XIII
There I was, once more broke, which was bad, and dead wrong in my trading, which was a sight worse. I was sick, nervous, upset and unable to reason calmly. That is, I was in the frame of mind in which no speculator should be when he is trading. Everything went wrong with me. Indeed, I began to think that I could not recover my departed sense of proportion. Having grown accustomed to swinging a big line—say, more than a hundred thousand shares of stock—I feared I would not show good judgment trading in a small way. It scarcely seemed worthwhile being right when all you carried was a hundred shares of stock. After the habit of taking a big profit on a big line I wasn’t sure I would know when to take my profit on a small line. I can’t describe to you how weaponless I felt.
Broke again and incapable of assuming the offensive vigorously. In debt and wrong! After all those long years of successes, tempered by mistakes that really served to pave the way for greater successes, I was now worse off than when I began in the bucket shops. I had learned a great deal about the game of stock speculation, but I had not learned quite so much about the play of human weaknesses. There is no mind so machinelike that you can depend upon it to function with equal efficiency at all times. I now learned that I could not trust myself to remain equally unaffected by men and misfortunes at all times.
Money losses have never worried me in the slightest. But other troubles could and did. I studied my disaster in detail and of course found no difficulty in seeing just where I had been silly. I spotted the exact time and place. A man must know himself thoroughly if he is going to make a good job out of trading in the speculative markets. To know what I was capable of in the line of folly was a long educational step. I sometimes think that no price is too high for a speculator to pay to learn that which will keep him from getting the swelled head. A great many smashes by brilliant men can be traced directly to the swelled head—an expensive disease everywhere to everybody, but particularly in Wall Street to a speculator.
I was not happy in New York, feeling the way I did. I didn’t want to trade, because I wasn’t in good trading trim. I decided to go away and seek a stake elsewhere. The change of scene could help me to find myself again, I thought. So once more I left New York, beaten by the game of speculation. I was worse than broke, since I owed over one hundred thousand dollars spread among various brokers.
I went to Chicago and there found a stake. It was not a very substantial stake, but that merely meant that I would need a little more time to win back my fortune. A house that I once had done business with had faith in my ability as a trader and they were willing to prove it by allowing me to trade in their office in a small way.
I began very conservatively. I don’t know how I might have fared had I stayed there. But one of the most remarkable experiences in my career cut short my stay in Chicago. It is an almost incredible story.
One day I got a telegram from Lucius Tucker. I had known him when he was the office manager of a Stock Exchange firm that I had at times given some business to, but I had lost track of him. The telegram read:
Come to New York at once.
L. Tucker.