If you already have a position in the market, do not attempt to bolster up your failing faith by resorting to intellectual subtleties in the interpretation of obvious facts. If you are long or short of the market, you are not an unprejudiced judge, and you will be greatly tempted to put such an interpretation upon current events as will coincide with your preconceived opinion. It is hardly too much to say that this is the greatest obstacle to success. The least you can do is to avoid inverted reasoning in support of your own position. After a prolonged advance, do not call inverted reasoning to your aid in order to prove that prices are going still higher; likewise after a big break do not let your bearish deductions become too complicated. Be suspicious of bull news at high prices, and of bear news at low prices. Bear in mind that an item of news usually causes but _one_ considerable movement of prices. If the movement takes place before the news comes out, as a result of rumors and expectations, then it is not likely to be repeated after the announcement is made; but if the movement of prices has not preceded, then the news contributes to the general strength or weakness of the situation and a movement of prices may follow. III—“They” If a man entirely unfamiliar with the stock market should spend several days around the Exchange listening to the conversation of all sorts of traders and investors, in order to pick up information about the causes of price movements, the probability is that the most pressing question in his mind at the end of that time would be “Who are ‘They?’” Everywhere he went he would hear about Them. In the customers’ rooms of the fractional lot houses he would find young men trading in ten shares and arguing learnedly as to what They were to do next. Tape readers—experts and tyros alike—would tell him that They were accumulating Steel, or distributing Reading. Floor traders and members of the Exchange would whisper that they were told They were going to put the market up, or down, as the case might be. Even sedate investors might inform him that, although the situation was bearish, undoubtedly They would have to put the market temporarily higher in order to unload Their stocks. This “They” theory of the market is quite as prevalent among successful traders as among beginners—probably more so. There may be room for argument as to why this is so, but as to the fact itself there is no doubt. Whether They are a myth or a definite reality, many persons are making money by studying the market from this point of view.