it doesn't pay to start wrong

It would not be so difficult to make money if a
trader always stuck to his speculative guns -- that is, waited
for the line of least resistance to define itself and began
buying only when the tape said up or selling only when it said
down. He should accumulate his line on the way up. Let him buy
one-fifth of his full line. If that does not show him a profit
he must not increase his holdings because he has obviously begun
wrong; he is wrong temporarily and there is no profit in being
wrong at any time. The same tape that said up did not
necessarily lie merely because it is now saying NOT YET.
In cotton I was very successful in my trading for a long
time. I had my theory about it and I absolutely lived up to it.
Suppose I had decided that my line would be forty to fifty
thousand bales. Well, I would study the tape as I told you,
watching for an opportunity either to buy or to sell. Suppose
the line of least resistance indicated a bull movement. Well, I
would buy ten thousand bales. After I got through buying that,
if the market went up ten points over my initial purchase price,
I would take on another ten thousand bales. Same thing. Then, if
I could get twenty points' profit, or one dollar a bale, I would
buy twenty thousand more. That would give me my line -- my basis
for my trading. But if after buying the first ten or twenty
thousand bales, it showed me a loss, out I'd go. I was wrong. It
might be I was only temporarily wrong.
But as I have said before it doesn't pay to start wrong in
anything.