How I Trade and Invest in Stocks and Bonds

good but tape reading is the classic

Really cool little book, lots of useful information for technical traders but fundamentals guys would likely benefit even more by reading this.

Classic piece of literature perhaps slightly outdated in todays hft world.

You know an investing book has promise when the Author admits to the difficulty of success in the investment field. Wyckoff delivers in this regard:

“I aim to make money, keep it and make it grow. The latter involves something like defensive trench warfare”.
“People are successful in business because, while they make mistakes at first, they study these mistakes and avoid them in future… by gradually acquiring knowledge of the basic principles of success, they develop into good business men.”
“A satisfactory outcome is the result of knowledge + capital”

Though it was written in 1922, there are clear lessons for the investor of today. We see that 1. the author recognises the flaws in his own psychology, 2. He mentions the importance of identifying the “insiders” in an investment situation and 3. He advises entry into a stock on a scale, warning that those who average down too early “go out with the tide”. All simple lessons but difficult in practice.

The reference to making money as “defensive trench warfare” is as good an analogy as I have heard. In other words, how do we protect capital while advancing, inch by inch? Wyckoff offers some helpful suggestions.

Very disappointed in this book. I was hoping to find some technical analysis of some sort. I found none. If you are looking for a technical way to buy stock; Look somewhere else.

Great starter book from a great trader.. difficult to follow his writing but all great points

This book was written many years ago, but I believe the principles hold true as much today as when it was written. Very good basic patterns and common sense trading.

It is a great idea to read the words of a true trader or better say investor . I do not like to give details of the content because you can look for them yourself. But you will not regret this choice if you are smart.

This little classic has great advice in it even though it was written over 80 years ago. It discusses the importance of risk management when trading stocks and how different investing is to trading stocks. The author gives the excellent advice to never average down in price after the first purchase of a stock for trading.(This has saved me a lot of money). I found it very interesting that on one page he claimed that he could trade stocks succesfully if he was away from Wall Street and just received cables of a stocks daily range of prices and closing price while traveling. He claimed that was all the information needed to make trading decisions. He said that it was better to be away from Wall Street and the ticker and rumors. Strangely enough 40 years after he wrote this Nicolas Darvas did exactly that and made $2.5 million trading stocks using cables while traveling the world. This is a great book for beginners.

Virtually everything written after Livermore and Wyckoff are variations on themes developed by these two men. Wyckoff was among the first to explain the accumulation-distribution cycle (which makes stock and market timing possible) and to develop the use of “surrogates”, self-made indexes which consist of a handful of leading stocks in a group (such as semiconductors), which warn the investor of impending moves, and which enable the investor to filter out all the noise of broadcasters, publishers, newsletters, message boards, and chat rooms.
Understand Wyckoff and you’ll understand the engine that drives stocks and markets rather than be distracted by the genuine imitation wood trim and the smell of the leather seats.