Edwin Lefevre (1871 – 1943)
American journalist, writer, and statesman most remembered today for his writings about Wall Street.
The game taught me the game.
As I have said a thousand times, no manipulation can put stocks down and keep them down.
The big money in booms is always made first by the public - on paper.
And it remains on paper.
There is nothing like losing all you have in the world for teaching you what not to do. And when you know what not to do in order not to lose money, you begin to learn what to do in order to win. Did you get that? You begin to learn!
" Oh, Mr. Wolff, what do you think of Balzac? "
Josh politely ceased to masticate, swallowed and answered,
" I never trade them Curb stocks! "
The speculators deadly enemies are: Ignorance, greed, fear and hope. All the statute books in the world and all the rules of all the Exchanges on earth cannot eliminate these from the human animal.
And 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.
History repeats itself all the time on Wall Street.
Nowhere does history indulge in repetitions so often or so uniformly as in Wall Street.
"the public never is independently responsive to news."
The speculator is not an investor.
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.
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.
People who look for easy money invariably pay for the privilege of proving conclusively that it cannot be found on this sordid earth.
When it comes to selling stocks, it is plain that nobody can sell unless somebody wants those stocks.
If you operate on a large scale you will have to bear that in mind all the time.
When the man who ought to want a stock doesn't want it, why should I want it?
It didn't require a Sherlock Holmes to size up the situation.
A battle goes on in the stock market and the tape is your telescope. You can depend upon it seven out of ten cases.
One of the most helpful things that any body can learn is to give up trying to catch the last eighth - or the first. These two are the most expensive eighths in the world.
There is no question that advertising is an art, and manipulation is the art of advertising through the medium of the tape.