Jesse Lauriston Livermore: The original trading legend

Events of Jesse Livermore's life

From his childhood, until the day he died, Jesse Livermore was a troubled legend.

• Jesse Lauriston Livermore was born in Acton, Massachusetts, on the 26th July, 1877. He had a poverty striken childhood, in which he grew up on the family farm, and attended school until the age of 14, when his father made him quit.
• He ran away from home and got a job at a stock brockerage firm in Boston, called Paine Webber, where he made $5 a week.
• At the tender age of 16, he found success in trading stocks by reading the ticker tape. He was able to earn a whopping $10,000, which in the late 1800's, was indeed, a fortune.
• He unfortunately lost this fortune when he tried to play the Wall Street market, a few years later. However, he then moved to St. Louis and was able to build his fortune back in the sketchy bucket shops. This fluctuation from rags to riches, and back again, would eventually pave the perpetual cycle of Livermore's life.
• He met his first wife, Nettie Jordan, at the age of 23. The pressure of Livermore going broke and pawning valuable items for trading money, lead their relationship to it's demise shortly after, in 1917.
• At 24, he was back to riches, after a $10,000 investment in Northern Pacific Railroad returned $500,000...... A 5000% gain! The next 7 years saw Livermore turn his fortune into $3 million.
• By 1918, he had built up enough buying power to corner the cotton market, at which point he was invited to the White House by President Woodrow Wilson, and asked to sell it back at break even. After obliging, and being asked why he did such a thing, Livermore replied, "To see if I could, Mr. President."
• At 40 years old, Livermore married his 2nd wife, Dorothy Fox Wendt, in 1918. They had 2 children, Jesse Livermore II, born in 1919, and Paul Livermore, born in 1922.
• During the Wall Street Crash in 1929, by taking a bearish market approach, Livermore's net worth reached $100 million.... That's the equivqlent of $14 billion by today's standard. This lead to people believing that Livermore himself was responsible for the crash. Death threats ensued, and he had to hire bodyguards.
• By 1932, Dorothy and Livermore were divorced, she retained custody of both children, and recieved a $10 million settlement. Their $3.5 million house was sold for $222,000, and torn down.
• In 1933, 56 year old Livermore married a singer named Harriet Metz. They met in Vienna in 1931, where Harriet was performing, and Livermore was on holiday.
• Events leading up to this point had sent him on a spiral of depression, eventually exacerbated by the non-fatal shooting of his son, by his wife, in 1935.
• 1934 came, and Livermore filed for bankruptcy for the third time, after the SEC introduced some new rules which affected his trading system. As a result, he opened a new business, and turned his hand to financial advice.
• Through the encouragement of his son, Jesse Jr., Livermore published a book named "How to trade in Stocks". Interest in the stock market was at an all time low, partly due to WWII, and as a result, his book did not do well.
• On November 28, 1940, at the age of 63, Livermore tragically ended his spiral of depression by shooting himself in the head. Police found his body in the cloakroom of the Sherry-Netherland hotel in Manhattan, along with a suicide note to his wife Harriet:

"My dear Nina: Can’t help it. Things have been bad with me.
I am tired of fighting. Can’t carry on any longer.
This is the only way out. I am unworthy of your love.
I am a failure. I am truly sorry, but this is the only way out for me.
Love Laurie."

For a more in depth look at Jesse Livermore's life, checkout the Wikipedia page.