“What’s the matter?”
“I wouldn’t send it,” advised Hood earnestly.
“Why not?” snapped Bert.
“It will make him sore as the dickens.”
“That’s what we want, isn’t it?” said Bert, looking at Hood in surprise.
But Hood shook his head disapprovingly and said in all seriousness, “We’ll never get another tip from him if you send that telegram!”
A professional trader actually said that. Now what’s the use of talking about sucker tip-takers? Men do not take tips because they are bally asses but because they like those hope cocktails I spoke of. Old Baron Rothschild’s recipe for wealth winning applies with greater force than ever to speculation. Somebody asked him if making money in the Bourse was not a very difficult matter, and he replied that, on the contrary, he thought it was very easy.
“That is because you are so rich,” objected the interviewer.
“Not at all. I have found an easy way and I stick to it. I simply cannot help making money. I will tell you my secret if you wish. It is this: I never buy at the bottom and I always sell too soon.”
Investors are a different breed of cats. Most of them go in strong for inventories and statistics of earnings and all sorts of mathematical data, as though that meant facts and certainties. The human factor is minimised as a rule. Very few people like to buy into a one-man business. But the wisest investor I ever knew was a man who began by being a Pennsylvania Dutchman and followed it up by coming to Wall Street and seeing a great deal of Russell Sage.