Some background on Charles H. Dow (of Dow Jones & Co. fame) in an article by Tim Wood. Tim is a guy who appears regularly on the Financial Sense Newshour broadcasts and has spent a lot of time studying Dow Theory and stock market cycles. In, "Who was Charles H. Dow?", Tim gives us a bit of background on a man who helped shape financial journalism and whose writings on market movements formed the basis of what came to be known as "Dow's Theory". Good info for us youngsters.
If you've been around markets for any length of time, you've probably heard of 20th century supertrader, Jesse Livermore . Today we're highlighting his rare 1940 work, How to Trade in Stocks (ebook, pdf). But first, a brief overview of Livermore's life and trading career (bio from Jesse Livermore's Wikipedia entry). "During his lifetime, Livermore gained and lost several multi-million dollar fortunes. Most notably, he was worth $3 million and $100 million after the 1907 and 1929 market crashes, respectively. He subsequently lost both fortunes. Apart from his success as a securities speculator, Livermore left traders a working philosophy for trading securities that emphasizes increasing the size of one's position as it goes in the right direction and cutting losses quickly. Ironically, Livermore sometimes did not follow his rules strictly. He claimed that lack of adherence to his own rules was the main reason for his losses after making his 1907 and