By far the most useful advice by Livermore in Reminiscences of a Stock Operator was to avoid tips like the plague. Similarly, Bacon warned:

DON’T look at anybody else’s selections of prices or handicaps before making your own selections and prices. That is a rule with no exceptions.

If you look at some other prices or selections first, the line you will come up with will be a sort of scrambling of his line and your line. Almost invariably, it will combine the weakest features of both. You’ll have the mistakes and trite opinions of his line and yours. But the possible ‘bright work’ and getting-away-from-the-public part of his figures and yours, will be discarded.