Naturally, promoters, manipulators and other beneficiaries of anonymous optimism will tell you that anyone who trades on rumors and unsigned statements has only himself to blame for his losses. One might as well argue that any one who is silly enough to be a drug addict is not entitled to protection. The Stock Exchange should help. It is vitally interested in protecting the public against unfair practices. If a man in position to know wishes to make the public accept his statements of fact or even his opinions, let him sign his name. Signing bullish items would not necessarily make them true. But it would make the “insiders” and “directors” more careful. The public ought always to keep in mind the elementals of stock trading. When a stock is going up no elaborate explanation is needed as to why it is going up. It takes continuous buying to make a stock keep on going up. As long as it does so, with only small and natural reactions from time to time, it is a pretty safe proposition to trail along with it. But if after a long steady rise a stock turns and gradually begins to go down, with only occasional small rallies, it is obvious that the line of least resistance has changed from upward to downward. Such being the case why should any one ask for explanations? There are probably very good reasons why it should go down, but these reasons are known only to a few people who either keep those reasons to themselves, or else actually tell the public that the stock is cheap. The nature of the game as it is played is such that the public should realise that the truth cannot be told by the few who know. Many of the so-called statements attributed to “insiders” or officials have no basis in fact. Sometimes the insiders are not even asked to make a statement, anonymous or signed. These stories are invented by somebody or other who has a large interest in the market. At a certain stage of an advance in the market-price of a security the big insiders are not averse to getting the help of the professional element to trade in that stock. But while the insider might tell the big plunger the right time to buy, you can bet he will never tell when is the time to sell. That puts the big professional in the same position as the public, only he has to have a market big enough for him to get out on. Then is when you get the most misleading “information.” Of course, there are certain insiders who cannot be trusted at any stage of the game. As a rule the men who are the head of big corporations may act in the market upon their inside knowledge, but they don’t actually tell lies. They merely say nothing, for they have discovered that there are times when silence is golden.