VOObyM

"Why not?" asked the friend.
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
"I am carrying so much cotton that I can't sleep thinking about it. It is wearing me out.
What can I do?"
"Sell down to the sleeping point," answered the friend.
As a rule a man adapts himself to conditions so quickly that he loses the perspective. He
does not feel the difference much that is, he does not vividly remember how it felt not to
be a millionaire. He only remembers that there were things he could not do that he can
do now. It does not take a reasonably young and normal man very long to lose the habit
of being poor. It requires a little longer to forget that he used to be rich. I suppose that is
because money creates needs or encourages their multiplication. I mean that after a man
makes money in the stock market he very quickly loses the habit of not spending. But
after he loses his money it takes him a long time to lose the habit of spending.
After I took in my shorts and went long in October, 1907, I decided to take it easy for a
while. I bought a yacht and planned to go off on a cruise in Southern waters. I am crazy
about fishing and I was due to have the time of my life. I looked forward to it and
expected to go any day. But I did not. The market wouldn't let me.
I always have traded in commodities as well as in stocks. I began as a youngster in the
bucket shops. I studied those markets for years, though perhaps not so assiduously as the
stock market. As a matter of fact, I would rather play commodities than stocks. There is
no question about their greater legitimacy, as it were. It partakes more of the nature of a
commercial venture than trading in stocks does. A man can approach it as he might any
mercantile problem. It may be possible to use fictitious arguments for or against a
certain trend in a commodity market; but success will be only temporary, for in the end
the facts are bound to prevail, so that a trader gets dividends on study and observation,
as he does in a regular business. He can watch and weigh conditions and he knows as
much about it as anyone else. He need not guard against inside cliques. Dividends are
not unexpectedly passed or increased overnight in the cotton market or in wheat or corn.
In the long run commodity prices are governed but by one law the economic law of
demand and supply. The business of the trader in commodities is simply to get facts
about the demand and the supply, present and prospective. He does not indulge in
guesses about a dozen things as he does in stocks. It always appealed to me trading in
commodities.
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