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Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
There was a chap with me, a broker I had met in New York. He knew I was long eight
thousand full shares and I suspect that he had some of his own, for when we got that one
quotation he certainly had a fit. He couldn't tell whether the stock at that very moment
had gone off another ten points or not. The way Anaconda had gone up it wouldn't have
been anything unusual for it to break twenty points. But I said to him, "Don't you worry,
John. It will be all right to-morrow." That was really the way I felt. But he looked at me
and shook his head. He knew better. He was that kind. So I laughed, and I waited in the
office in case some quotation trickled through. But no, sir. That one was all we got:
Anaconda, 292. It meant a paper loss to me of nearly one hundred thousand dollars. I
had wanted quick action. Well, I was getting it.
The next day the wires were working and we got the quotations as usual. Anaconda
opened at 298 and went up to 302^4, but pretty soon it began to fade away. Also, the rest
of the market was not acting just right for a further rally. I made up my mind that if
Anaconda went back to 301 I must" consider the whole thing a fake movement. On a
legitimate advance the price should have gone to 310 without stopping. If instead it
reacted it meant that precedents had failed me and I was wrong: and the only thing to do
when a man is wrong is to be right by ceasing to be wrong. I had bought eight thousand
full shares in expectation of a thirty or forty point rise. It would not be my first mistake;
nor my last.
Sure enough, Anaconda fell back to 301. The moment it touched that figure I sneaked
over to the telegraph operator they had a direct wire to the New York office and I said to
him, "Sell all my Anaconda, eight thousand full shares." I said it in a low voice. I didn't
want anybody else to know what I was doing.
He looked up at me almost in horror. But I nodded and said, "All I've got!"
"Surely, Mr. Livingston, you don't meant at the market?" and he looked as if he was
going to lose a couple of millions of his own through bum execution by a careless
broker. But I just told him, "Sell it! Don't argue about it!"
The two Black boys, Jim and Ollie, were in the office, out of hearing of the operator and
myself. They were big traders who had come originally from Chicago, where they had
been famous plungers in wheat, and were now heavy traders on the New York Stock
Exchange. They were very wealthy and were high rollers for fair.
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