VOObyM

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
bought it the week before.
That was only one case. There isn't a man in Wall Street who has not lost money trying
to make the market pay for an automobile or a bracelet or a motor boat or a painting. I
could build a huge hospital with the birthday presents that the tight-fisted stock market
has refused to pay for. In fact, of all hoodoos in Wall Street I think the resolve to induce
the stock market to act as a fairy godmother is the busiest and most persistent.
Like all well-authenticated hoodoos this has its reason for being. What does a man do
when he sets out to make the stock market pay for a sudden need? Why, he merely
hopes. He gambles. He therefore runs much greater risks than he would if he were
speculating intelligently, in accordance with opinions or beliefs logically arrived at after
a dispassionate study of underlying conditions. To begin with, he is after an immediate
profit. He cannot afford to wait. The market must be nice to him at once if at all. He
flatters himself that he is not asking more than to place an even-money bet. Because he
is prepared to run quick say, stop his loss at two points when all he hopes to make is two
points he hugs the fallacy that he is merely taking a fifty-fifty chance. Why, I've known
men to lose thousands of dollars on such trades, particularly on purchases made at the
height of a bull market just before a moderate reaction. It certainly is no way to trade.
Well, that crowning folly of my career as a stock operator was the last straw. It beat me.
I lost what little my cotton deal had left me. It did even more harm, for I kept on trading
and losing. I persisted in thinking that the stock market must perforce make money for
me in the end. But the only end in sight was the end of my resources. I went into debt,
not only to my principal brokers but to other houses that accepted business from me
without my putting up an adequate margin. I not only got in debt but I stayed in debt
from then on.
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