Everybody knows what happened. We had a big bull movement. I knew the market was going up. General conditions were favourable. Even after stocks had gone up extensively and my paper profit was not to be sneezed at, the tape kept trumpeting: _Not yet! Not yet!_ When I arrived in Washington the tape was still saying that to me. Of course, I had no intention of increasing my line at that late day, even though I was still bullish. At the same time, the market was plainly going my way and there was no occasion for me to sit in front of a quotation board all day, in hourly expectation of getting a tip to get out. Before the clarion call to retreat came--barring an utterly unexpected catastrophe, of course--the market would hesitate or otherwise prepare me for a reversal of the speculative situation. That was the reason why I went blithely about my business with my Congressman. At the same time, prices kept going up and that meant that the end of the bull market was drawing nearer. I did not look for the end on any fixed date. That was something quite beyond my power to determine. But I needn’t tell you that I was on the watch for the tip-off. I always am, anyhow. It has become a matter of business habit with me. I cannot swear to it but I rather suspect that the day before I sold out, seeing the high prices made me think of the magnitude of my paper profit as well as of the line I was carrying and, later on, of my vain efforts to induce our legislators to deal fairly and intelligently by Wall Street. That was probably the way and the time the seed was sown within me. The subconscious mind worked on it all night. In the morning I thought of the market and began to wonder how it would act that day. When I went down to the office I saw not so much that prices were still higher and that I had a satisfying profit but that there was a great big market with a tremendous power of absorption. I could sell any amount of stock in that market; and, of course, when a man is carrying his full line of stocks, he must be on the watch for an opportunity to change his paper profit into actual cash. He should try to lose as little of the profit as possible in the swapping. Experience has taught me that a man can always find an opportunity to make his profits real and that this opportunity usually comes at the end of the move. That isn’t tape-reading or a hunch.