VOObyM

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
When the commission houses found out there was not a cent to be had at any price I
knew the time had come. I sent brokers into the various crowds. Why, at one time there
wasn't a single bid for Union Pacific. Not at any price! Think of it! And in other stocks
the same thing. No money to hold stocks and nobody to buy them.
I had enormous paper profits and the certainty that all that I had to do to smash prices
still more was to send in orders to sell ten thousand shares each of Union Pacific and of
a half dozen other good dividend-paying stocks and what would follow would be simply
hell. It seemed to me that the panic that would be precipitated would be of such an
intensity and character that the board of governors would deem it advisable to close the
Exchange, as was done in August, 1914, when the World War broke out.
It would mean greatly increased profits on paper. It might also mean an inability to
convert those profits into actual cash. But there were other things to consider, and one
was that a further break would retard the recovery that I was beginning to figure on, the
compensating improvement after all that bloodletting. Such a panic would do much
harm to the country generally.
I made up my mind that since it was unwise and unpleasant to continue actively bearish
it was illogical for me to stay short. So I turned and began to buy.
It wasn't long after my brokers began to buy in for me and, by the way, I got bottom
prices that the banker sent for my friend.
"I have sent for you," he said, "because I want you to go instantly to your friend
Livingston and say to him mat we hope he will not sell any more stocks to-day. The
market can't stand much more pressure. As it is, it will be an immensely difficult task to
avert a devastating panic. Appeal to your friend's patriotism. This is a case where a man
has to work for the benefit of all. Let me know at once what he says."
My friend came right over and told me. He was very tactful. I suppose he thought that
having planned to smash the market I would consider his request as equivalent to
throwing away the chance to make about ten million dollars. He knew I was sore on
some of the big guns for the way they had acted trying to land the public with a lot of
stock when they knew as well as I did what was coming.
As a matter of fact, the big men were big sufferers and lots of the stocks I bought at the
- 96 -