New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Wall Street (New York, N.Y.) -- Fiction
Mr. Sharpe sent a peremptory message to Greenbaum, Lazarus & Co.; I. &
M. Wechsler; Morris Steinfelder’s Sons; Reis & Stern; Kohn, Fischel &
Co.; Silberman & Lindheim; Rosenthal, Shaffran & Co.; and Zeman Bros. It
was the same message to all:
“_Send me at once all your Turpentine stock!_”
There was consternation and dismay, also admiration and
self-congratulation, among the recipients of the message. They would
have to buy back in the open market the stock they had sold a few days
before. It would mean losses on the treasonable transactions of fully a
quarter of a million, but the pool “stood to win” simply fabulous sums,
if Mr. Sharpe did his duty.
There were some large blocks of stock for sale at 66, but Sharpe’s
brokers cleared the figures with a fierce, irresistible rush, whooping
exultantly. The genuine short interest was simply panic-stricken, and
atop it all there came orders to buy an aggregate of 31,400
shares—orders from Messrs. Greenbaum, Wechsler, Lindheim, Steinfelder,
Reis, Fischel, Shaffran, and Zeman. The stock rose grandly on their
buying: 4,000 shares at 66; 2,200 at 66⅜; 700 at 67⅝; 1,200 at 68; 3,200
at 69½; 2,000 at 70; 5,700 at 70½; 1,200 at 72. Total, 31,400 shares
bought in by the “Skindicate.” Total, 31,400 shares sold by Samuel
Wimbleton Sharpe to his own associates in the great Turpentine pool. In
all he found buyers for 41,700 shares that day, but it had taken
purchases of exactly 21,100 to “stampede the shorts” earlier in the day,
and in addition he held 17,800 shares acquired in the course of his bull
manipulation, which had not been disposed of when he discovered the
breach of faith, so that at the day’s close he found himself not only
without a share of stock manipulatively purchased, but “short” for his
personal account of 2,800 shares.
The newspapers published picturesque accounts of the “Great Day in
Turpentine.” A powerful clique, they said, owned so much of the
stock—had “cornered” it—that they could easily mark up the price to any
figure. They called it a “memorable squeeze.” It was hinted also that
Mr. Sharpe had been on the wrong side of the market, and one paper gave
a wealth of details and statistics in bold, bad type to prove that the
wily bear leader had been caught short of 75,000 shares, and had covered
at a loss of $1,500,000. A newspaper man whose relations with Sharpe
were intimate asked him, very carelessly: “What the deuce caused the
rise in Turpentine?” and Sharpe drawled: “I don’t know for a certainty,
but I rather imagine it was inside buying!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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