VOObyM

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
I then began all over again. I took all the stock that was for sale on the way up it wasn't
very much and the price began to rise a second time; from a higher starting point than
70. Don't forget that on the way down there are many holders who wish to heaven they
had sold theirs but won't do it three or four points from the top. Such speculators always
vow they will surely sell out if there is a rally. They put in their orders to sell on the way
up, and then they change their minds with the change in the stock's price-trend. Of
course there is always profit taking from safe-playing quick runners to whom a profit is
always a profit to be taken.
All I had to do after that was to repeat the process; alternately buying and selling; but
always working higher.
Sometimes, after you have taken all the stock that is for sale, it pays to rush up the price
sharply, to have what might be called little bull flurries in the stock you are
manipulating. It is excellent advertising, because it makes talk and also brings in both
the professional traders and that portion of the speculating public that likes action. It is, I
think, a large portion. I did that in Imperial Steel, and whatever demand was created by
those spurts I supplied. My selling always kept the upward movement within bounds
both as to extent and as to speed. In buying on the way down and selling on the way up I
was doing more than marking up the price: I was developing the marketability of
Imperial Steel.
After I began my operations in it there never was a time when a man could not buy or
sell the stock freely; I mean by this, buy or sell a reasonable amount without causing
over-violent fluctuations in the price. The fear of being left high and dry if he bought, or
squeezed to death if he sold, was gone. The gradual spread among the professionals and
the public of a belief in the permanence of the market for Imperial Steel had much to do
with creating confidence in the movement; and, of course, the activity also put an end to
a lot of other objections. The result was that after buying and selling a good many
thousands of shares I succeeded in making the stocks sell at par. At one hundred dollars
a share everybody wanted to buy Imperial Steel. Why not? Everybody now knew that it
was a good stock; that it had been and still was a bargain. The proof was the rise. A
stock that could go thirty points from 70 could go up thirty more from par. That is the
way a good many argued.
In the course of marking up the price those thirty points I accumulated only seven
- 219 -