Evening star., 1923-07-20
Curb Bucketeers Get Millions
By Controlling O,un Markets
Pushed Cheap Stocks Up and Do,On at
O,Un Pleasure While Buyers
Remained IL, Ignorance.

adverse developments that beset min
ing operations, and the shares would
drop to almost nothing.
The bucketeers. aware of the ex-
treme likelihood of these adverse de-.
yelopmentS in company'S affairs,
would use all the facilities at their
disposal for encouraging the placing
with them by their customers of buy
| ing orders for these stocks in the
periods of speculative enthusiasm
and high prices.
Used Raid Tactics.
These orders were bucketed and
later. If the prices for them did not
decline on adverse developments in
the company's affairs or similar con-
| dftions, the bucketeers resorted to the
old familiar bucket shop raiding tao
! tics to force decline and to wipe out
| the customers margin accounts.
But, sometimes. despite all the fore
| going conditions in his favor, the
! bucketeer would find himself with a
vast array of customers whose ae-
| counts would continue to show profits.
| A real mining shares boom might de-
velop and stocks would reach such
! levels that bucket shops would have
standing against them enormous
/ paper losses that could spell ruin to
them should their customers start
taking their profits" or call for de-
| livery of stock.
New Scheme for Plumber.
1t was then that the curb bucket
! eerS hit upon a plan to protect them
| selves and to take millions of dollars
| more from the unwary. This was
such plan as the bucket shop men
| who had f1ourished a few years be-
| fore, and who had pretended to handle
merely New York Stock Exchange Sc
4, curities, could hardly have hoped to
! effect
Tbie n1.n ,ra. ,n,bjpr mama pnr
! less than to obtain actual control of
the market in such manner as to wipe
out the bucket shop customers.
The fact that such market control
J had been obtained was kept secret.
/ So also. naturally. was the fact that
manipulation of the stock was being
! guided by the bucketeerS.
This market control could he gained
I in any one of several ways. Some
times 1T was by the medium of taking
| an option through a dummy on a
/ large block of stock.
1t was now up to the customers
man. employed by the bucket shop, to
| induce the customers of the house to
/ buy this stock, particularly those
| customers whose accounts carried
! large paper profits.
The willy bucket shop employe
| painted to the customers a glowing
! picture of great ascending market
! ahead for the stock. When the Gus
4
ciently the stock was manipulated
downward by the buck eteers and the
| customers lost so heavily on that one
stock alone that their entire margin
accounts on all stocks were wiped out.
! Promoted Own Stocks.
1t was only a step from this sort of
business to the promotion by the
bucket shops of their own stocks
| that is, stocks of companies which
were wholly under their control.
! This. also was done absolutely under
/. cover. Mining stocks remained the
big public favorites. and il was min
ing stocks which these houses secret
| ly promoted.
The stocks thus promoted by the
! bucket shops generally had little
value. No one knew this better than
the bucketeers. They manipulated
these securities to all sorts of ridicu-
| lously high prices. piled their Gus
toners into them at the high marks
and finally directed terrific smashes in
prices for these bogus securities,
thereby again wiping out customers
and increasing more their ill-gotten
fortunes.
In stirring up enthusiasm for such
stocks, the bucket shops not only put
out great mass of the usual form of
bucket shop circulars, but issued
classy-looking periodicals which dealt
with all sorts of mining stocks. They
became main sources of information
on most low-priced active mining Sc