“I don’t know,” I told him. I spoke gospel truth.
“Oh, come across, Larry,” he said.
He knew it was my habit to know why I traded. I had sold a thousand shares of Union Pacific. I must have a very good reason to sell that much stock in the face of the strong market.
“I don’t know,” I repeated. “I just feel that something is going to happen.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know. I can’t give you any reason. All I know is that I want to sell that stock. And I’m going to let ’em have another thousand.”
I walked back into the office and gave an order to sell a second thousand. If I was right in selling the first thousand I ought to have out a little more.
“What could possibly happen?” persisted my friend, who couldn’t make up his mind to follow my lead. If I’d told him that I had heard UP. was going down he’d have sold it without asking me from whom I’d heard it or why. “What could possibly happen?” he asked again.
“A million things could happen. But I can’t promise you that any of them will. I can’t give you any reasons and I can’t tell fortunes,” I told him.
“Then you’re crazy,” he said. “Stark crazy, selling that stock without rime or reason. You don’t know why you want to sell it?”