When I had absorbed all the stock that was for sale at 70 and a little
higher I relieved the market of that pressure, and naturally that made
clear for trading purposes the line of least resistance in Imperial
Steel. It was manifestly upward. The moment that fact was perceived
by the observant traders on the floor they logically assumed that
the stock was in for an advance the extent of which they could not
know; but they knew enough to begin buying. Their demand for Imperial
Steel, created exclusively by the obviousness of the stock’s rising
tendency--the tape’s infallible bull tip!--I promptly filled. I sold to
the traders the stock that I had bought from the tired-out holders at
the beginning. Of course this selling was judiciously done; I contented
myself with supplying the demand. I was not forcing my stock on the
market and I did not want too rapid an advance. It wouldn’t have been
good business to sell out the half of my one hundred thousand shares at
that stage of the proceedings. My job was to make a market on which I
might sell my entire line.
But even though I sold only as much as the traders were anxious to buy,
the market was temporarily deprived of my own buying power, which I had
hitherto exerted steadily. In due course the traders’ purchases ceased
and the price stopped rising. As soon as that happened there began the
selling by disappointed bulls or by those traders whose reasons for
buying disappeared the instant the rising tendency was checked. But I
was ready for this selling, and on the way down I bought back the stock
I had sold to the traders a couple of points higher. This buying of
stock I knew was bound to be sold in turn checked the downward course;
and when the price stopped going down the selling orders stopped coming
in.
I then began all over again. I took all the stock that was for sale on
the way up--it wasn’t very much--and the price began to rise a second
time; from a higher starting point than 70. _Don’t_ forget that on the
way down there are many holders who wish to heaven they had sold theirs
but won’t do it three or four points from the top. Such speculators
always vow they will surely sell out if there is a rally. They put in
their orders to sell on the way up, and then they change their minds
with the change in the stock’s price-trend. Of course there is always
profit taking from safe-playing quick runners to whom a profit is
always a profit to be taken.
All I had to do after that was to repeat the process; alternately
buying and selling; but always working higher.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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