This is how I worked it out. I asked my brokers to send out their telegrams after Wall Street closing time, so they would reach me at 6 P.M. This is about the time I get up – the result of performing in nightclubs for many years. Meanwhile, during the day, the telephone operator is instructed not to let any calls through. In this way everything happens in Wall Street while I am in bed. I am sleeping while they are working, and they cannot reach me nor worry me. My delegate, the stop-loss order, represents me in case something unforeseen happens. – Nicolas Darvas
Archives of “Hungarian people” tag
rssHow I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market by Nicolas Darvas
Excerpt: “Hungarian by birth, Nicolas Darvas trained as an economist at the University of Budapest. Reluctant to remain in Hungary until either the Nazis or the Soviets took over, he fled at the age of 23 with a forged exit visa and fifty pounds sterling to stave off hunger in Istanbul, Turkey. During his off hours as a dancer, he read some 200 books on the market and the great speculators, spending as much as eight hours a day studying. Darvas invested his money into a couple of stocks that had been hitting their 52-week high. He was utterly surprised that the stocks continued to rise and subsequently sold them to make a large profit. His main source of stock selection was Barron’s Magazine. At the age of 39, after accumulating his fortune, Darvas documented his techniques in the book, How I Made 2,000,000 in the Stock Market. The book describes his unique “Box System”, which he used to buy and sell stocks. Darvas’ book remains a classic stock market text to this day.”
Nicolas Darvas on stops: "no loss-free Nirvana"
I was just rereading Nicolas Darvas’ How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market and came across this interesting summary of his trading method and risk management approach in the author’s intro. I’d like to share it with you.
Quoth Darvas:
“I built a fortune with serenity by avoiding premature selling yet making an exodus from most of my stocks with the use of a single tool: the trailing stop-loss.
I have discovered no loss-free Nirvana. But I have been able to limit my losses to less than 10 percent wherever possible. My stop loss method had two effects. It got me out of the wrong stock and into the right one.”
Full passage in the image below: