VOObyM

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
Chapter XVII
One of my most intimate friends is very fond of telling stories about what he calls my
hunches. He is forever ascribing to me powers that defy analysis. He declares I merely
follow blindly certain mysterious impulses and thereby get out of the stock market at
precisely the right time. His pet yarn is about a black cat that told me, at his breakfasttable,
to sell a lot of stock I was carrying, and that after I got the pussy's message I was
grouchy and nervous until I sold every share I was long of. I got practically the top
prices of the movement, which of course strengthened the hunch theory of my hardheaded
friend.
I had gone to Washington to endeavor to convince a few Congressmen that there was no
wisdom in taxing us to death and I wasn't paying much attention to the stock market. My
decision to sell out my line came suddenly, hence my friend's yarn.
I admit that I do get irresistible impulses at times to do certain things in the market. It
doesn't matter whether I am long or short of stocks. I must get out. I am uncomfortable
until I do. I myself think that what happens is that I see a lot of warning-signals. Perhaps
not a single one may be sufficiently clear or powerful to afford me a positive, definite
reason for doing what I suddenly feel like doing. Probably that is all there is to what they
call "ticker-sense" that old traders say James R. Keene had so strongly developed and
other operators before him. Usually, I confess, the warning turns out to be not only
sound but timed to the minute. But in this particular instance there was no hunch. The
black cat had nothing to do with it. What he tells everybody about my getting up so
grumpy that morning I suppose can be explained if I in truth was grouchy by my
disappointment. I knew I was not convincing the Congressman I talked to and the
Committee did not view the problem of taxing Wall Street as I did. I wasn't trying to
arrest or evade taxation on stock transactions but to suggest a tax that I as an
experienced stock operator felt was neither unfair nor unintelligent. I didn't want Uncle
- 180 -