And with my eyes wide open, to boot! And it wasn’t the only period of my life when I did it, either. A stock operator has to fight a lot of expensive enemies within himself. Anyhow, I came to New York with twenty-five hundred dollars. There were no bucket shops here that a fellow could trust. The Stock Exchange and the police between them had succeeded in closing them up pretty tight. Besides, I wanted to find a place where the only limit to my trading would be the size of my stake. I didn’t have much of one, but I didn’t expect it to stay little forever. The main thing at the start was to find a place where I wouldn’t have to worry about getting a square deal. So I went to a New York Stock Exchange house that had a branch at home where I knew some of the clerks. They have long since gone out of business. I wasn’t there long, didn’t like one of the partners, and then I went to A. R. Fullerton & Co. Somebody must have told them about my early experiences, because it was not long before they all got to calling me the Boy Trader. I’ve always looked young. It was a handicap in some ways but it compelled me to fight for my own because so many tried to take advantage of my youth. The chaps at the bucket shops seeing what a kid I was, always thought I was a fool for luck and that was the only reason why I beat them so often. Well, it wasn’t six months before I was broke. I was a pretty active trader and had a sort of reputation as a winner. I guess my commissions amounted to something. I ran up my account quite a little, but, of course, in the end I lost. I played carefully; but I had to lose. I’ll tell you the reason: it was my remarkable success in the bucket shops! I could beat the game my way only in a bucket shop, where I was betting on fluctuations. My tape reading had to do with that exclusively. When I bought the price was there on the quotation board, right in front of me. Even before I bought I knew exactly the price I’d have to pay for my stock. And I always could sell on the instant. I could scalp successfully, because I could move like lightning. [I could follow up my luck or cut my loss in a second.] Sometimes, for instance, I was certain a stock would move at least a point. Well, I didn’t have to hog it, I could put up a point margin and double my money in a jiffy; or I’d take half a point. On one or two hundred shares a day, that wouldn’t be bad at the end of the month, what? The practical trouble with that arrangement, of course, was that even if the bucket shop had the resources to stand a big steady loss, they wouldn’t do it. They wouldn’t have a customer around the place who had the bad taste to win all the time.