Reminiscences of a Stock Operator Jesse Livermore

to help them out. Gordon was particularly insistent, and in the end I made them put in their pooled stock at 25-1/2.

My fee for my services was to be one-half of whatever I got above that figure. The last sale had been at about 30.

There I was with their stock to liquidate. Given general market conditions and specifically the behaviour of Consolidated Stove, there was only one way to do it, and that was, of course, to sell on the way down and without first trying to put up the price, and I certainly would have got stock by the ream on the way up. But on the way down I could reach those buyers who always argue that a stock is cheap when it sells fifteen or twenty points below the top of the movement, particularly when that top is a matter of recent history. A rally is due, in their opinion. After seeing Consolidated Stove sell up to close to 44 it sure looked like a good thing below 30.

It worked out as always. Bargain hunters bought it in sufficient volume to enable me to liquidate the pool's holdings.

But do you think that Gordon or Wolff or Kane felt any gratitude? Not a bit of it. They are still sore at me, or so their friends tell me. They often tell people how I did them.

They cannot forgive me for not putting up the price on myself, as they expected.

As a matter of fact I never would have been able to sell the bank's hundred thousand shares i f Wolff and the rest had not passed around those red-hot bull tips of theirs. If I had worked as I usually do -- that is, in a logical natural way I would have had to take whatever price I could get. I told you we ran into a declining market. The only way to sell on such a market is to sell not necessarily recklessly but really regardless of price. No other way was possible, but I suppose they do not believe this. They are still angry. I am not.

Getting angry doesn't get a man anywhere. More than once it has been borne in on me that a speculator who loses his temper is a goner. In this case there was no aftermath to the grouches.

But I'll tell you something curious. One day Mrs. Livermore went to a dressmaker who had been warmly recommended to her. The woman was competent and obliging and had a very pleasing personality. At the third or fourth visit, when the dressmaker felt less like a stranger, she said to Mrs. Livermore: "I hope Mr. Livermore puts up Consolidated Stove soon. We have some that we bought because we were told he was going to put it up, and we'd always heard that he was very successful in all his deals."

I tell you it isn't pleasant to think that innocent people may have lost money following a tip of that sort. Perhaps you understand why I never give any myself. That dressmaker made me