VOObyM

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
that is, in my reading of basic conditions. What playwrights call battles of business are
not fights between human beings. They are merely tests of business vision. I try to stick
to facts and facts only, and govern my actions accordingly. That is Bernard
M. Baruch's recipe for success in wealth-winning. Sometimes I do not see the facts all
the facts clearly enough or early enough; or else I do not reason logically. Whenever any
of these things happen I lose. I am wrong. And it always costs me money to be wrong.
No reasonable man objects to paying for his mistakes. There are no preferred creditors
in mistake-making and no exceptions or exemptions. But I object to losing money when
I am right. I do not mean, either, those deals that have cost me money because of sudden
changes in the rules of some particular exchange. I have in mind certain hazards of
speculation that from time to time remind a man that no profit should be counted safe
until it is deposited in your bank to your credit.
After the Great War broke out in Europe there began the rise in the prices of
commodities that was to be expected. It was as easy to foresee that as to foresee war
inflation. Of course the general advance continued as the war prolonged itself. As you
may remember, I was busy "coming back" in 1915. The boom in stocks was there and it
was my duty to utilise it. My safest, easiest and quickest big play was in the stock
market, and I was lucky, as you know.
By July, 1917, I not only had been able to pay off all my debts but was quite a little to
the good besides. This meant that I now had the time, the money and the inclination to
consider trading in commodities as well as in stocks. For many years I have made it my
practice to study all the markets. The advance in commodity prices over the pre-war
level ranged from 100 to 400 per cent. There was only one exception, and that was
coffee. Of course there was a reason for this. The breaking out of the war meant the
closing up of European markets and huge cargoes were sent to this country, which was
the one big market. That led in time to an enormous surplus of raw coffee here, and that,
in turn, kept the price low. Why, when I first began to consider its speculative
possibilities coffee was actually selling below pre-war prices. If the reasons for this
anomaly were plain, no less plain was it that the active and increasingly efficient
operation by the German and Austrian submarines must mean an appalling reduction in
the number of ships available for commercial purposes. This eventually in turn must
lead to dwindling imports of coffee. With reduced receipts and an unchanged
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