The Unsuccessful Investor Is Best Friends With Hope

"The unsuccessful investor is best friends with hope, and hope skips along life’s path hand in hand
with greed when it comes to the stock market. Once a stock trade is entered, hope springs to life. It
is human nature to be positive, to hope for the best. Hope is an important survival technique. But
hope, like its stock market cousin’s ignorance, greed, and fear, distorts reason. See the stock
market only deals in facts, in reality, in reason, and the stock market is never wrong. Traders are
wrong. Like the spinning of a roulette wheel, the little black ball tells the final outcome, not greed,
fear or hope. The result is objective and final, with no appeal."

"When the market goes against you, you hope that every day will be the last day - and you
lose more than you should had you not listened to hope. And when the market goes your
way, you become fearful that the next day will take away your profit and you get out - too
soon. The successful trader has to fight these two deep-seated instincts."

- Jesse Livermore

W. Scott O'neil (son of William J. O'neil) goes over the investing pyschology of Hope and it's perils.