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Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
Company and he got one hundred thousand shares of Consolidated Stove for it. He had
been carrying enough to disregard Jim Barnes' wild bull tips and had cashed in on thirty
thousand shares before the market petered out on him. He told a friend later that he
would have sold more only the other big holders, who were old and intimate friends,
pleaded with him not to sell any more, and out of regard for them he stopped. Besides
which, as I said, he had no market to unload on.
The third man was Joshua Wolff. He was probably the best known of all the traders. For
twenty years everybody had known him as one of the plungers on the floor. In bidding
up stocks or offering them down he had few equals, for ten or twenty thousand shares
meant no more to him than two or three hundred. Before I came to New York I had
heard of him as a plunger. He was then trailing with a sporting coterie that played a no
limit game, whether on the race track or in the stock market.
They used to accuse him of being nothing but a gambler, but he had real ability and a
strongly developed aptitude for the speculative game. At the same time his reputed
indifference to highbrow pursuits made him the hero of numberless anecdotes. One of
the most widely circulated of the yarns was that Joshua was a guest at what he called a
swell dinner and by some oversight of the hostess several of the other guests began to
discuss literature before they could be stopped. A girl who sat next to Josh and had not
heard him use his mouth except for masticating purposes, turned to him and looking
anxious to hear the great financier's opinion asked him, "Oh, Mr. Wolff, what do you
think of Balzac?"
Josh politely ceased to masticate, swallowed and answered, "I never trade in them Curb
stocks!"
Such were the three largest individual holders of Consolidated Stove. When they came
over to see me I told them that if they formed a syndicate to put up some cash and gave
me a call on their stock at a little above the market I would do what I could to make a
market. They promptly asked me how much money would be required.
I answered, "You've had that stock a long time and you can't do a thing with it. Between
the three of you you've got two hundred thousand shares, and you know very well that
you haven't the slightest chance of getting rid of it unless you make a market for it. It's
got to be some market to absorb what you've got to give it, and it will be wise to have
enough cash to pay for whatever stock it may be necessary to buy at first. It's no use to
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