You might know the name Lutz Kleveman if you've read his articles or heard him speak about his book, The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia. Last year, Lutz went off to South America to chronicle the drug trade and the rising tide of urban warfare between drug lords and paramilitary police. Very much the kind of thing we were hearing about in the news out of Brazil a couple weeks ago. I read Kleveman's article, "Street Fighting Boys", last night and you can read his account of time spent among the drug gangs by clicking the link.
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