As the market broadens I of course sell stock on the way up, but
never enough to check the rise. This is in strict accordance with
my stabilising plans. It is obvious that the more stock I sell on a
reasonable and orderly advance the more I encourage the conservative
speculators, who are more numerous than the reckless room traders;
and in addition the more support I shall be able to give to the stock
on the inevitable weak days. By always being short I always am in a
position to support the stock without danger to myself. As a rule I
begin my selling at a price that will show me a profit. But I often
sell without having a profit, simply to create or to increase what I
may call my riskless buying power. My business is not alone to put up
the price or to sell a big block of stock for a client but to make
money for myself. That is why I do not ask my clients to finance my
operations. My fee is contingent upon my success.
Of course what I have described is not my invariable practice. I
neither have nor adhere to an inflexible system. I modify my terms and
conditions according to circumstances.
A stock which it is desired to distribute should be manipulated to the
highest possible point and then sold. I repeat this both because it is
fundamental and because the public apparently believes that the selling
is all done at the top. Sometimes a stock gets waterlogged, as it
were; it doesn’t go up. That is the time to sell. The price naturally
will go down on your selling rather further than you wish, but you can
generally nurse it back. As long as a stock that I am manipulating
goes up on my buying I know I am hunky, and if need be I buy it with
confidence and use my own money without fear--precisely as I would any
other stock that acts the same way. It is the line of least resistance.
You remember my trading theories about that line, don’t you? Well,
when the price line of least resistance is established I follow it,
not because I am manipulating that particular stock at that particular
moment but because I am a stock operator at all times.
When my buying does not put the stock up I stop buying and then proceed
to sell it down; and that also is exactly what I would do with that
same stock if I did not happen to be manipulating it. The principal
marketing of the stock, as you know, is done on the way down. _It is
perfectly astonishing how much stock a man can get rid of on a decline._
I repeat that at no time during the manipulation do I forget to be a
stock trader. My problems as a manipulator, after all, are the same
that confront me as an operator. All manipulation comes to an end when
the manipulator cannot make a stock do what he wants it to do. _When
the stock you are manipulating doesn’t act as it should, quit. Don’t
argue with the tape. Do not seek to lure the profit back. Quit while
the quitting is good--and cheap._
_XXI_
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