Wall Street Stories: Introduction by Jack Schwager

“Lefèvre provided me with a goal when I wrote my first Market Wizards book… to write a book that would emulate the spirit of Lefèvre's work in maintaining truth and relevance many years after it was written.”

-from the Foreword by Jack Schwager

The book that launched Edwin Lefèvre's literary career, Wall Street Stories is considered by many to be his most memorable work, second only to Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, his classic fictionalization of the life of Jesse Livermore. Published to great critical acclaim in 1901, Wall Street Stories is a literary romp through the habits and customs of Wall Street. Like all of Lefèvre's fiction it is firmly rooted in the facts as he knew them both as a top financial journalist and a successful investor, and, as was his style, many of the fictional characters in the stories are thinly-veiled portraits of well-known Wall Street personalities such as James R. Keene, Elverton R. Chapman, Roswell Pettibone Flower, and Daniel Drew-names as familiar to the public in their day as Warren Buffet, George Soros, and Julian Robertson are today.

But the charm of the eight tales in Wall Street Stories isn't just in their ability to convey a sense of life in a bygone era. It comes from the timeless insights they offer into human nature warped in the crucible of the stock market. Each of these witty tales of still resonate with poignancy and simple authority.