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Non-Tech : Quote.com QCharts
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To: Keith Monahan who wrote (10005)10/18/2000 12:56:34 PM
From: ahhaha  Read Replies (1) of 17977
 
If you want a good way to make money see if you can get your hands on an air blown Translux ticker tape. The white alphanumerics were blown into position by an air gun on the black composition display conveyer. They stopped making them in the mid '70s when they and others went all electronic. It isn't practical to use this device now because the trade density is far too great.

In the good old days this air blown Translux display was terrific because you could hear the ticker tape. The sound told you far more than every trade data or charts. The subtleties of sounds created by the air, device rate, and other factors, made it possible to read the market in a way unequaled now. I could actually beat the market trading the newly listed options when armed with this Translux ticker, and made a lot of dough by camping out in Glore Forgan Dupont Walston. Who?

The bucket shops that Jesse beat were set up so that he was beating the other local customers rather than the market. He was beating it by clipping fractions and using 10% margin to overcome commission drag. There's no money in doing that. You can do it now, but you find like Livermore did that from time to time you get bagged on a bunk move like this morning. You zig and it zags cleaning your margin likely putting you into a hole.

Livermore continually was thrown into the hole and had to operate his way out. Mostly this is done by one big hit. The only way speculators stay around for any period of time is that they load up and hit a home run which keeps them alive until they piss it all away. This is what happens to the greatest.

The reason this occurs is because it's the nature of the universe, what is called the negative expected return of trading. Livermore went bust during the depression because he went back in too early and gambled like a bucket shop beginner on margin. He fled to France to avoid his debtors many of whom were not the best kinds of people. The latest biography about him claims differently, but it's revisionism and is inconsistent with newspaper reports and other sources from the times.
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