It is a common saying, even among veteran traders, that such and such a stock “is a good buy, but you must watch it closely.” To _watch_ a stock after buying it is about the most foolish thing one can do. To watch it go down is certainly no pleasure, and if it goes up it doesn’t need watching. The time to watch it is before buying. In order to limit one’s loss on a purchase it is a simple matter to put in an “open stop loss” order somewhere under the cost price; and no amount of diligent “watching” will prevent it from going down. On the other hand, to insure one’s profit, if the price goes up, nothing more is required than to put in a “G. T. C.” (good till cancelled), selling order at whatever figure above the cost price the purchaser is willing to accept as his profit. There is probably no more popular fallacy among traders than the one which presupposes that great “pools” and combinations formed to manipulate certain stocks are either made up of officers and directors of the corporations concerned, or else that such pools base their operations upon valuable inside information from some head official. This may be true in rare instances; but generally speaking the directors and officers of the companies know nothing whatever of the pool operations in their stocks, and when they do know they usually frown on such schemes. Anyone who stops to consider knows that the market prices of the company’s securities are of far less concern to the officials than the matter of conducting their business operations at a profit. If the company’s earnings are good, it is clear that this fact will soon enough manifest itself in the demand for the securities, without any abortive or clandestine efforts; and if the earnings are poor, it would obviously be beneath the dignity of the officials to deceive the public through pool operations or pool affiliations. A more simple plan would be to utilize their “inside information” by quietly selling the stock.