Lincoln County leader. [volume] (Toledo, Lincoln County, Or.) 1893-1987, 1893-09-28
STOCK GAMBLING.
The Bulls" the Bears" the Amateurs
and Brokers and Their Methods,

The Bulls" the Bears" the Amateurs
and Brokers and Their Methods.
l do not know how il 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 : stocks
bears so large a proportion to tue entire
population as it does here in New York:
Men, and women, too, of all trades and oc-
cupations and of every degree of pecuniary
ability habitually engage in operations on
our Stock Exchange and find in them
amusement il not profit. Indeed, if the
stock brokers had for customers only in
yeStors and professional speculators, half
st them and probably more could not make
. living The commissions and 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 than 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-
plewho 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
IN ha 10 l-ar, nnA tbarofD,.., oft
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 rule, however, the bulls" among the
professionals also outnumber the "bears"
and are said in the long run to be more sue
cessful
Amateur stock gamblers, besides being
for the most part bulls, have rarely enough
ready cash Of their own to 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 ag.
gregate Of these borrowings runs up 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 the broker, and so the broker to 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 ~
| down more.
1t is evident that the stock market, being
thus, as a rule, supported by purchasers
with borrowed money, is always liable tc
collapse whenever borrowing becomes diff
cult. 1t is pyramid balanced on its apex
ready to topple over with a slight push IN
one direction or another When this push
is strong, owing to the sudden attacks upor
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 thos,
who are caught and crushed under 1t is very
large. Still this is peril to which tn,
victims voluntarily expose themselves, ant
they have no right to try to cast tn,
blame of their misfortune upon others. L
was old Andrew jackson, think, who ut
tered the sage aphorism that men who trad
upon borrowed money ought to fail, or, a
more modern authority once put 1t, "Son
ny, don't buy what you can't pay for an,
don't sell what you haven't got."-Mat
thew Marshall in New York Sun.