Learn from the world’s greatest ‘tape worm’ trader

Jesse Livermore's famous biography is required reading for traders, says John C Burford - not least when trading the pound.

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is the autobiography of Jesse Livermore, one of the most colourful stock and commodity market speculators of his day. He operated in the early 20th century when technology was still quite primitive.

Back then, the ticker tape had just been introduced and speculators would read the tape' as it spewed out of the machine in much the same way as we pore over our screens. Avid tape readers were dubbed tape worms'.

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(Contracts of GBP 62,500)Row 0 - Cell 1 Row 0 - Cell 2 Row 0 - Cell 3 Open interest: 202,115
Commitments
66,75137,0272,687102,280144,695171,718184,40930,39717,706
Changes from 03/18/14 (Change in open interest: -6,846)
2,610-1,578383-7,165-4,133-4,172-5,328-2,674-1,518
Percent of open in terest for each category of traders
33.018.31.350.671.685.091.215.08.8
Number of traders in each category (Total traders: 107)
3723828306858Row 8 - Cell 7 Row 8 - Cell 8

John is is a British-born lapsed PhD physicist, who previously worked for Nasa on the Mars exploration team. He is a former commodity trading advisor with the US Commodities Futures Trading Commission, and worked in a boutique futures house in California in the 1980s.

 

He was a partner in one of the first futures newsletter advisory services, based in Washington DC, specialising in pork bellies and currencies. John is primarily a chart-reading trader, having cut his trading teeth in the days before PCs.

 

As well as his work in the financial world, he has launched, run and sold several 'real' businesses producing 'real' products.