Nicolas Darvas

Nicolas Darvas (* 1920 , † 1977 in Paris ) was a Hungarian dancer, punter and author.

Darvas studied economics and sociology at the University of Budapest . At the age of 23 he fled Hungary to Turkey in Istanbul during the Second World War . There he met his (alleged) half-sister Julia Darvas . He learned to dance there and became a Turkish citizen. In 1951 he emigrated to the USA, where he worked as a professional dancer with his sister. The couple toured around the world and danced with Judy Garland and Bob Hope in 1953, for example .

His time as a speculator began in 1952 when he received shares in the construction company Brilund worth $ 3,000 in Toronto instead of a fee . He put the stocks aside and ignored them for a while, and on a casual check found that their price had tripled. Darvas sold the shares, making a profit of nearly $ 8,000. Fascinated by this quick way of making money, Darvas read books on the stock market between appearances and continued to speculate on the stock market. At first he made losses. Darvas relied on advice from friends, studied price / earnings ratios with the help of brokers, but the losses continued.

Darvas claims to have read around 200 books on stocks and finance over the years. The decisive factors were his precise and month-long notes of the stock movements and the knowledge from his errors that ultimately brought him success. He was actively trading on the American stock exchange from 1952 until the early 1960s. According to John Boik's book, "Lessons from the Greatest Stock Traders Ever," Darvas has made $ 2.45 million since his success with Brilund stocks. Most of it - according to Boik - Darvas earned in 18 months, around $ 2.25 million. Boik goes on to say that the American Stock Exchange ended the use of stop-loss sell orders, which Darvas used to limit his losses. He observed that stock prices move up and down within a certain range before they go up. Darvas compared this to a dancer crouching down before a big jump to get some momentum. Darvas compared the upper and lower limits of these movements to the top and bottom of a box.

He developed the method "The Box Theory" (the box theory). In the imaginary box, the course bounces up and down like a rubber ball before jumping to a higher level. At that moment a purchase was made. Then - according to Darvas - the game repeats itself until box after box is piled up. If the share price breaks the bottom (the lower mark) of such a box, the share has been sold. With this method he became one of the pioneers of technical chart analysis .

Some critics have claimed that Darvas was just lucky in his speculation because he was trading in a very strong market. In an interview published by British stock market professional Mark Crisp on his website in 1974, Darvas said that he had looked at the charts every week with the average values ​​for the past six months. If prices fell in general, then it was a stock market slump. In 1957, Darvas could no longer find any stocks that would have met his requirements for his method. A bear market followed shortly thereafter.

In the 1960s, Darvas finally withdrew from the stock exchange. He gave interviews and wrote books. According to Time magazine, the New York State Attorney's Office was investigating him in 1960. The accusation: Darvas actually never made that much money on the stock market. The descriptions in his books are wrong. It was only $ 216,000. A judge blocked the investigation in 1961 as an inadmissible attack on the free press.

Darvas died in 1977 and is buried in Paris.

author

As an author, Darvas has published the following books:

• How I Made 2,000,000 in the Stock Market . 1960
• Wall Street: The Other Las Vegas . 1964
• The Anatomy of Success . 1965 **
• The Darvas System for Over-The-Counter Profits . 1971 **
• You Can Still Make It in the Market. 1977 **

In German:

• The Darvas Method: How I Made $ 2 Million In The Stock Exchange. A Wall Street Classic , 1997, ISBN 978-3922669227
• The Wall Street Casino. How to make a fortune with stocks - and keep it , 2005, ISBN 978-3-938350-05-8
• Analysis of the success , 1968
• How I Made $ 2 Million on the Stock Exchange , 1961

Web links

• Literature by and about Nicolas Darvas in the catalog of the German National Library
• SZ short biography

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Business. Pas de dough . In: Time . May 25, 1959.