It has also attracted a great many people who have no business to speculate, and who would be prevented from doing so if it were possible. The ignorance and cupidity of these people is so great, and the pitfalls provided them by unscrupulous, methods outside the Exchange are so many and various that something has to be done to protect them. The Stock Exchange does not encourage them, but it recognizes that they have legal if not moral rights, and it stands ready to help them. It gives to such people the same information that it gives to the richest investor in the land. The securities in which it deals are known to be free from taint; all forms of crookedness are prohibited; every transaction within its walls is made openly, as a result of free competitive bidding, and published broadcast to the world. What more, and what less, can be done? Has there ever been a time in the world’s history when property and trade were so secure, and when speculation, which makes property and trade, was so jealously safeguarded?[30] CHAPTER III THE BEAR AND SHORT SELLING The operations of “bears” in the great speculative markets and the practice of “short selling” are riddles which the layman but dimly comprehends. Buying in the hope of selling at a profit, and if need be, “holding the baby” for a long time and “nursing” it until the profit appears, is simple enough; but an Oedipus is required to solve the enigma of selling what one does not possess, and of buying it at a profit after the price has cheapened. It is the most complicated of all ordinary commercial transactions. How the thing can be done at all is a mystery; how such a man can serve a really useful economic purpose by this process is unfathomable. The layman who tries to figure it out thinks there is an Ethiopian somewhere in the wood-pile; the thing is unreal and fictitious. The only way he can understand it is to turn bear himself and learn by experience. Why there should be so many bulls and so few bears can only be explained on the ground that optimism is the basis of speculation, and hope the essence of it. Yet the market can only go two ways: it is quite as likely to go down as up. Since sentiment should have no place in speculation one would think there should be as many bears as bulls, more of them, in fact, because the market almost always goes down faster than it goes up, and because nine out of ten of the unforeseen things that occur result in lower prices.