At long as a stock is acting right, and the market is right, do not be in a hurry to take profits. One should never permit speculative ventures to run into investments.
Interpretation
Patience is key in investing; don’t rush to take profits unless conditions change.
This quote emphasizes the importance of patience in trading and investing. Jesse Livermore advises that as long as a stock behaves well and the market conditions are favorable, investors should resist the urge to quickly secure profits. It warns against allowing speculative positions to turn into long-term investments without careful analysis, underscoring the need for vigilance in managing one's investments.
In practice
During a financial seminar to stress the importance of holding onto good stocks.
The average man doesn't wish to be told that it is a bull or a bear market. What he desires is to be told specifically which particular stock to buy or sell. He wants to get something for nothing. He does not wish to work. He doesn't even wish to have to think.
After spending many years in Wall Street and after making and losing millions of dollars I want to tell you this: It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight!
Don't take action with a trade until the market, itself, confirms your opinion. Being a little late in a trade is insurance that your opinion is correct. In other words, don't be an impatient trader.
He really meant to tell them that the big money was not in the individual fluctuations but in the main movements that is, not in reading the tape but in sizing up the entire market and its trend.
Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon. I found it one of the hardest things to learn. But it is only after a stock operator has firmly grasped this that he can make big money.
It is what people actually did in the stock market that counted - not what they said they were going to do.
You've got to tell your money what to do or it will leave.
People come in. They are too gung ho. They invest too much money in things they don't know. They lose it and then they clam up and stop investing. Then they miss the actual boom. That's the nature of the market.
The [stock] market,like the Lord, helps those who help themselves. But, unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do.
Debt collectors like to play on your emotions because they think you'll give in and do something you can't really afford to do. Most of them don't care about you or your situation as long as they get some money.
It's a familiar truism that at any one moment, financial markets are dominated by either fear or greed. But the healthiest markets are those that are animated by both fear and greed at the same time.
If nobody can sell mortgage-backed securities based on trillions of dollars of unpayable instruments, there's a lot less risk in the overall system.
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