Fairhaven herald. [volume] (Fairhaven, Wash.) 1890-????, 1893-06-09
STOCK GAMBLING.
The Bulls" the "Bears," the Amateurs
and Brokers and Their Methods.

and Brokers and Their Methods.
/ do not know how it is in London, Paris
and the other great cities of Europe, but |
can hardly believe that the number of per-
sons in any of them who speculate I stocks
bears so large a proportion TO TIE entire
population as it does here in New York.
Men, and women, too, of all trades and oc-
equations and of every degree of pecuniary
ability habtually engage in operations on
our Stock Exchange and find in them
amusement if not profit. Indeed, if the
stock brokers had for customers only in
vestors and professional spectators, half
of them and probably more could not make
living. The commissions aud interest
paid them by merchants, lawyers, doctors,
manufacturers and retired capitalists, not
to mention women, furnish the greater
part of their incomes, and the very magni-
tude of this miscellaneous crowd, augment
ed as it is by recruits from other cities of
the Union, all of them being borrowers of
money, renders breakdown in the market
exceedingly easy
As Is well known, the amateur stock op-
orator expects to make his gains by selling
at higher price shan he buys at This is
the natural method Of conducting business
In other things, and the application of it to
stock transactions follows as a matter Of
course. The many legends current of peo-
pie who have acquired fortunes by purchas-
ing apparently worthless stocks at nominal
prices and subsequently selling them at an
enormous advance also helps to confirm
amateurs in this view of the proper course
10 be taken, and therefore most of them are
what are called bulls Professional stock
gamblers, on the contrary, are as often
bears" as bulls-that is they sell at going
prices stocks which they do not hold in the
expectation of buying them back cheaper
AS a rule, however, the bulls" among the
professionals also Outnumber the bears
and are said in the long run to be more sue
eessful
Amateur stock gamblers, besides being
for the most part bulls, have rarely enough
ready cash of their own 10 pay for what they
desire to buy, and hence what cash they
have they put up as margins" and rely on
their brokers to furnish the rest This the
brokers do by borrowing from banks, trust
companies and private lenders, and the az
gregate of these borrowings runs mp into
the millions and tens of millions What
the result is when these loans are called in
we have seen. The customer cannot pro
tect himself sells out the customers stocks,
and when hundred brokers are doing the
same thing at once the wonder is not that
prices go down, but that they do not go
down more.
1t is evident that the stock market, being
thus, as a rule, supported by purchasers
with borrowed money, is always liable to
collapse whenever borrowing becomes diff
cult. IL is a pyramid balanced on its apex,
ready to topple over with slight push in
one direction or another. When this push
"a strong, owing to the sudden attacks upon
few vulnerable stocks and the contract
ing OF loans resulting from the apprehen-
sions of lenders, the overturn of the pyra-
mid is inevitable, and the number of those
who are caught and crushed underit is very
large. Still this is "A peril to which the
victims voluntarily expose themselves, ami
they have no right to try to cast the
blame of their misfortune upon others. 1t
was old Andrew jackson, | think, who ut
tered the sage aphorism that men who trade
upon borrowed money ought to fail, or, as
a more modern authority once put it, "Son
ny. don't buy what you can't pay for and
don't sell what you haven't got. Mat
thew Marshall in New York Sun.