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Jesse Lauriston Livermore (July 26, 1877 – November 28, 1940) was an American stock trader. He is celebrated as a pioneer in day trading and served as the inspiration for the main character in Edwin Lefèvre's best-selling book, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator.
At one time, Livermore was one of the richest people in the world; however, by the time of his suicide, his liabilities exceeded his assets.
In an era when accurate financial statements were a rarity, securing real-time stock quotes required considerable resources, and market manipulation was widespread, Livermore utilized what is now known as technical analysis as the basis for his trades.
His principles, including the effects of emotion on trading, are still studied today.
Some of Livermore's trades, such as taking short positions before the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and just before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, are legendary within investing circles.
Some observers have regarded Livermore as the greatest trader who ever lived, while others view his story as a warning against the dangers of using leverage to chase large gains instead of pursuing a strategy aimed at smaller, more consistent returns.
Early Life
Jesse Lauriston Livermore was born into a poverty-stricken family in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, later moving to Acton, Massachusetts, during his childhood.
He learned to read and write at the age of three and a half.
At the age of 14, his father pulled him out of school to work on the farm. However, with his mother’s blessing, Jesse ran away from home.
Career
In 1891, at the age of 14, Jesse Livermore secured employment as a board boy at a Boston branch of PaineWebber, posting stock quotes for $5 per week.
He made his first trade by purchasing five shares of Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad.
The next year, he bet $5 on the same stock at a bucket shop—an establishment that took leveraged bets without actual stock transactions—and earned $3.12.
From 1893 to 1894, now aged 16 to 17 and nicknamed "The Boy Plunger," he was earning about $200 per week trading at bucket shops in Boston, far exceeding his salary at Paine Webber.
He left his job at 16 to trade full-time and brought home $1,000, arguing to his mother, who disapproved, that he was "speculating," not "gambling."
Between 1895 and 1897, he amassed $10,000 in profits, a 1,000 percent return over three years. However, his consistent winnings led to a ban from most Boston bucket shops.
Attempts to evade this with disguises only delayed an inevitable city-wide ban.
From 1898 to 1900, he continued trading at Haight & Freese, the last bucket shop in Boston that had not banned him.
The firm made it increasingly difficult and risky by widening the bid-ask spread and imposing strict margin requirements.
On September 14, 1900, he moved to New York, capitalizing on a strong bull market. At Harris, Hutton & Company, he turned $10,000 into $50,000 in five days.
Anticipating a downturn in May 1901, he shorted the market using 400% margin but lost everything due to outdated ticker tape data. He borrowed $2,000 from Ed Hutton and moved to St.
Louis to continue trading at bucket shops.
His breakthrough came in 1901 at age 24 when he turned $10,000 into $500,000 by investing in Northern Pacific Railway.
In 1906, while vacationing in Palm Beach, he earned $250,000 from a massive short on Union Pacific Railroad the day before the San Francisco earthquake, on advice from Thomas W. Lawson. Later, erroneous advice from Edward Francis Hutton led to a $40,000 loss.
During the 1907 Panic, he netted $1 million in a day from large short positions. J.P. Morgan, who bailed out the NYSE, asked him to cease short selling. He complied and profited from the rebound, boosting his net worth to $3 million.
He lived lavishly, purchasing a $200,000 yacht, a rail car, and an apartment on the Upper West Side, joining exclusive clubs and maintaining mistresses.
In 1908, following Theodore H. "Teddy" Price's misleading advice to buy cotton while Price sold, Livermore went bankrupt but later recovered.
After World War I, he secretly cornered the cotton market, stopping only after President Woodrow Wilson, prompted by the Secretary of Agriculture, intervened.
He agreed to sell the cotton at break-even, preventing a market crisis. When asked why, Livermore replied, "To see if I could, Mr. President."
Between 1924 and 1925, he earned $10 million from manipulating the wheat and corn markets and engineering a short squeeze on Piggly Wiggly.
In early 1929, he amassed huge short positions using over 100 brokers to conceal his actions. He was down over $6 million by spring but netted about $100 million following the Wall Street Crash of 1929, earning the nickname "Great Bear of Wall Street." He faced public backlash and threats, necessitating an armed bodyguard.
His second divorce in 1932, the non-fatal shooting of his son by his wife in 1935, and a lawsuit from his Russian mistress contributed to a decline in his mental health.
The creation of the SEC in 1934 imposed new trading rules, affecting his operations.
He lost his fortune and filed for bankruptcy a third time in 1934, listing $84,000 in assets against $2.5 million in debts. He was suspended from the Chicago Board of Trade.
In 1937, he settled an $800,000 tax bill.
In 1939, he opened a financial advisory business, selling a technical analysis system.
Personal life
Jesse Livermore's favorite book was "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds," by Charles Mackay, first published in 1841.
This book was also a favorite of Bernard Baruch, a stock trader and close friend.
An avid fisherman, Livermore caught a 486-pound swordfish in 1937.
Marriages
Livermore married three times and fathered two children. His first wife, Nettie Jordan from Indianapolis, married him in October 1900 when he was 23, after only a few weeks of acquaintance.
Less than a year later, following financial losses, he asked Nettie to pawn her extensive jewelry collection for new funds, which she refused.
This refusal severely strained their relationship, leading to their separation.
Despite this, Livermore funded the legal defense of his brother-in-law, Chester S.
Jordan, accused of murder. Their divorce was finalized in October 1917.
On December 2, 1918, at age 40, Livermore married 22-23-year-old Dorothy Fox Wendt, a former Ziegfeld girl. He had affairs with several dancers.
The couple had two sons: Jesse Livermore II, born in 1919, and Paul, born in 1922.
He purchased a lavish house in Great Neck, allowing Dorothy to spend freely on furnishings. In 1927, they were burglarized at gunpoint. Dorothy's drinking and
Livermore's infidelities worsened the marriage, leading to her filing for divorce in 1931.
She moved to Reno, Nevada, with her new lover, James Walter Longcope, and the divorce was granted on September 16, 1932.
She immediately married Longcope, gaining custody of their sons and a $10 million settlement.
Dorothy sold the Great Neck house, which Livermore had spent $3.5 million on, for only $222,000. The house was later demolished, deepening Livermore's despair.
On March 28, 1933, at age 56, Livermore married 38-year-old singer and socialite Harriet Metz Noble in Geneva, Illinois.
They had met in 1931 in Vienna, where she was performing and he was vacationing.
Metz Noble, from a prominent Omaha family linked to the Metz Brewery Company, was Livermore's fifth husband.
Notably, at least two of her previous husbands had committed suicide, including Warren Noble, who hanged himself after the 1929 Wall Street Crash.
Publications
In late 1939, Jesse Livermore's son, Jesse Jr., urged him to write a book on trading. The resulting publication, How to Trade in Stocks, was released by Duell, Sloan, and Pearce in March 1940.
Released during World War II when interest in the stock market was minimal, the book sold poorly and received mixed reviews due to Livermore's controversial investment strategies.
Death
On Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1940, just after 5:30 pm, Jesse Livermore ended his life with a Colt automatic pistol in a cloakroom at The Sherry-Netherland hotel in Manhattan, a place he frequently visited for cocktails.
A suicide note found by police in his personal, leather-bound notebook was addressed to his wife, Harriet, affectionately nicknamed
"Nina."
The note read:
"My dear Nina:
Can't help it.
Things have been bad with me.
I am tired of fighting.
Can't carry on any longer.
This is the only way out.
I am unworthy of your love.
I am a failure.
I am truly sorry, but this is the only way out for me.
Love, Laurie."
Further reading
Significant works about Livermore include:
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre (1923), a best-selling, semi-fictionalized biography of Livermore.
The book has been reissued multiple times, most recently on January 17, 2006, with a foreword by Roger Lowenstein.
Jesse Livermore – Speculator King by Paul Sarnoff (1985).
Jesse Livermore: The World's Greatest Stock Trader by Richard Smitten (2001).
Speculation as a Fine Art by Dickson G. Watts (2003).
Trade Like Jesse Livermore by Richard Smitten (2004).
Lessons from the Greatest Stock Traders of All Time by John Boik (2004).
How Legendary Traders Made Millions by John Boik (2006).
The Secret of Livermore: Analyzing the Market Key System by Andras Nagy (2007).
Jesse Livermore - Boy Plunger by Tom Rubython (2014), with a foreword by Paul Tudor-Jones.
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