The behaviour of Tropical Trading was the outstanding feature of the market, according to the newspapers I got that morning. It served to crystallise my general bearishness because I thought it particularly asinine for the insiders to run up the price of TT in the face of the heaviness of the general list. There are times when the milking process must be suspended. What is abnormal is seldom a desirable factor in a trader’s calculations and it looked to me as if the marking up of that stock were a capital blunder. Nobody can make blunders of that magnitude with impunity; not in the stock market. After I got through reading the newspapers I went back to my fishing but I kept thinking of what the insiders in Tropical Trading were trying to do. That they were bound to fail was as certain as that a man is bound to smash himself if he jumps from the roof of a twenty-story building without a parachute. I couldn’t think of anything else and finally I gave up trying to fish and sent off a telegram to my brokers to sell 2000 shares of TT at the market. After that I was able to go back to my fishing. I did pretty well. That afternoon I received the reply to my telegram by special courier. My brokers reported that they had sold the 2000 shares of Tropical Trading at 153. So far so good. I was selling short on a declining market, which was as it should be. But I could not fish any more. I was too far away from a quotation board. I discovered this after I began to think of all the reasons why Tropical Trading should go down with the rest of the market instead of going up on inside manipulation. I therefore left my fishing camp and returned to Palm Beach; or, rather, to the direct wire to New York. The moment I got to Palm Beach and saw what the misguided insiders were still trying to do, I let them have a second lot of 2000 TT. Back came the report and I sold another 2000 shares. The market behaved excellently. That is, it declined on my selling. Everything being satisfactory I went out and had a chair ride. But I wasn’t happy. The more I thought the unhappier it made me to think that I hadn’t sold more. So back I went to the broker’s office and sold another 2000 shares. I was happy only when I was selling that stock. Presently I was short 10,000 shares. Then I decided to return to New York. I had business to do now. My fishing I would do some other time. When I arrived in New York I made it a point to get a line on the company’s business, actual and prospective. What I learned strengthened my conviction that the insiders had been worse than reckless in jacking up the price at a time when such an advance was not justified either by the tone of the general market or by the company’s earnings.