How to Trade in Stocks: The Livermore Formula for Combining Time Element and Price.

LIVERMORE, Jesse.

Item Number: 102688

New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1940.

First edition of the only book by Jesse Livermore, one of Wall Street’s most well-known traders. Octavo, original blue cloth, contains 16 full color charts. In near fine condition. Laid in is a three page typed letter from Jesse Livermore to Mr. W.H. Mann which reads in part, “I am in receipt of a letter from Mr. W. H. Mann, our Chicago representative of The Livermore Market Key, saying that you would like my opinion on U.S. Gypsum. Personally I have no definite ideas regarding this stock. I class this stock along with many, many others – where the market at times is in a wide range between bids and offered prices…Whenever a selling movement starts, if one should decide to liquidate any of those stocks in that class, – the owner almost always finds a very thin market, – and because the market is so thin, even if he wants to liquidate, he is afraid to…The day is gone, when one can, with assurance, hold what one may term Good Stocks – for no other reason than that one believes in them…As you know our Service does not try to pick out the minor intermediate movements – but only indicate that the MAJOR SWINGS, either up or down, are going to get under way…Sincerely, THE LIVERMORE MARKET KEY Jesse L. Livermore.” Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. Rare and desirable, offering extraordinary insight into the legendary trader’s trading principles.

Born in 1877 Jesse Livermore began working with stocks at the age of 15 when he ran away from his parent’s farm and took a job posting stock quotes at a Boston brokerage firm. While he was working he would jot down predictions so he could follow up on them thus testing his theories. After doing this for some time he was convinced to try his systems with real money. However since he was still young he started placing bets with local bookies on the movements of particular stocks, he proved so good at this he was eventually banned from a number of local gambling houses for winning too much and he started trading on the real exchanges. Intrigued by Livermore’s career, financial writer Edwin Lefevre conducted weeks of interviews with him during the early 1920s. Then, in 1923, Lefevre wrote a first-person account of a fictional trader named "Larry Livingston," who bore countless similarities to Livermore, ranging from their last names to the specific events of their trading careers. Although many traders attempted to glean the secret of Livermore’s success from Reminiscences, his technique was not fully elucidated until How To Trade in Stocks was published in 1940. It offers an in-depth explanation of the Livermore Formula, the trading method, still in use today, that turned Livermore into a Wall Street icon.