Vacation's Over, Now It's Back to Business

It always takes me a few days after vacation to get back up to speed. So, to ease my transition -- and, I suppose yours -- here's a potpourri of things that have been going through my head over the past week...

Many of you have read Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre. This fictionalized account of Jesse Livermore's life is at the top of nearly every trader's must-read list, and rightly so.

However, I just finished a new biography of Livermore, The Amazing Life Of Jesse Livermore by Richard Smitten. In many respects I enjoyed it even more than Reminiscences, as the details of Livermore's triumphs and tragedies are clearly laid out throughout the book. There are some soap opera-ish scenes that might have been deleted, but overall you'll get a lot out of Smitten's work if you have any interest in trading and particularly if you're a momentum trader who rarely looks at fundamentals. (Kind of like someone I know!) ...