I got my money from all; but that ten-point jump put an end to the
pleasing pastime of skinning skinners. They were on the lookout for the
little trick that they themselves had used to defraud hundreds of poor
customers. I went back to my regular trading; but the market wasn’t
always right for my system--that is, limited as I was by the size of
the orders they would take, I couldn’t make a killing.
I had been at it over a year, during which I used every device that I
could think of to make money trading in those wire houses. I had lived
very comfortably, bought an automobile and didn’t limit myself about
my expenses. I had to make a stake, but I also had to live while I was
doing it. If my position on the market was right I couldn’t spend as
much as I made, so that I’d always be saving some. If I was wrong I
didn’t make any money and therefore couldn’t spend. As I said, I had
saved up a fair-sized roll, and there wasn’t so much money to be made
in the five wire houses; so I decided to return to New York.
I had my own automobile and I invited a friend of mine who also was a
trader to motor to New York with me. He accepted and we started. We
stopped at New Haven for dinner. At the hotel I met an old trading
acquaintance, and among other things he told me there was a shop in
town that had a wire and was doing a pretty good business.
We left the hotel on our way to New York, but I drove by the street
where the bucket shop was to see what the outside looked like. We found
it and couldn’t resist the temptation to stop and have a look at the
inside. It wasn’t very sumptuous, but the old blackboard was there, and
the customers, and the game was on.
The manager was a chap who looked as if he had been an actor or a stump
speaker. He was very impressive. He’d say good morning as though he
had discovered the morning’s goodness after ten years of searching for
it with a microscope and was making you a present of the discovery as
well as of the sky, the sun and the firm’s bank roll. He saw us come
up in the sporty-looking automobile, and as both of us were young and
careless--I don’t suppose I looked twenty--he naturally concluded we
were a couple of Yale boys. I didn’t tell him we weren’t. He didn’t
give me a chance, but began delivering a speech. He was very glad to
see us. Would we have a comfortable seat? The market, we would find,
was philanthropically inclined that morning; in fact, clamoring to
increase the supply of collegiate pocket money, of which no intelligent
undergraduate ever had a sufficiency since the dawn of historic time.
But here and now, by the beneficence of the ticker, a small initial
investment would return thousands. More pocket money than anybody could
spend was what the stock market yearned to yield.
Well, I thought it would be a pity not to do as the nice man of the
bucket shop was so anxious to have us do, so I told him I would do as
he wished, because I had heard that lots of people made lots of money
in the stock market.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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