I wish I had read this book fifteen years ago. It is the fictional account of the great stock speculator Jesse Livermore. The author presents his life starting from the bucket shops through his great gains and losses on the actual stock and commodities markets. There are so many pearls of wisdom in this book that can be gleaned by the typical (loser)investor that the book will probably pay for itself by avoiding the first bad trade. I am only giving it four stars because it is dated, but the psycholgy and behaviours has not chnaged since then, so it is still valuable for today.