[idaxtrader]

I had been gradually approaching the full realization of how much more than tape reading there was to stock speculation. Old man Partridge's insistence on the vital importance of being continuously bullish in a bull market doubtless made my mind dwell on the need above all other things of determining the kind of market a man is trading in.

There was not so much need as I had imagined to study individual plays or the behaviour of this or the other stock.

Obviously the thing to do was to be bullish in a bull market and bearish in a bear market. Sounds silly, doesn't it? But I had to grasp that general principle firmly before I saw that to put it into practice really meant to anticipate probabilities.

I always had or felt that I had to make my daily bread out of the stock market. It interfered with my efforts to increase the stake available for the more profitable but slower and therefore more immediately expensive method of trading on swings.

You see, I had observed certain facts but had not learned to co-ordinate them. My incomplete observation not only did not help but actually hindered.

But if he didn't profit by his mistakes he wouldn't own a blessed thing.

But I can tell you after the market began to go my way I felt for the first time in my life that I had allies -- the strongest and truest in the
world: underlying conditions. They were helping me with all their might. Perhaps they were a trifle slow at times in bringing up the reserves, but they were dependable, provided I did not get too impatient.

The market would not be right for me to trade in for a while.

I lost because I traded in and out of season, every day, whether or not conditions were right. I wasn't making that mistake twice.

However, the real joy was in the consciousness that as a trader I was at last on the right track. I still had much to learn but I knew what to do. No more floundering, no more half-right methods. Tape reading was an important part of the game; so was beginning at the right time; so was sticking to your position. But my greatest discovery was that a man must study general conditions, to size them so as to be able to anticipate probabilities. In short, I had learned that I had to work for my money.

I was no longer betting blindly or concerned with mastering the technic of the game, but with earning my successes by hard study and clear thinking. I also had found out that nobody was immune from the danger of making sucker plays. And for a sucker play a man gets sucker pay; for the paymaster is on the job and never loses the pay envelope that is coming to you.

It marked the successful ending of my first deliberately planned trading campaign. What I had foreseen had come to pass.

But my biggest winnings were not in dollars but in the intangibles: I had been right, I had looked ahead and followed a clear-cut plan. I had learned what a man must do in order to make big money; I was permanently out of the gambler class; I had at last learned to trade intelligently in a big way. It was a day of days for me.