I said I’d wait, and bought five hundred shares more of UP. I couldn’t imagine what Harding could have to say to me. I didn’t think it was anything about business. My margin was more than ample for what I was buying. Pretty soon the manager came and told me that Mr. Harding wanted me on the long-distance telephone. “Hello, Ed,” I said. But he said, “What the devil’s the matter with you? Are you crazy?” “Are you?” I said. “What are you doing?” he asked. “What do you mean?” “Buying all that stock.” “Why, isn’t my margin all right?” “It isn’t a case of margin, but of being a plain sucker.” “I don’t get you.” “Why are you buying all that Union Pacific?” “It’s going up,” I said. “Going up, hell! Don’t you know that the insiders are feeding it out to you? You’re just about the easiest mark up there. You’d have more fun losing it on the ponies. Don’t let them kid you.” “Nobody is kidding me,” I told him. “I haven’t talked to a soul about it.” But he came back at me: “You can’t expect a miracle to save you every time you plunge into that stock. Get out while you’ve still got a chance,” he said. “It’s a crime to be long of that stock at this level--when these highbinders are shoveling it out by the ton.” “The tape says they’re buying it,” I insisted. “Larry, I got heart disease when your orders began to come in. For the love of Mike, don’t be a sucker. Get out! Right away. It’s liable to bust wide open any minute. I’ve done my duty. Good-by!” And he hung up. Ed Harding was a very clever chap, unusually well-informed and a real friend, disinterested and kind-hearted. And what was even more, I knew he was in position to hear things. All I had to go by, in my purchases of UP., was my years of studying the behaviour of stocks and my perception of certain symptoms which experience had taught me usually accompanied a substantial rise. _I don’t know what happened to me, but I suppose I must have concluded that my tape reading told me the stock was being absorbed simply because very clever manipulation by the insiders made the tape tell a story that wasn’t true._ Possibly I was impressed by the pains Ed Harding took to stop me from making what he was so sure would be a colossal mistake on my part. Neither his brains nor his motives were to be questioned. Whatever it was that made me decide to follow his advice, I cannot tell you; but follow it, I did. I sold out all my Union Pacific. _Of course if it was unwise to be long of it, it was equally unwise not to be short of it. So after I got rid of my long stock I sold four thousand shares short. I put out most of it around 162._