MICHEL PIREU: In the market for hope, fear, stress, eccentricity … and money
Markets will test you. Markets will … • Test you. Most financial advice, especially on television and the internet, suggests that investing is an endless race to beat the market. It would seem that if anyone else wins, you lose. But investing isn’t about beating others at their game; it’s about controlling yourself at your own game. "Speculation must be an unnatural sort of business," says Jesse Livermore. "Because I find that the average speculator has arrayed against him his own nature. The weaknesses that all men are prone to are fatal to success in speculation…. "The speculator’s chief enemies are always boring from within. It is inseparable from human nature to hope and to fear. In speculation, when the market goes against you, you hope that every day will be the last day — and you lose more than you should had you not listened to hope. And when the market goes your way you become fearful that the next day will take away your profit, and you get out too soon. The successful tra...
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