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Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
feel that way and not cover. And once I had covered because Thomas made me think I
was wrong, I simply had to go long. It is the way my mind works. You know, I have
done nothing in my life but trade in stocks and commodities. I naturally think that if it is
wrong to be bearish it must be right to be a bull. And if it is right to be a bull it is
imperative to buy. As my old Palm Beach friend said Pat Hearne used to say, "You can't
tell till you bet!" I must prove whether I am right on the market or not; and the proofs
are to be read only in my brokers' statements at the end of the month.
I started in to buy cotton and in a jiffy I had my usual line,' about sixty thousand bales. It
was the most asinine play of my career. Instead of standing or falling by my own
observation and deductions I was merely playing another man's game. It was eminently
fitting that my silly plays should not end with that. I not only bought when I had no
business to be bullish but I didn't accumulate my line in accordance with the promptings
of experience. I wasn't trading right. Having listened, I was lost.
The market was not going my way. I am never afraid or impatient when I am sure of my
position. But the market didn't act the way it should have acted had Thomas been right.
Having taken the first wrong step I took the second and the third, and of course it
muddled me all up. I allowed myself to be persuaded not only into not taking my loss
but into holding up the market. That is a style of play foreign to my nature and contrary
to my trading principles and theories. Even as a boy in the bucket shops I had known
better. But I was not myself. I was another man a Thomas-ized person.
I not only was long of cotton but I was carrying a heavy line of wheat. That was doing
famously and showed me a handsome profit. My fool efforts to bolster up cotton had
increased my line to about one hundred and fifty thousand bales. I may tell you that
about this time I was not feeling very well. " I don't say this to furnish an excuse for my
blunders, but merely to state a pertinent fact. I remember I went to Bayshore for a rest.
While there I did some thinking. It seemed to me that my speculative commitments were
overlarge. I am not timid as a rule, but I got to feeling nervous and that made me decide
to lighten my load. To do this I must clean up either tht cotton or the wheat.
It seems incredible that knowing the game as well as I did and with an experience of
twelve or fourteen years of speculating in stocks and commodities I did precisely the
wrong thing. The cotton showed me a loss and I kept it. The wheat showed me a profit
and I sold it out. It was an utterly foolish play, but all I can say in extenuation is that it
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