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

LIVERMORE, Jesse.

Item Number: 146342

New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1940.

Deluxe first edition, limited to 500 copies of the only book by Jesse Livermore, one of Wall Street’s greatest traders. Octavo, original blue cloth, silver titles to the spine, front panel, silver topstain, contains 16 full color charts. Association copy, inscribed by the author, “Dear Henry I hope this little book is not too dull for you. Your friend J.L. Jesse L. Livermore.” The recipient, Henry Junior Taylor was an economist, author, radio broadcaster and former United States Ambassador to Switzerland He served as a foreign correspondent for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain in the early years of World War II. After the war, Taylor hosted the General Motors-sponsored radio program Your Land and Mine, on which he was known for his conservative commentary. Taylor was a columnist for the United Feature Syndicate after serving as Ambassador. He authored several nonfiction books, including An American Speaks His Mind and It Must Be a Long War, and a novel, The Big Man. Near fine in a near fine slipcase. Bookplate to the front pastedown of Henry Junior Taylor. Exceptionally rare and desirable signed and inscribed, as Livermore committed suicide the same year of publication.

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.