VOObyM

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
much of it was gossip, some of it deliberately false, and the rest merely the personal
opinion of the writers. The reputable weekly reviews when they touched upon
underlying conditions were not entirely satisfactory to me. The point of view of the
financial editors was not mine as a rule. It was not a vital matter for them to marshal
their facts and draw their conclusions from them, but it was for me. Also there was a
vast difference in our appraisal of the element of time. The analysis of the week that had
passed was less important to me than the forecast of the weeks that were to come.
For years I had been the victim of an unfortunate combination of inexperience, youth
and insufficient capital. But now I felt the elation of a discoverer. My new attitude
toward the game explained my repeated failures to make big money in New York. But
now with adequate resources, experience and confidence, I was in such a hurry to try the
new key that I did not notice that there was another lock on the door a time lock! It was
a perfectly natural oversight. I had to pay the usual tuition a good whack per each step
forward.
I studied the situation in 1906 and I thought that the money outlook was particularly
serious. Much actual wealth the world over had been destroyed. Everybody must sooner
or later feel the pinch, and therefore nobody would be in position to help anybody. It
would not be the kind of hard times that comes from the swapping of a house worth ten
thousand dollars for a carload of race horses worth eight thousand dollars. It was the
complete destruction of the house by fire and of most of the horses by a railroad wreck.
It was good hard cash that went up in cannon smoke in the Boer War, and the millions
spent for feeding nonproducing soldiers in South Africa meant no help from British
investors as in the past. Also, the earthquake and the fire in San Francisco and other
disasters touched everybody manufacturers, farmers, merchants, labourers and
millionaires. The railroads must suffer greatly. I figured that nothing could stave off one
peach of a smash. Such being the case there was but one thing to do sell stocks!
I told you I had already observed that my initial transaction, after I made up my mind
which way I was going to trade, was apt to show me a profit. And now when I decided
to sell I plunged. Since we undoubtedly were entering upon a genuine bear market I was
sure I should make the biggest killing of my career.
The market went off. Then it came back. It shaded off and then it began to advance
steadily. My paper profits vanished and my paper losses grew. One day it looked as if
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