I am well aware that all these generalities do not sound especially impressive. Generalities seldom do. Possibly I may succeed better if I give a concrete example. I’ll tell you how I marked up the price of a stock 30 points, and in so doing accumulated only seven thousand shares and developed a market that would absorb almost any amount of stock. It was Imperial Steel. The stock had been brought out by reputable people and it had been fairly well tipped as a property of value. About 30 per cent of the capital stock was placed with the general public through various Wall Street houses, but there had been no significant activity in the shares after they were listed. From time to time somebody would ask about it and one or another insider--members of the original underwriting syndicate--would say that the company’s earnings were better than expected and the prospects more than encouraging. This was true enough and very good as far as it went, but not exactly thrilling. The speculative appeal was absent, and from the investor’s point of view the price stability and dividend permanency of the stock were not yet demonstrated. It was a stock that never behaved sensationally. It was so gentlemanly that no corroborative rise ever followed the insiders’ eminently truthful reports. On the other hand, neither did the price decline. Imperial Steel remained unhonoured and unsung and untipped, content to be one of those stocks that don’t go down because nobody sells and that nobody sells because nobody likes to go short of a stock that is not well distributed; the seller is too much at the mercy of the loaded-up inside clique. Similarly, there is no inducement to buy such a stock. To the investor Imperial Steel therefore remained a speculation. To the speculator it was a dead one--the kind that makes an investor of you against your will by the simple expedient of falling into a trance the moment you go long of it. The chap who is compelled to lug a corpse a year or two always loses more than the original cost of the deceased; he is sure to find himself tied up with it when some really good things come his way. One day the foremost member of the Imperial Steel syndicate, acting for himself and associates, came to see me. They wished to create a market for the stock, of which they controlled the undistributed 70 per cent. They wanted me to dispose of their holdings at better prices than they thought they would obtain if they tried to sell in the open market. They wanted to know on what terms I would undertake the job. I told him that I would let him know in a few days. Then I looked into the property. I had experts go over the various departments of the company--industrial, commercial and financial. They made reports to me which were unbiased. I wasn’t looking for the good or the bad points, but for the facts, such as they were.