VOObyM

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
time I'd seen a quotation in it, I think, was around 140. My opinion was that we were
going into a bear market and I was biding my time before going short of stocks. But
there was no mad rush. That was why I was fishing and out of hearing of the ticker. I
knew that I'd be back home when the real call came. In the meanwhile nothing that I did
or failed to do would hurry matters a bit.
The behaviour of Tropical Trading was the outstanding feature of the market, according
to the newspapers I got that morning. It served to crystallise my general bearishness
because I thought it particularly asinine for the insiders to run up the price of TT in the
face of the heaviness of the general list. There are times when the milking process must
be suspended. What is abnormal is seldom a desirable factor in a trader's calculations
and it looked to me as if the marking up of that stock were a capital blunder. Nobody
can make blunders of that magnitude with impunity; not in the stock market.
After I got through reading the newspapers I went back to my fishing but I kept thinking
of what the insiders in Tropical Trading were trying to do. That they were bound to fail
was as certain as that a man is bound to smash himself if he jumps from the roof of a
twenty-story building without a parachute. I couldn't think of anything else and finally I
gave up trying to fish and sent off a telegram to my brokers to sell 2000 shares of TT at
the market. After that I was able to go back to my fishing. I did pretty well.
That afternoon I received the reply to my telegram by special courier. My brokers
reported that they had sold the 2000 shares of Tropical Trading at 153. So far so good. I
was selling short on a declining market, which was as it should be. But I could not fish
any more. I was too far away from a quotation board. I discovered this after I began to
think of all the reasons why Tropical Trading should go down with the rest of the market
instead of going up on inside manipulation. I therefore left my fishing camp and
returned to Palm Beach; or, rather, to the direct wire to New York.
The moment I got to Palm Beach and saw what the misguided insiders were still trying
to do, I let them have a second lot of 2000 TT. Back came the report and I sold another
2000 shares. The market behaved excellently. That is, it declined on my selling.
Everything being satisfactory I went out and had a chair ride. But I wasn't happy. The
more I thought the unhappier it made me to think that I hadn't sold more. So back I went
to the broker's office and sold another 2000 shares.
I was happy only when I was selling that stock. Presently I was short 10,000 shares.
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