I lost that. But I knew how and why because I traded out of season all the time; because when I couldn't play according to my system, which was based on study and experience, I went in and gambled. I hoped to win, instead of knowing that I ought to win on form. When I was about twenty-two I ran up my stake to fifty thousand dollars; I lost it on May ninth. But I knew exactly why and how. It was the laggard tape and the unprecedented violence of the movements that awful day. But I didn't know why I had lost after my return from St. Louis or after the May ninth panic. I had theories that is, remedies for some of the faults that I thought I found in my play. But I needed actual practice.

I was not betting blindly. I wasn't a crazy bear. I wasn't drunk with success or thinking that because Frisco was pretty well wiped off the map the entire country was headed for the scrap heap. No, indeed! I didn't look for a panic. Well, the next day I cleaned up. I made two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It was my biggest winnings up to that time. It was all made in a few days. The Street paid no attention to the earthquake the first day or two. They'll tell you that it was because the first despatches were not so alarming, but I think it was because it took so long to change the point of view of the public toward the securities markets. Even the professional traders for the most part were slow and shortsighted.

At all events, I knew that all bull manipulation was foredoomed to failure in that bear market. The instant I read the dispatch I knew there was only one thing to do to be comfortable, and that was to sell Smelters short. Why, the insiders as much as begged me on their knees to do it, when they increased the dividend rate on the verge of a money panic. It was as infuriating as the old "dares" of your boyhood. They dared me to sell that particular stock short.

It made me think. I had seen a smash coming, but not, I admit, the worst panic in our history. It might not be profitable to anybody if it went much further. Finally it became plain that there was no use in waiting at the Post for money. There wasn't going to be any. Then hell broke loose. The president of the Stock Exchange, Mr. R. H. Thomas, so I heard later in the day, knowing that every house in the Street was headed for disaster, went out in search of succour. He called on James Stillman, president of the National City Bank, the richest bank in the United States. Its boast was that it never loaned money at a higher rate than 6 per cent.

Stillman heard what the president of the New York Stock Exchange had to say. Then he said, "Mr. Thomas, we'll have to go and see Mr. Morgan about this." The two men, hoping to stave off the most disastrous panic in our financial history, went together to the office of J. P. Morgan & Co. and saw Mr. Morgan. Mr. Thomas laid the case before him. The moment he got through speaking Mr. Morgan said, "Go back to the Exchange and tell them that there will be money for them."

I heard a day or two later that Mr. Morgan simply sent word to the frightened bankers of New York that they mnst provide the money the Stock Exchange needed. "But we haven't got any. We're loaned up to the hilt," the banks protested. "You've got your reserves," snapped J. P. "But we're already below the legal limit," they howled "Use them! That's what reserves are for!" And the banks obeyed and invaded the reserves to the extent of about twenty million dollars. It saved the stock market. The bank panic didn't come until the following week. He was a man, J. P. Morgan was. They don't come much bigger.

When the commission houses found out there was not a cent to be had at any price I knew the time had come. I sent brokers into the various crowds. Why, at one time there wasn't a single bid for Union Pacific. Not at any price! Think of it! And in other stocks the same thing. No money to hold stocks and nobody to buy them. I had enormous paper profits and the certainty that all that I had to do to smash prices still more was to send in orders to sell ten thousand shares each of Union Pacific and of a half dozen other good dividend-paying stocks and what would follow would be simply hell. It seemed to me that the panic that would be precipitated would be of such an intensity and character that the board of governors would deem it advisable to close the Exchange, as was done in August, 1914, when the World War broke out.

It would mean greatly increased profits on paper. It might also mean an inability to convert those profits into actual cash. But there were other things to consider, and one was that a further break would retard the recovery that I was beginning to figure on, the compensating improvement after all that bloodletting. Such a panic would do much harm to the country generally.

I made up my mind that since it was unwise and unpleasant to continue actively bearish it was illogical for me to stay short. So I turned and began to buy. It wasn't long after my brokers began to buy in for me and, by the way, I got bottom prices that the banker sent for my friend. "I have sent for you," he said, "because I want you to go instantly to your friend Livingston and say to him mat we hope he will not sell any more stocks to-day. The market can't stand much more pressure. As it is, it will be an immensely difficult task to avert a devastating panic. Appeal to your friend's patriotism. This is a case where a man has to work for the benefit of all. Let me know at once what he says."

to my heart's content from my own yacht, going wherever I wished whenever I felt like it. Everything was ready. I had made a killing in stocks, but at the last moment corn held me back. I must explain that before the money panic which gave me ray first million I had been trading in grain at Chicago. I was short ten million bushels of wheat and ten million bushels of corn. I had studied the grain markets for a long time and was as bearish on corn and wheat as I had been on stocks.

Of course the Liverpool cables made our own market wild. But I noticed the higher it went the scarcer July cotton seemed to be. I wasn't letting go any of mine. Altogether that Monday was an exciting and not very cheerful day for the bears; but for all that, I could detect no signs of an impending bear panic; no beginnings of a blind stampede to cover. And I had one hundred and forty thousand bales for which I must find a market.

When we got to Philadelphia I drove to a broker's office. I saw that there was the very dickens to pay in the cotton market. Prices had broken badly and there was a small-sized panic on. I didn't wait to get to New York. I called up my brokers on the long distance and I covered my shorts. As soon as I got my reports and found that I had practically made up my previous loss, I motored on to New York without having to stop en route to see any more quotations.

Of course, general conditions favoured him. Not only actual business but sentiment and his unlimited financial backing made possible his success. What we had was not merely a big bull market but a boom and a state of mind not likely to be seen again. The undigested-securities panic came later, when Steel common, which Keene had marked up to 55 in 1901, sold at 10 in 1903 and at 8-7/8 in 1904.

quarter-pound box it might go better; and perhaps at 27 or 30 cents. Why does not the public ask why the stock is made easy to buy? It is a case of the Wall Street philanthropist operating again, but the wise trader bewares of the Greeks bearing gifts. It is all the warning needed. The public disregards it and loses millions of dollars annually. The law punishes whoever originates or circulates rumors calculated to affect adversely the credit or business of individuals or corporations, that is, that tend to depress the values of securities by influencing the public to sell. Originally, the chief intention may have been to reduce the danger of panic by punishing anyone who doubted aloud the solvency of banks in times of stress. But of course, it serves also to protect the public against selling stocks below their real value. In other words the law of the land punishes the disseminator of bearish items of that nature.