VOObyM

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
help making money than he could help getting wet if he went out in a rainstorm without
an umbrella. It was the most clearly defined bull market we ever had. It was plain to
everybody that the Allied purchases of all kinds of supplies here made the United States
the most prosperous nation in the world. We had all the things that no one else had for
sale, and we were fast getting all the cash in the world. I mean that the wide world's gold
was pouring into this country in torrents. Inflation was inevitable, and, of course, that
meant rising prices for everything.
All this was so evident from the first that little or no manipulation for the rise was
needed. That was the reason why the preliminary work was so much less than in other
bull markets. And not only was the war-bride boom more naturally developed than all
others but it proved unprecedentedly profitable for the general public. That is, the stockmarket
winnings during 1915 were more widely distributed than in any other boom in
the history of Wall Street. That the public did not turn all their paper profits into good
hard cash or that they did not long keep what profits they actually took was merely
history repeating itself. Nowhere does history indulge in repetitions so often or so
uniformly as in Wall Street. When you read contemporary accounts of booms or panics
the one thing that strikes you most forcibly is how little either stock speculation or stock
speculators to-day differ from yesterday. The game does not change and neither does
human nature.
I went along with the rise in 1916. I was as bullish as the next man, but of course I kept
my eyes open. I knew, as everybody did, that there must be an end, and I was on the
watch for warning signals. I wasn't particularly interested in guessing from which
quarter the tip would come and so I didn't stare at just one spot. I was not, and I never
have felt that I was, wedded indissolubly to one or the other side of the market. That a
bull market has added to my bank account or a bear market has been particularly
generous I do not consider sufficient reason for sticking to the bull or the bear side after
I receive the get-out warning. A man does not swear eternal allegiance to either the bull
or the bear side. His concern lies with being right.
And there is another thing to remember, and that is that a market does not culminate in
one grand blaze of glory. Neither does it end with a sudden reversal of form. A market
can and does often cease to be a bull market long before prices generally begin to break.
My long expected warning came to me when I noticed that, one after another, those
stocks which had been the leaders of the market reacted several points from the top and
- 153 -