Page 62 - Morgan Housel - The Psychology of Money_ Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness-Harriman House Limited (2020)

He then broke the news to his family: In a stroke of genius and luck, he had
been short the market, betting stocks would decline.
COBACOBA

“You mean we are not ruined?” Dorothy asked.

“No darling, I have just had my best ever trading day—we are fabulously
rich and can do whatever we like,” Jesse said.

Dorothy ran to her mother and told her to be quiet.

In one day Jesse Livermore made the equivalent of more than $3 billion.

During one of the worst months in the history of the stock market he became
one of the richest men in the world.

As Livermore’s family celebrated their unfathomable success, another man

wandered the streets of New York in desperation.

Abraham Germansky was a multimillionaire real estate developer who made
a fortune during the roaring 1920s. As the economy boomed, he did what
virtually every other successful New Yorker did in the late 1920s: bet
heavily on the surging stock market.

On October 26th, 1929, The New York Times published an article that in
two paragraphs portrays a tragic ending:

Bernard H. Sandler, attorney of 225 Broadway, was asked yesterday
morning by Mrs. Abraham Germansky of Mount Vernon to help find her
husband, missing since Thursday Morning. Germansky, who is 50 years old
and an east side real estate operator, was said by Sandler to have invested
heavily in stocks.

Sandler said he was told by Mrs. Germansky that a friend saw her husband
late Thursday on Wall Street near the stock exchange. According to her
informant, her husband was tearing a strip of ticker tape into bits and

scattering it on the sidewalk as he walked toward Broadway.