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From the Foreword by Richard Wyckoff written in 1922:
'During the last thirty-three years I have been a persistent student of the security markets. As a member of several Stock Exchange firms, as a bond dealer, trader and investor, I have come into active contact with many thousands of those who are executing orders and handling markets as well as those who deal in such markets, namely traders and investors.
For the past fifteen years I have edited and published The Magazine of Wall Street, which at this writing has the largest circulation of any financial publication in the world.
These experiences have given me an opportunity to study not only the stock and bond markets, but all those related thereto, and have enabled me to observe the forces which influence these markets and the human elements which contribute so largely to their activity and wide fluctuations.
Out of this experience I have evolved or adopted or formulated certain methods of trading and investing, and some of these I have collected and presented in the pages which follow.
My purpose in preparing this book has been two-fold. Primarily, I have in mind the thousands of new investors who find the securities market a vast, technical machine, too complex to be understood by many. It has been my effort to do away with this impression - to emphasize the fact that, in Wall Street as anywhere else, the chief essential is common sense, coupled with study and practical experience. I have attempted to outline the requirements for success in this field in a way that will be understandable to all.
Furthermore, as I learned in preparing my first book, 'Studies in Tape Reading', it is of great personal advantage for me to write out and thus clarify and crystallize in my own mind the principles upon which I endeavor to operate. And so, from both standpoints it seemed to me well worth while to arrange my impressions in methodical and coherent order.'
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