VOObyM

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
automobiles. Accurate and reliable information should be given by the public. But what
I meant was that the tape did all that was needed for my purpose. As I said before, the
reputable newspapers always try to print explanations for market movements. It is news.
Their readers demand to know not only what happens in the stock market but why it
happens. Therefore without the manipulator lifting a finger the financial writers will
print all the available information and gossip, and also analyse the reports of earnings,
trade condition and outlook; in short, whatever may throw light on the advance.
Whenever a newspaperman or an acquaintance asks my opinion of a stock and I have
one I do not hesitate to express it. I do not volunteer advice and I never give tips, but I
have nothing to gain in my operations from secrecy. At the same time I realise that the
best of all tipsters, the most persuasive of all salesmen, is the tape.
When I had absorbed all the stock that was for sale at 70 and a little higher I relieved the
market of that pressure, and naturally that made clear for trading purposes the line of
least resistance in Imperial Steel. It was manifestly upward. The moment that fact was
perceived by the observant traders on the floor they logically assumed that the stock was
in for an advance the extent of which they could not know; but they knew enough to
begin buying. Their demand for Imperial Steel, created exclusively by the obviousness
of the stock's rising tendency the tape's infallible bull tip! I promptly filled. I sold to the
traders the stock that I had bought from the tired-out holders at the beginning. Of course
this selling was judiciously done; I contented myself with supplying the demand. I was
not forcing my stock on the market and I did not want too rapid an advance. It wouldn't
have been good business to sell out the half of my one hundred thousand shares at that
stage of the proceedings. My job was to make a market on which I might sell my entire
line.
But even though I sold only as much as the traders were anxious to buy, the market was
temporarily deprived of my own buying power, which I had hitherto exerted steadily. In
due course the traders' purchases ceased and the price stopped rising. As soon as that
happened there began the selling by disappointed bulls or by those traders whose
reasons for buying disappeared the instant the rising tendency was checked. But I was
ready for this selling, and on the way down I bought back the stock I had sold to the
traders a couple of points higher. This buying of stock I knew was bound to be sold in
turn checked the downward course; and when the price stopped going down the selling
orders stopped coming in.
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