When I think of the name Jesse Livermore, I'm sure many friends in the financial investment industry are familiar with it. Jesse Livermore was born in 1877 to a poor peasant family in the United States. At age 14, he left home to Boston to work in reporting and bookkeeping at a stock brokerage company, earning $3 a week. After his busy daily trading, Livermore began to think about the stock price fluctuations he observed in the market during the day. After a period of time, he gradually gained a deep understanding of the rhythm of price changes in the stock market.
He partnered with his partner for the first time and earned $3.182 in a stock betting company. Since then, he has given up his job and embarked on the path of professional speculation in stocks and commodity futures. In the early decades of the 20th century, Livermore, a quiet and persistent young man, earned huge wealth with a small amount of money many times, and became the disheartening speculator in the stock and futures markets.
In 1929, during the major collapse of the US Wall Street stock market, which began at a high of 381 points, most speculators went bankrupt and lost their money, yet Livermore earned more than three thousand dollars by following the trend of shorting the market. The book “Memoirs of a Stock Master”, written by Lee Livermore in collaboration with others in 1922, describes in detail the ups and downs of his speculative career, and systematically explains the formation, transformation and development process of his speculative ideas and strategies.
I have carefully read the book “Memoirs of a Stock Master” several times. I can understand that “Every speculator has a growth process after entering the market.” The book “Memoirs of a Stock Master” can enable speculators to mature a little faster and take fewer detours in market transactions. The experience and lessons learned in it have general guiding significance and great reference value. It is an essential navigation chart for speculators in the ocean market.”
Jesse Livermore's mentality and market wisdom have profoundly influenced my trading activities and became my spiritual mentor for long-term self-education, yet it was also the ultimate life ending of such a top trading master, yet profoundly intriguing.
In November 1940, after getting drunk in a Manhattan restaurant, Jesse Livermore wrote a letter to his wife that ended with the words “My life has been a failure!” He then ended his life with a pistol in the hotel's cloakroom at the age of 63. It is said that the wealth left behind him was less than 10,000 US dollars, and the legend of a major stock company came to an end.
Perhaps Jesse Livermore's legendary experiences in his life coincided with another philosopher's seemingly ordinary philosophy, “Most people are in the midst of fate and death, and can't figure out where they are.” Start blindly and end blindly if you don't really realize it; in fact, this is where Jesse Livermore's life is truly sad.
Here's a little story:
On the morning of my day off, I felt like I had nothing to do to relax in the day. Looking at a blank wall at home, I thought, “I think I should hang a picture; my home could be a little more beautiful.” Get a picture, grab a small nail, knock it on, and hang it up. I found that the nail was too small to hang, what should I do? I want to add a piece of wood chips to the back of the nail and go find the wood. It took half a day to find a piece of wood, but there was no way to cut it out. Go knock on the neighbor's house and borrow an axe. I borrowed an axe and found that the split was irregular. It needed to be processed more finely, and then I went to a neighbor's house farther away to borrow a saw. My neighbor's house only had a saw blade, and I couldn't hold it when I brought it. He drove to someone farther away to borrow his pen, and just came down after a long day of torsion.
Finally, this person came home and thought about a bunch of well-equipped carpenter tools. What was he going to do in the first place? I really can't remember why I need so many tools? In fact, I've forgotten the first simple wish. This is very much like the famous Lebanese poet Gibran said: We have gone so far that we have forgotten why we set out.
A saga of ups and downs and a dull story may seem unrelated, yet both actually contain a simple principle of life: simply being busy isn't enough; the question is what are we all busy with? Was the initial starting point of our transaction really this month's non-agricultural data or the central bank's interest rate decision? Was the final destination of our transaction really “after personal struggle, I finally went from nothing to extreme poverty.” (This is a dark humorous quote from Glock Max, an investor of the same time as Livermore)
I remember seeing this phrase before: “Fools tend to be busier than wise people.” I didn't really understand the deep meaning at the time. Later, as the years passed and my life experience was rich, I was able to fully appreciate the depth of Chinese characters created. In fact, isn't the so-called “busy” often just “heart” and “death”?
Many people end up trading and don't know why they are trading. In fact, if you trade blindly for the rest of your life, you will end up busy with a kind of nameless fire, and there will never be a day of relief. Because the more you trade, the more you don't know what you're doing. The masters were all confused, let alone we just plain old people? The reason we need to ask our heart for answers about the beginning and destination of transactions is so that we can make a little discovery, use clear rationality and wisdom to make our hearts more thorough, so that we can better understand and have some insight.
Some people may say that the question about the origin and destination of the transaction is not simple; it's just about money, isn't it? Stop for a moment, will that really be the answer?
Some people say, “Wall Street is heaven on one end and hell on the other.” Most of us are hastily crammed on our way to heaven, and often only realise after actually experiencing it: Heaven is actually in another sparsely populated place, and we're only leading to a door to hell.
There is a Buddhist saying, “What you really care about is actually where your dead end is.” Looking back on myself many years ago, I also had dreams and hopes for money, connected to the financial investment market, and joined this game with a lot of interest with pride and foolish prejudice at a young age. Now I have a deep sense of how relevant it is to use this phrase to understand the real root cause of the failure of most speculators in the market!
When it comes to money, how should people view money? This is a huge field of study. Having money only indicates financial success, and financial success is only part of a successful life. People live in a world where they should pursue a successful life. A successful life is not just about getting fame and fortune; it is also an indifferent mentality. In this mentality, you feel serene, serene, and satisfied; this is the foundation for survival.
If you can maintain this mentality every day, its accumulation will continue into a truly successful life. I'm sure no one would object to money, how can you survive without money? In fact, there is nothing wrong with money itself. The real problem is that we must not forget the meaning of life, including the beginning of transactions. Strong pursuit of money will cause you to lose your peace of mind, become a slave to desire, and ultimately lead to the failure of transactions.
In fact, during the transaction process, if people lose their peace of mind, the transaction also loses its source of living water. If a person cannot understand the market and himself with a clear nature, trading results brought by luck alone are bound not to last long. This is exactly what it is called: “The heart is dirty, and its path is uneven, so it falls; the heart is clean, its path is flat, so it is at ease.”
At this point, it is not difficult to conclude that the truth about the transaction is actually one: the starting point of the transaction comes from the nature of Qingming, and the destination of the transaction ends with the nature of Qingming. What is real is the original; the original is the first, the first and the last.
No matter what we say, believe, or do in our trading career, all of those things that cause pain are actually just false opinions for mediocre people to bother themselves. Once your opinion is correct, your mind will immediately naturally return to serenity.
Editor/Jeffrey