Reading the tape merely enables him to see that at 130 the selling had
been stronger than the buying and a reaction in the price logically
followed. Up to the point where the selling prevailed over the buying,
superficial students of the tape may conclude that the price is not
going to stop short of 150, and they buy. But after the reaction
begins to hold on, or sell out at a small loss, or they go short and
talk bearish. But at 120 there is stronger resistance to the decline.
The buying prevails over the selling, there is a rally and the shorts
cover. The public is so often whipsawed that one marvels at their
persistence in not learning their lesson.
Eventually something happens that increases the power of either the
upward or the downward force and the point of greatest resistance moves
up or down--that is, the buying at 130 will for the first time be
stronger than the selling, or the selling at 120 be stronger than the
buying. The price will break through the old barrier or movement-limit
and go on. As a rule, there is always a crowd of traders who are short
at 120 because it looked so weak, or long at 130 because it looked so
strong, and, when the market goes against them they are forced, after a
while, either to change their minds and turn or to close out. In either
event they help to define even more clearly the price line of least
resistance. Thus the intelligent trader who has patiently waited to
determine this line will enlist the aid of fundamental trade conditions
and also of the force of the trading of that part of the community that
happened to guess wrong and must now rectify mistakes. Such corrections
tend to push prices along the line of least resistance.
And right here I will say that, though I do not give it as a
mathematical certainty or as an axiom of speculation, my experience
has been that accidents--that is, the unexpected or unforeseen--have
always helped me in my market position whenever the latter has been
based upon my determination of the line of least resistance. Do you
remember that Union Pacific episode at Saratoga that I told you about?
Well, I was long because I found out that the line of least resistance
was upward. I should have stayed long instead of letting my broker tell
me that insiders were selling stocks. It didn’t make any difference
what was going on in the directors’ minds. That was something I
couldn’t possibly know. But I could and did know that the tape said:
“Going up!” And then came the unexpected raising of the dividend rate
and the thirty-point rise in the stock. At 164 prices looked mighty
high, but as I told you before, _stocks are never too high to buy
or too low to sell_. _The price_, per se, _has nothing to do with
establishing my line of least resistance._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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