A NEW KNIGHT-ERRANT IN SPECULATION
Another incident occurs to me, which is so typical of those who become infected with the stock market microbe that it seems worth relating. A few years ago a young friend appealed to me for advice as to the best method of investing about $10,000 surplus which he had taken out of his business the previous year with a view to placing it out at interest. I recommended several preferred industrial and railroad securities which seemed reasonably safe as a business man’s investment, and suggested that he put about twenty per cent. of the amount in each of five different stocks. He knew nothing about buying securities, so I introduced him to a reputable firm of bankers and brokers, and in addition to warning him to buy no more than he could pay for in full, I cautioned the head of the firm not to encourage, or even to permit, him to speculate on margin. He bought twenty shares each of five investment stocks, and a few weeks later he informed me, quite excitedly, that already his purchases showed a profit of more than six hundred dollars; also that inasmuch as the market was “going higher” he thought he ought to double his holdings. The mistake I had made in advising him to buy stocks, instead of non-speculative bonds, was now plainly evident; but I could do no more than caution him to stick to his own business and leave the stock market to others. He insisted that he could see no harm in buying a few more shares and margining them fifty points or more with the stocks he then owned; that it would not distract him in the least from his business, nor would it subject him to any risk or anxiety. My counter argument that stocks, having already advanced to a high average level, were as likely to decline as they were to advance further, was totally unconvincing. My young friend had caught the speculative infection; which, like typhoid fever and smallpox, must run its course. It can be treated, and sometimes mitigated, but not cured; in some cases not even by bankruptcy.
About four months later, on returning home after a few weeks’ absence, I received a telephone call from the head of the brokerage firm, informing me that the young man had sold out all his investment securities, and was in a raging fever of speculation; that he was buying and selling all sorts of highly speculative stocks in lots of from a hundred to five hundred shares, and that he spent two or three hours a day watching the ticker. He paid no heed to repeated warnings, and threatened to take his account to some other office if his orders were not executed as given. “What am I to do?” the broker asked in despair. “This young daredevil will probably be in bankruptcy in less than six months.”
On the losing side there are at least three distinct classes to be found at all times in stock market circles: one class who know nothing about the market, except what they read or hear; they are guided by floating rumors, the advice of well-meaning friends, and the spumous counsel of market tipsters. There is another class who arbitrarily suppose they have learned everything there is to know about the market; they possess a large store of cynicism and skepticism, and their market maneuvers are guided by a monumental self-sufficiency that would be a valuable asset in trading but for the fact that it is worthless. There is a third class who, although they really know the practices, theories, precedents and possibilities of the game, are not temperamentally qualified to utilize this knowledge in their transactions.
Of course every banking and brokerage firm has a few customers who go into the market and buy stocks and bonds during seasons of depression and afterwards pay no attention to the daily or weekly fluctuations until prices reach a stage where it seems advisable to sell out; then they dispose of their holdings and leave the market to the traders until bargain day comes round again. But the foregoing examples symbolize the mental attitude and customary procedure of an overwhelming majority of the trading public. This being true, one may draw from them some idea of how important a part psychology plays in the destinies of those who speculate. It would be erroneous to suppose that the characters who play these rôles are shallow-brained dolts because their actions (judged by results) appear nonsensical to the rational and composed mind. On the contrary, the speculative element represents for the most part men of uncommon shrewdness and foresight; men of studious and analytical minds; men who are, or have been, masters of every situation in their own professions or commercial vocations, even though most of them act like children when they get tangled up in the meshes of stock speculation.
Nor should it be imagined that the stock market is primarily a guessing game, or a game of chance; or even an unbeatable game; or that it is run by a gang of swindlers or mountebanks. Gamesters and swindlers may play at it, but the game itself is as straight and legitimate as any business pursuit. As a matter of fact it is one of the fairest and most open games ever played; a game in which every participant, man or woman, rich or poor, old or young, has an equal chance. The fact that most people resort to mere guessing and gambling in their stock transactions does not make it necessary to qualify this statement; neither is the truth of the assertion altered by the fact that certain individuals and organized cliques of traders manipulate stocks, both up and down, with utter disregard of basic values, and in this way set cleverly baited traps for other traders who imagine themselves wise enough to pluck the bait and get away without springing the trap. A trader or investor in stocks is not obliged to participate in these machinations, any more than one who goes to a circus is obliged to bet on the shell games and other tricky money-making devices that are sometimes run in conjunction with traveling menageries, but are no part of the main performance.
A person who buys a piece of improved real estate for less than half of its actual worth is reasonably sure he has a bargain; but if he afterwards sells it at a fair price, and later buys it back again at a much higher figure, he is gambling that for some reason or other it is going to be worth more, either actually or fictitiously. Nor is it ever unsafe to buy good stocks at figures away below their intrinsic worth. The element of gambling does not enter the undertaking until the market price has risen above the investment value; then if the owner refuses to sell, or buys more (as the speculator usually does) he is gambling on the uncertain event that some individual or clique is going to pay him more than the stock is worth. When one buys a stock, either for investment or speculation, its value cannot be permanently affected by the action of other traders, and no individual or group of individuals can euchre an investor out of his stock except by his own free will. The man with a hundred dollars has the same relative chance for making money as the man with a million; but the difficulty is that the one with the smaller amount is ambitious to make equally as much as the one with the million; therefore he resorts to gambling on thin margins; and not being content with ordinary risks he plays a long chance shot. If he wins, instead of withdrawing the original capital, with perhaps a little more, he usually stakes the whole amount on every venture until it is lost.
Viewing the stock market calmly in the perspective, it is not a question whether stocks will rise or fall; of that there is not the slightest doubt. They rise and decline with the same certainty that the sun rises and sets, though of course with less regularity. The only question is, how far they will go in either direction.
The action of the stock market much resembles that of a troubled sea, which is always uneasy, rolling and tumbling about as if undermined by some volcanic force. The prices of stocks are periodically rising and falling, and one might as well undertake to fight the ocean tide as to contest the course of the stock market when once in full swing in either direction; for the market, unlike the tide, has no prescribed boundaries. There are times—indeed most of the time—when it is much wiser to sit by in the capacity of an interested observer, than to plunge in and become a struggling participant, with the chance of being carried out beyond one’s depth. Theoretically, there seems to be no reason why the stock market should not move along at a fairly even pace, except in case of some unexpected crisis; but practically, it is either abnormally high or unreasonably low most of the time. Stocks, like food, clothing and all human necessities, are more or less subject to the laws of supply and demand; and when the traders and investors throughout the country become convinced that it is time to buy stocks, a bull market is sure to ensue; then when everybody has acquired all they want—and some of them more—and they make up their minds to sell, it is only natural that values should recede; which they do, usually to somewhere near the low point from where they began to rise. This process of sliding up and down the scale is repeated year after year, and age after age.
No one has ever been able satisfactorily to explain why the prices of all stocks, both good and poor, and even gilt edge bonds, keep an almost even pace in the backward and forward swings, but they do; and thousands of people who have placed their savings in securities that are as sound and safe as a savings bank have viewed with alarm the crumbling market values of their investments, wondering what has happened to their particular stocks or bonds, and if the slumping prices foreshadow a reduction in dividends, or if interest will be defaulted on coupons. Investors who own bonds or good dividend paying stocks need not be troubled over these capricious changes; but others of a more venturesome or speculative bent are forever wondering when they ought to get in or out. Of this latter class it is the best guessers who win.
SOME SIGNS ARE COMPREHENDIBLE; OTHERS
ARE HARD TO INTERPRET
It has been wisely observed by one who is more famous for the wisdom of his writings than for the amount of money he has made in speculation, that when a market reaches the top there is no visible sign to indicate it; that on the contrary, at this critical point, everything seems to indicate much higher prices. Also the majority of traders, tipsters, financial editors, and even the brokers themselves, are apt to be most bearishly disposed when the market is at its lowest point. This same authority declares that when the “cats and dogs,” that is, the poorest and most neglected stocks in the list, begin to advance it is time for holders of securities to cash in their profits. It might be further observed that when plums get ripe and the melon season is on, it is a sure indication that summer is well advanced; likewise when, after a long season of bullish anticipation, the stock market “plums” are being distributed, and the “melon-cutting” process is in full swing—when the favorite “mystery” stocks have disgorged their “hidden assets,” and begin to sell ex-rights, ex-dividend, ex-merger and ex-mystery, it is a pretty sure sign that the “bulls” are running short of provender, and that the “bears” are about due for their inning. A man who accumulates large paper profits in speculation and fails to “cash in” until a large part, or all, of his gains have been dissipated in the process of deflation which inevitably follows every boom, is comparable to one who plants a field of grain and refuses to harvest it at maturity, hoping that the ripened kernels will get a little larger. Many a speculator has been brought to grief by an insatiate greed for that coveted topmost point, instead of being content to sell at a good profit and leave the possibility of a small gain to the individual who buys his stock.
Chorus of the bears:—
When the plums are gone and the bulls go hence,
We’ll sharpen our claws and jump the fence.
NONE ARE SO BLIND AS THOSE WHO REFUSE TO
SEE—NONE SO FOOLISH AS THOSE WHO
SCOFF AT WISE COUNSEL
While there are various danger signals which indicate the culmination of a bull market, just as there are others which mark the final stages of a bear market, it must not be supposed that these signals stand out like so many red lights placed in front of a ditch at the roadside; on the contrary they are of the most deceptive and decoying nature to all except experienced and dispassionate observers. And even the best judges are frequently deceived. On this point one of the most reliable financial writers in the country says: “Not all of the economic indicia ever turn together at any peak or bottom in the securities markets. Always the case is that some of the indicia disclose the change, while others do not. The public usually keeps on expecting a bull movement to continue, no matter how unreasonably high stocks may sell. This persistence of bullish sentiment greatly facilitates distribution by wealthy holders.” This timely note of warning was written early in January of the present year, when a great bull market after running about two years was at the boiling-over point; but very few bullish traders ever pay any attention to such counsel; nor would they if the danger signals stood out like beacon lights along a treacherous shore. A few days later the following bit of good advice was issued by a Boston broker:
“For fifteen months this country has enjoyed clear skies, politically, economically and financially. Washington Irving begins his essay on the Mississippi Bubble with the phrase, ‘There was not a cloud on the horizon,’ and then goes on to state that the prudent mariner takes cognizance of such ideal conditions and prepares for the inevitable change. Today, after fifteen months of national sunshine and cloudless skies in all directions, we believe it behooves a man of affairs to take counsel with himself relative to his investment and speculative position. Many business men who should have learned better by past experience, still take the business situation as a guide to their stock market operations in spite of the fact that all stock exchange history shows that the market turns up long before a period of business depression has run its course and likewise turns down six months or more before prosperity comes to a pause.”
Speculators can usually find an abundance of literary food suited to their particular tastes, as witness the following, issued by a prominent market forecaster simultaneously with the above: “We wish you to keep in mind that the biggest speculation yet witnessed in the present bull market is still to come. Now that the reactionary trend in the market has been definitely halted, you can look with assurance for higher prices in many issues in the near future. Continue to pick up our favorites as outlined in our letters, as we expect them to prove features.” Most of the “favorites” were then selling at figures far above their intrinsic worth, and many of them have since fulfilled the prediction that they would “prove features,” for soon afterwards they declined anywhere from ten to fifty points.
The active participants in a market that has run a long course in either direction are wont to become so intoxicated with affluence, or downcast with adversity—depending on which side they have been operating—that they give little heed to the matter of interpreting signs which forecast future events, particularly if these signs controvert their own opinions. A man driving an automobile at a sixty-mile-an-hour pace does not stop to read signs by the roadway; and no more does a trader bother with warnings when a prolonged series of stock market victories has blurred his vision to everything but prosperity. As every unfamiliar noise or object tends to aggravate fear in those who are frightened in the dark, so every concurrent happening stimulates courage and recklessness in those who become emboldened by stock market success. Paradoxical though it may seem, many things which are construed bearishly in a falling market are regarded as bullish in a rising market; and signs which portend higher prices in the mind of a bull are equally significant of lower prices to the mind of a bear. In other words, both bulls and bears often derive their opposing opinions from the same identical hypothesis. These strange anomalies are not mere theories, they are attested stock market facts.
For example, in a bear market some years ago the stock of the Amalgamated Copper Company was depressed several points in one day on the report that the dividend was to be reduced. Next day the report was denied and upon supposedly good authority it was stated that the regular dividend had been earned and would be declared. Whereupon the traders—who were mostly bearish—argued that a declaration of the regular dividend would be a bear argument, because it ought to be reduced and if the usual amount were declared it would be only for the purpose of furnishing artificial market support to the stock; consequently it was again depressed a dozen points or more. Later when the trend of prices had turned upward this stock advanced sharply on the report that the dividend was to be increased. Although the report met with prompt denial, the stock was nevertheless bid up several points more on the theory that if the dividend were not increased it at least ought to be, and if only the regular declaration were made, that would be evidence of a commendable policy of conservatism.
EVEN THE STOCK MARKET HAS ITS
FARCICAL SIDE
Some of the stock market philosophies and inventions are quite amusing to the unsophisticated onlooker. When the Amalgamated Copper Company and the Anaconda Copper Company were under separate management a clique of traders became interested in advancing the market price of the latter stock, and forthwith the tipsters and rumor-mongers circulated a report that Amalgamated was buying Anaconda for control. This device proved a profitable asset for the pool members, who were thereby enabled to sell out their holdings at much higher prices. When this was accomplished and the story had become threadbare, another ingenious story was circulated, to the effect that the Anaconda Company was now seeking control of Amalgamated, whereupon that stock in its turn became the favorite of traders, who succeeded in lifting the price high enough to let the pool unload its holdings at a handsome profit. While these two monster companies were performing the act of trying to swallow each other the traders greatly enjoyed the comedy, in consideration of which they contributed generously toward swelling the purses of the promoters. The final outcome was that the great Anaconda succeeded in devouring its competitor, which appears still to be in process of digestion—or rather indigestion,—judging from the internal agonies expressed in the market action of the stock.
