“I don’t know,” I repeated. “I just feel that something is going to happen.” “What’s going to happen?” “I don’t know. I can’t give you any reason. All I know is that I want to sell that stock. And I’m going to let ’em have another thousand.” I walked back into the office and gave an order to sell a second thousand. If I was right in selling the first thousand I ought to have out a little more. “What could possibly happen?” persisted my friend, who couldn’t make up his mind to follow my lead. If I’d told him that I had heard UP. was going down he’d have sold it without asking me from whom I’d heard it or why. “What could possibly happen?” he asked again. “A million things could happen. But I can’t promise you that any of them will. I can’t give you any reasons and I can’t tell fortunes,” I told him. “Then you’re crazy,” he said. “Stark crazy, selling that stock without rime or reason. You don’t know why you want to sell it?” “I don’t know why I want to sell it. I only know I do want to,” I said. “I want to, like everything.” The urge was so strong that I sold another thousand. That was too much for my friend. He grabbed me by the arm and said, “Here! Let’s get out of this place before you sell the entire capital stock.” I had sold as much as I needed to satisfy my feeling, so I followed him without waiting for a report on the last two thousand shares. It was a pretty good jag of stock for me to sell even with the best of reasons. It seemed more than enough to be short of without any reason whatever, particularly when the entire market was so strong and there was nothing in sight to make anybody think of the bear side. But I remembered that on previous occasions when I had the same urge to sell and didn’t do it I always had reasons to regret it. I have told some of these stories to friends, and some of them tell me it isn’t a hunch but the subconscious mind, which is the creative mind, at work. That is the mind which makes artists do things without their knowing how they came to do them. Perhaps with me it was the cumulative effect of a lot of little things individually insignificant but collectively powerful. Possibly my friend’s unintelligent bullishness aroused a spirit of contradiction and I picked on UP. because it had been touted so much. I can’t tell you what the cause or motive for hunches may be. All I know is that I went out of the Atlantic City branch office of Harding Brothers short three thousand Union Pacific in a rising market, and I wasn’t worried a bit. I wanted to know what price they’d got for my last two thousand shares. So after luncheon we walked up to the office. I had the pleasure of seeing that the general market was strong and Union Pacific higher. “I see your finish,” said my friend. You could see he was glad he hadn’t sold any.