Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

What heat me was not having brains enough to stick to my own game — that is, to play the market only when I was satisfied that precedents favored my plan.

I have come to feel that it is as necessary to know how to read myself as to know how to read the tape.

There is the plain fool, who does the wrong thing at all times everywhere, but there is the Wall Street fool, who thinks he must trade all the time. No man can always have adequate reasons for buying or selling stocks daily — or sufficient knowledge to make his play an intelligent play.