The Roanoke times. [volume] (Roanoke, Va.) 1890-1895, 1893-03-28

sometimes he makes your acquaintance
accidentally as it were. Sometimes he
brings u letter of introction from some
person who doesn't thoroughly know
INN. Then, again he ndvcrtises, When
he advcrtiscs it is done something like
these announcements, which can be
cut by the dozen out of any Sunday
newspaper of large circulation;
CONFIDENTIAL. CLERK TO prominent op-
orator knows OF good dividend paying stock
That vii! yield good profits. Address Profits,
$50, ----- Office
a GREAT OPPORTUNITY for making
Woucy III stocks. For particulars address
Active, box 20l, -- Office.
WANTED Party with capital to take
advantage of my reliable information ON
stock market. Address Success, box II, -
If you address either of these ingcn-
ions gentlemen, he will call on you if
he thinks you are worth calling upon,
and after some conversation touching
the necessity of caution and confidence
on both sides, and the superior sources
of information enjoyed upon his side,
he will tell you to go at once to your
broker and buy Y, y, u shares That
Is, unless he has just advised some
Other person to buy X, Y, II; in which
case he will earnestly urge you to has
ten, without loss of time to sell Y, Y.
H. AS for the profits, in all cases he is
to have half the net gain, and he leaves
1T to your honor to let him know what
the amount of the gain is.
If ten persons act upon his advice.
five will gain and five will lose The
loser he has nothing to do with, he
would prefer not to see them; but he
has the names of the winners in his
memorandum book and he rarely fails
to collect from them. This pitfall looks
like Il shallow artificc, and it is; but a
great many people slide down it's sides
in the course of any given year. Else
how should the professional point-givcr
flourish rs he does and have SO much
cash whercwith to advertise in TX +h;s
day newspapers? N Gnd
Ono of the worst, deepest, most dan
gerous and most largely tumblcd into of
all the pitfalls Of Wall street is dug by
operators themselves, and seems 20 be
the result of Il viec of the human men
tai constitution, which, so far rs we
know, is incradicable when once it be-
comes II habit. This is the practice of
taking small profits and large losses.
a Spectator puts up 10 per cent. mar
gin and buys X, Y, u ATS. The shares
fall to "A, 73, - and SO on. Now if he
knows the property TO be sound why
should he rclinquish it merely because
the market price is lower than it was?
On the contrary, if he can afford it, it
may be policy for him to buy another
lot mt 20, and even another lot at 60,
besides protecting his first pur-
chase.
hut suppose he is merely Spectator,
whose gains proceed from turning n
small capital frequently, is it not his
plain cause of action to drop his pur-
chase at IS and take chances of buying
iii again. Most of us would say, YES,
by all means" But rs a matter of fact
he will not drop out until the 10 per
cent. margin is exhausted
But if \, Y, u had gone up to II or
rs, and then shown IL tendency to sag
Off, the same operator wouh at once
have closed the transaction, thus show
ing Willingness to gain by twos and
thrces and lose by tens.
An English novelist once wrote:
'Thcre are at this moment 10, 600 Eng
lishmen wandering homeless and pen
niless over the continent of Europe be-
cause they would not lead trumps at
the proper timc.' So any well-informed
broker can say, of his own personal
knowledge and experience: "There are
thousands of American citizens who
are to-day poor because they would not
cut short their losses and let their
profits run on.''
&c OILS
which men dig for themselves; namely.
the belief that because a certain des-
cription of shares mounts and mounts
and scars above previous calculations
of the general market, therefore it is
desirable to buy into it after it has
mounted during : long period of days.
This belief is almost universal, and vet
it directly contradicts our experience
and the laws of Nature.
We know that the higher the wave
gets the breaker is at the top, while
its base is always strong; and we also
know that whatever goes up has ten
dency to descend again, and that the
time always comes when the holders OF
any commercial property, no matter
how desirable, prefer money TO prop
erty.
But the majority of outside operators
regard the market as strongest when
prices arc up and weakest when prices
arc down, and act accordingly; whereas
those who know base their actions on
the firm truth thai the market is never
so weak as when it is high, and never
so strong as when it is low; being in
fact like that ancient wrestler who,
whenever forced down by his antag-
onist so that his body touched his
ground, Immediately received from