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Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
an extra dividend. They had run up the price of the stock and the entire market had come
back quite strong. Of course that changed everything for me in Aix. The news simply
meant that the bull cliques were still fighting desperately against conditions against
common sense and against common honesty, for they knew what was coming and were
resorting to such schemes to put up the market in order to unload stocks before the storm
struck them. It is possible they really did not believe the danger was as serious or as
close at hand as I thought. The big men of the Street are as prone to be wishful thinkers
as the politicians or the plain suckers. I myself can't work that way. In a speculator such
an attitude is fatal. Perhaps a manufacturer of securities or a promoter of new enterprises
can afford to indulge in hope-jags.
At all events, I knew that all bull manipulation was foredoomed to failure in that bear
market. The instant I read the dispatch I knew there was only one thing to do to be
comfortable, and that was to sell Smelters short. Why, the insiders as much as begged
me on their knees to do it, when they increased the dividend rate on the verge of a
money panic. It was as infuriating as the old "dares" of your boyhood. They dared me to
sell that particular stock short.
I cabled some selling orders in Smelters and advised my friends in New York to go short
of it. When I got my report from the brokers I saw the price they got was six points
below the quotations I had seen in the Paris Herald. It shows you what the situation was.
My plans had been to return to Paris at the end of the month and about three weeks later
sail for New York, but as soon as I received the cabled reports from my brokers I went
back to Paris. The same day I arrived I called at the steamship offices and found there
was a fast boat leaving for New York the next day. I took it.
There I was, back in New York, almost a month ahead of my original plans, because it
was the most comfortable place to be short of the market in. I had well over half a
million in cash available for margins. My return was not due to my being bearish but to
my being logical.
I sold more stocks. As money got tighter call-money rates went higher and prices of
stocks lower. I had foreseen it. At first, my foresight broke me. But now I was right and
prospering. However, the real joy was in the consciousness that as a trader I was at last
on the right track. I still had much to learn but I knew what to do. No more floundering,
no more half-right methods. Tape reading was an important part of the game; so was
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