VOObyM

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
"I don't know," I repeated. "I just feel that something is going to happen."
"What's going to happen?"
"I don't know. I can't give you any reason. All I know is that I want to sell that stock.
And I'm going to let 'em have another thousand."
I walked back into the office and gave an order to sell a second thousand. If I was right
in selling the first thousand I ought to have out a little more.
"What could possibly happen?" persisted my friend, who couldn't make up his mind to
follow my lead. If I'd told him that I had heard UP. was going down he'd have sold it
without asking me from whom I'd heard it or why. "What could possibly happen?" he
asked again.
"A million things could happen. But I can't promise you that any of them will. I can't
give you any reasons and I can't tell fortunes," I told him.
"Then you're crazy," he said. "Stark crazy, selling that stock without rime or reason. You
don't know why you want to sell it?"
"I don't know why I want to sell it. I only know I do want to," I said. "I want to, like
everything." The urge was so strong that I sold another thousand.
That was too much for my friend. He grabbed me by the arm and said, "Here! Let's get
out of this place before you sell the entire capital stock."
I had sold as much as I needed to satisfy my feeling, so I followed him without waiting
for a report on the last two thousand shares. It was a pretty good jag of stock for me to
sell even with the best of reasons. It seemed more than enough to be short of without any
reason whatever, particularly when the entire market was so strong and there was
nothing in sight to make anybody think of the bear side. But I remembered that on
previous occasions when I had the same urge to sell and didn't do it I always had reasons
to regret it.
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