The market does not beat them. They beat themselves, because though they have brains they cannot sit tight.
Interpretation
Successful investors can face defeat because of their lack of discipline and patience.
This quote by Jesse Lauriston Livermore emphasizes the importance of self-discipline and emotional control in achieving success in the financial market. Despite having intelligence or analytical skills, many investors fail to succeed because they allow their emotions and impulsiveness to dictate their decisions, leading to poor outcomes.
In practice
In a finance seminar discussing the psychological aspects of trading.
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.
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.
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 has been just so in all my inventions. The first step is an intuition-and comes with a burst, then difficulties arise. This thing that gives out and then that-"Bugs"as such little faults and difficulties are called show themselves and months of anxious watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success-or failure-is certainly reached.
Statues to great men are made of the stones thrown at them in their lifetime.
Desire is what takes the hot water of mediocrity and turns it into the steam of outstanding success.
If you do everything that everyone else does in business, you're going to lose. The only way to really be ahead, is to 'be different'.
I had great football players. To be quite truthful, my great football players, the ones who wanted the ball at the end of the games, they weren't focused on money. They want to do something great. They want to go to Pro Bowls. They want to win Super Bowls. Those are the people that succeed in sports - or in business.
Success is never so interesting as struggle
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