By this time the general market had grown quite weak. As I told you,
it was the conviction that we were in a bear market that started me
selling TT short in the fishing-camp in Florida. I was short of quite a
few other stocks but TT was my pet. Finally, general conditions proved
too much for the inside clique to defy and TT hit the toboggan slide.
It went below 120 for the first time in years; then below 110; below
par; and still I did not cover. One day when the entire market was
extremely weak Tropical Trading broke 90 and on the demoralisation I
covered. Same old reason! I had the opportunity--the big market and the
weakness and the excess of sellers over buyers. I may tell you, even
at the risk of appearing to be monotonously bragging of my cleverness,
that I took in my 30,000 shares of TT at practically the lowest prices
of the movement. But I wasn’t thinking of covering at the bottom. I was
intent on turning my paper profits into cash without losing much of the
profit in the changing.
I stood pat throughout because I knew my position was sound. I wasn’t
bucking the trend of the market or going against basic conditions but
the reverse, and that was what made me so sure of the failure of an
over-confident inside clique. What they tried to do others had tried
before and it had always failed. The frequent rallies, even when I knew
as well as anybody that they were due, could not frighten me. I knew
I’d do much better in the end by staying pat than by trying to cover to
put out a new short line at a higher price. By sticking to the position
that I felt was right I made over a million dollars. I was not indebted
to hunches or to skillful tape reading or to stubborn courage. It was a
dividend declared by my faith in my judgment and not by my cleverness
or by my vanity. Knowledge is power and power need not fear lies--not
even when the tape prints them. The retraction follows pretty quickly.
A year later, TT was jacked up again to 150 and hung around there for
a couple of weeks. The entire market was entitled to a good reaction
for it had risen uninterruptedly and it did not bull any longer. I
know because I tested it. Now, the group to which TT belonged had been
suffering from very poor business and I couldn’t see anything to bull
those stocks on anyhow, even if the rest of the market were due for a
rise, which it wasn’t. So I began to sell Tropical Trading. I intended
to put out 10,000 shares in all. The price broke on my selling. I
couldn’t see that there was any support whatever. Then suddenly, the
character of the buying changed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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