The trader who made $100mn from the 1929 crash — only to lose it all

那位从1929年股市崩盘中赚取了1亿美元的交易者——结果却输得精光

Behind the Money

2026-07-22

54 分钟
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Jesse Livermore was a legendary trader who made and lost several fortunes in the early 20th century, most famously by shorting the Wall Street crash of 1929. His early life was immortalised in the roman à clef Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre, and his trading insights and stunning successes continue to inspire professional traders and would-be traders to this day. But his life also contains cautionary tales about the ease with which success can morph into failure, and what happens when the buzz of the markets is no longer enough. Host Robin Wigglesworth and the FT's US financial commentator Robert Armstrong explore the extraordinary life of the greatest day trader in history. Content note: This episode includes discussion of suicide and mental health. Further reading: Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (1923), Edwin Lefèvre 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History and How It Shattered a Nation (2025), Andrew Ross Sorkin  Credits: Getty Images, The New York Times  To enjoy future episodes, be sure to subscribe to The Story of Money wherever you get your podcasts, also on the show's dedicated YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@FTTheStoryOfMoney  Learn more at www.ft.com/tsom or get in touch at thestoryofmoney@ft.com. Hosts: Gillian Tett and Robin Wigglesworth Producer: Lulu Smyth Senior Producer: Michela Tindera  Executive Producer: Manuela Saragosa Original music and sound design: Breen Turner Broadcast engineers: Bianca Wakeman and Petros Giuompasis Podcast Development: Laura Clarke FT Global Head of Audio: Flo Phillips  Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  • He would walk into stockbroker's offices and they'd think he was a naive kid when,

  • in fact, he was an absolute shark and would clean the place out.

  • I mean, I found this great quote that apparently he gave to his kids.

  • The only way to get a real education in life is to examine each and every one of your mistakes.

  • Yeah, and isn't that the truth on Wall Street in life?

  • I know, I know.

  • It's the very same thing.

  • I think what's so compelling about Jesse Livermore is that he does learn from his mistakes, most of them.

  • The time at least bad investors what what they do and what i've done when i've made mistakes

  • is you think you lost because it was a coincidence livermore never does that yeah the only thing that is winning

  • is making money and if you lose and lose money it's because you were wrong not

  • because you were unlucky today on the story of money How do you make a hundred million bucks when marks are crashing

  • and everyone else is losing their shirt and then somehow blow it all?

  • Well, today we're going to be talking about one of history's most legendary traders, Jesse Livermore.

  • He made a cool hundred million dollars in the great crash of 1929. And that's actually $1.5 billion in today's money.

  • Or if you want to scale it relative to the size of the US economy back then and now, around $30 billion.

  • One of the biggest trading halls in history.

  • He was a larger-than-life character who went from Massachusetts farm boy to champagne-soaked parties in New York.

  • He even helped inspire F.

  • Scott Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby.