“Selling your eight thousand Anaconda at the market; in fact, insisting on it,” said Ollie Black. I knew that he was supposed to be very clever and always traded on inside news. But how he knew my business so accurately was beyond me. I was sure the office hadn’t given me away. “Ollie, how do you know that?” I asked him. He laughed and told me: “I got it from Charlie Kratzer.” That was the telegraph operator. “But he never budged from his place,” I said. “I couldn’t hear you and him whispering,” he chuckled. “But I heard every word of the message he sent to the New York office for you. I learned telegraphy years ago after I had a big row over a mistake in a message. Since then when I do what you did just now--give an order by word of mouth to an operator--I want to be sure the operator sends the message as I give it to him. I know what he sends in my name. But you will be sorry you sold that Anaconda. It’s going to 500.” “Not this trip, Ollie,” I said. He stared at me and said, “You’re pretty cocky about it.” “Not I; the tape,” I said. There wasn’t any ticker there so there wasn’t any tape. But he knew what I meant. “I’ve heard of those birds,” he said, “who look at the tape and instead of seeing prices they see a railroad time-table of the arrival and departure of stocks. But they were in padded cells where they couldn’t hurt themselves.” I didn’t answer him anything because about that time the boy brought me a memorandum. They had sold five thousand shares at 299¾. I knew our quotations were a little behind the market. The price on the board at Palm Beach when I gave the operator the order to sell was 301. I felt so certain that at that very moment the price at which the stock was actually selling on the Stock Exchange in New York was less, that if anybody had offered to take the stock off my hands at 296 I’d have been tickled to death to accept. What happened shows you that I am right in never trading at limits. Suppose I had limited my selling price to 300? I’d never have got it off. No, sir! _When you want to get out, get out._ Now, my stock cost me about 300. They got off five hundred shares--full shares, of course--at 299¾. The next thousand they sold at 299⅝. Then a hundred at ½; two hundred at ⅜ and two hundred at ¼. The last of my stock went at 298¾. It took Harding’s cleverest floor man fifteen minutes to get rid of that last one hundred shares. They didn’t want to crack it wide open. The moment I got the report of the sale of the last of my long stock I started to do what I had really come ashore to do--that is, to sell stocks. I simply had to. There was the market after its outrageous rally, begging to be sold. Why, people were beginning to talk bullish again. The course of the market, however, told me that the rally had run its course. It was safe to sell them. It did not require reflection.