📖Jesse Livermore

Sell Discipline Rules

🌿 Intermediate★★★★★

Follow pre-defined sell criteria without emotion.

💬

Have clear, pre-defined sell criteria. Sell when: your thesis is broken, valuation is fully realized, or a significantly better opportunity appears.

— Reminiscences of a Stock Operator,1923

🏠 Everyday Analogy

A process is like a pilot checklist: discipline prevents simple mistakes when pressure rises and keeps outcomes more repeatable.

📖 Core Interpretation

Jesse Livermore advocates a repeatable process: define criteria, execute consistently, and review decisions against evidence. Process quality drives outcome consistency.
💎 Key Insight:Disciplined selling prevents emotional decision-making.

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❓ Why It Matters

Without process, there is no reliable feedback loop. Structured execution and review improve decision quality over time.

🎯 How to Practice

Run a decision loop of research, thesis, execution, and post-mortem; document assumptions and update playbooks with evidence, not hindsight bias.

⚠️ Common Pitfalls

Having opinions without execution criteria
Reviewing outcomes but not decisions
Abandoning rules during volatility spikes

📚 Case Studies

1
Great Crash Short Campaign (1929)
Livermore built massive short positions in leading stocks as speculative excess peaked before the October 1929 crash.
✨ Outcome:Profited enormously from the collapse, though later lost much of the fortune through subsequent trading mistakes and overconfidence.
2
Bethlehem Steel Bull Run (1915)
Livermore built an initial stake, then pyramided only as the stock advanced and confirmed strength, adding smaller tranches at higher levels to control risk.
✨ Outcome:Captured a large portion of a powerful wartime advance while limiting exposure if the uptrend failed.

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