Jesse Livermore's eternal words

Jesse Livermore is probably one of the most successful traders in history (even though, he went bankrupt 3 times, he made it up again) and successfully predicted the 1907 and 1929 crashes, during which crashes he made dozens of millions of USD (remember, at that time, the USD was actually worth something, and was redeemable in gold). He committed suicide in 1940, shortly after publishing his book.

Here are a few quotes from him that I find particularly interesting.

"Wall Street never changes, the pockets change, the stocks change, but Wall Street never changes, because human nature never changes."

"There is nothing new on Wall Street or in stock speculation. What has happened in the past will happen again, and again, and again. This is because human nature does not change, and it is human emotion, solidly built into human nature, that always gets in the way of human intelligence."

"I have never always been suspicious of everything I read in the newspaper and I never accept what I read at face value I try to look for hidden agendas and self-serving reasons that could have generated the articles, no matter what paper published the information." [I have been doing the same, and on top of that, I do not have a TV set and have not been watching television for the past 10 years, and avoid reading newspapers and magazines. Blogs and the web are a better way to go, and choosing what you want to read instead of being fed by what the adviser wants you to see is a better approach]

"Often I have observed that the Chief Executive Officer of most companies is little more than a cheerleader, who has only one job with regard to the market. He must assure and reassure the shareholders that everything is fine — if sales are down he tells the shareholders that the decline in sales is nothing more than a sight problem due to some temporary reason. If profits are down, he assures the shareholders there is nothing to worry about since the company has already reacted and made adequate plans to recapture their profitability." [Any resemblance with what has been happening for the past 24 months?]

"After a while, and some substantial lost money, I never asked an insider about how their business was doing. Why waste my time listening to half-truths, shadowy statements, inaccurate projections, and just plain bold-faced lies when I could simply just look at the behavior of the stock. The story was clear in the action of the stock. The truth was in the tape for anyone and everyone to see." [Any resemblance with what has been happening for the past 24 months?]