MICHEL PIREU: Investment classics offer pearls of wisdom to modern day traders
Author Henry Clews reminds investors that it is easier to lose than make money
“Great books,” said US author William Deresiewicz in a seminal lecture at the US Military Academy at West Point, “even if they merely reflect the conventional wisdom of their own day, have the permanent power to disrupt our habits of thought.” Then there’s the claim by Edwin Lefevre, author of the thinly veiled biography of Jesse Livermore, that there is nothing new in Wall Street — “there can’t be because speculation is as old as the hills”. Which seems reason enough to turn to three investment classics in search of lessons that are apt for the times.
Fifty Years In Wall Street, by Henry Clews (1908) Clews arrived in Wall Street on the heels of the panic of 1857 that became known as the Western Blizzard, of which the “destructive power and chilling effects had surpassed all other financial gales that had swept over Wall Street”...
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