The Scheftels company published advertisements calling upon margin
traders to demand delivery of their certificates. This expedient proved
of small utility. The brokers continued to hold off deliveries to
customers and sold and delivered to us all the stocks that they could
borrow or lay hands on. The continued selling finally made inroads on
the Scheftels corporation's cash-reserve to a point that forced it one
day to stand aside and leave the market to the sharpshooters. That day,
in a few hours, approximately half a million shares of Rawhide
Coalition changed hands out of a capitalization of 3,000,000 shares.
The corporation's loans were called. This forced it to throw large
blocks of stock on the market. A sharp break ensued. That was just what
was wanted by the interests which were gunning for us. They covered
their short sales at great profit.
In the midst of the mêlée the Scheftels company tendered a Stock
Exchange house of great prominence, which had loaned it for the account
of a Salt Lake firm of brokers $12,500 on 50,000 shares of Rawhide
Coalition, the money to take up the loan. A representative of the Stock
Exchange house sheepishly stated that his firm had loaned part of the
pledged stock to out-of-town brokers. He asked for time. Under threat
of dire consequences the Stock Exchange firm bought stock back from us
in the open market that afternoon to supply the deficiency, and then
made delivery of this stock back to us in lieu of that which they had
parted with. It had been specifically stipulated by the Scheftels
company when the loan was made that the certificates must be held
intact and that the stock must not be loaned out or sold while the
money loan was in force.
This experience was repeated frequently during the Scheftels career on
the Curb. It cost B. H. Scheftels & Company more than one million
dollars, during the nineteen months of its existence, in giving loyal
market support, in times of "professional" attack, to the stocks it had
fathered or promoted and felt moral responsibility for.
Time and again the Scheftels company found among stocks delivered to
it, against purchases made in the open market, the identical
certificates it had pledged with loan-brokers as collateral for loans,
and which had been hypothecated by it with the specific proviso that
the certificates were not to be used. It opened our eyes to one of the
most commonplace practices, not only on the Curb, but also on the Stock
Exchange. Hardly a failure occurs on any of the Exchanges or on the
Curb that does not reveal customers' certificates, which were
originally pledged with the understanding that they were not to be
"used," in the strong-boxes of others.
The first grievous offense of the publicity forces of the Scheftels
corporation against Wall Street's "Oh-let-us-alone" promotion combine
was a wallop in April and May, 1909, through the Scheftels market
literature, at Nevada-Utah.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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