run_id: c845a568d7fb workflow_id: generic-source-summary status: completed dry_run: false inputs: - name: source artifact_id: source/chapter-01-part-001.md kind: source title: I Part 1 path: artifacts/sources/chapter-01-part-001.md slug: chapter-01-part-001 content: "# I\n\nI went to work when I was just out of grammar school. I got a job\ \ as quotation-board boy in a stock-brokerage office. I was quick at figures.\ \ At school I did three years of arithmetic in one. I was particularly good at\ \ mental arithmetic. As quotation-board boy I posted the numbers on the big board\ \ in the customers\u2019 room. One of the customers usually sat by the ticker\ \ and called out the prices. They couldn\u2019t come too fast for me. I have always\ \ remembered figures. No trouble at all. There were plenty of other employes in\ \ that office. Of course I made friends with the other fellows, but the work I\ \ did, if the market was active, kept me too busy from ten A.M. to three P.M.\ \ to let me do much talking. I don\u2019t care for it, anyhow, during business\ \ hours. But a busy market did not keep me from thinking about the work. Those\ \ quotations did not represent prices of stocks to me, so many dollars per share.\ \ They were numbers. Of course, they meant something. They were always changing.\ \ It was all I had to be interested in\u2014the changes. Why did they change?\ \ I didn\u2019t know. I didn\u2019t care. I didn\u2019t think about that. I simply\ \ saw that they changed. That was all I had to think about five hours every day\ \ and two on Saturdays: that they were always changing. That is how I first came\ \ to be interested in the behaviour of prices. I had a very good memory for figures.\ \ I could remember in detail how the prices had acted on the previous day, just\ \ before they went up or down. My fondness for mental arithmetic came in very\ \ handy. I noticed that in advances as well as declines, stock prices were apt\ \ to show certain habits, so to speak. There was no end of parallel cases and\ \ these made precedents to guide me. I was only fourteen, but after I had taken\ \ hundreds of observations in my mind I found myself testing their accuracy, comparing\ \ the behaviour of stocks to-day with other days. It was not long before I was\ \ anticipating movements in prices. My only guide, as I say, was their past performances.\ \ I carried the \u201Cdope sheets\u201D in my mind. I looked for stock prices\ \ to run on form. I had \u201Cclocked\u201D them. You know what I mean. You can\ \ spot, for instance, where the buying is only a trifle better than the selling.\ \ A battle goes on in the stock market and the tape is your telescope. You can\ \ depend upon it seven out of ten cases. Another lesson I learned early is that\ \ there is nothing new in Wall Street. There can\u2019t be because speculation\ \ is as old as the hills. Whatever happens in the stock market to-day has happened\ \ before and will happen again. I\u2019ve never forgotten that. I suppose I really\ \ manage to remember when and how it happened. The fact that I remember that way\ \ is my way of capitalizing experience. I got so interested in my game and so\ \ anxious to anticipate advances and declines in all the active stocks that I\ \ got a little book. I put down my observations in it. It was not a record of\ \ imaginary transactions such as so many people keep merely to make or lose millions\ \ of dollars without getting the swelled head or going to the poorhouse. It was\ \ rather a sort of record of my hits and misses, and next to the determination\ \ of probable movements I was most interested in verifying whether I had observed\ \ accurately; in other words, whether I was right. Say that after studying every\ \ fluctuation of the day in an active stock I would conclude that it was behaving\ \ as it always did before it broke eight or ten points. Well, I would jot down\ \ the stock and the price on Monday, and remembering past performances I would\ \ write down what it ought to do on Tuesday and Wednesday. Later I would check\ \ up with actual transcriptions from the tape. That is how I first came to take\ \ an interest in the message of the tape. The fluctuations were from the first\ \ associated in my mind with upward or downward movements. Of course there is\ \ always a reason for fluctuations, but the tape does not concern itself with\ \ the why and wherefore. It doesn\u2019t go into explanations. I didn\u2019t ask\ \ the tape why when I was fourteen, and I don\u2019t ask it to-day, at forty.\ \ The reason for what a certain stock does to-day may not be known for two or\ \ three days, or weeks, or months. But what the dickens does that matter? Your\ \ business with the tape is now\u2014not to-morrow. The reason can wait. But you\ \ must act\n" - name: source artifact_id: source/chapter-01-part-002.md kind: source title: I Part 2 path: artifacts/sources/chapter-01-part-002.md slug: chapter-01-part-002 content: "# I\n\ninstantly or be left. Time and again I see this happen. You\u2019\ ll remember that Hollow Tube went down three points the other day while the rest\ \ of the market rallied sharply. That was the fact. On the following Monday you\ \ saw that the directors passed the dividend. That was the reason. They knew what\ \ they were going to do, and even if they didn\u2019t sell the stock themselves\ \ they at least didn\u2019t buy it. There was no inside buying; no reason why\ \ it should not break. Well, I kept up my little memorandum book perhaps six months.\ \ Instead of leaving for home the moment I was through with my work, I\u2019d\ \ jot down the figures I wanted and would study the changes, always looking for\ \ the repetitions and parallelisms of behaviour\u2014learning to read the tape,\ \ although I was not aware of it at the time. One day one of the office boys\u2014\ he was older than I\u2014came to me where I was eating my lunch and asked me on\ \ the quiet if I had any money. \u201CWhy do you want to know?\u201D I said. \u201C\ Well,\u201D he said, \u201CI\u2019ve got a dandy tip on Burlington. I\u2019m going\ \ to play it if I can get somebody to go in with me.\u201D \u201CHow do you mean,\ \ play it?\u201D I asked. To me the only people who played or could play tips\ \ were the customers\u2014old jiggers with oodles of dough. Why, it cost hundreds,\ \ even thousands of dollars, to get into the game. It was like owning your private\ \ carriage and having a coachman who wore a silk hat. \u201CThat\u2019s what I\ \ mean; play it!\u201D he said. \u201CHow much you got?\u201D \u201CHow much you\ \ need?\u201D \u201CWell, I can trade in five shares by putting up $5.\u201D \u201C\ How are you going to play it?\u201D \u201CI\u2019m going to buy all the Burlington\ \ the bucket shop will let me carry with the money I give him for margin,\u201D\ \ he said. \u201CIt\u2019s going up sure. It\u2019s like picking up money. We\u2019\ ll double ours in a jiffy.\u201D \u201CHold on!\u201D I said to him, and pulled\ \ out my little dope book. I wasn\u2019t interested in doubling my money, but\ \ in his saying that Burlington was going up. If it was, my note-book ought to\ \ show it. I looked. Sure enough, Burlington, according to my figuring, was acting\ \ as it usually did before it went up. I had never bought or sold anything in\ \ my life, and I never gambled with the other boys. But all I could see was that\ \ this was a grand chance to test the accuracy of my work, of my hobby. It struck\ \ me at once that if my dope didn\u2019t work in practice there was nothing in\ \ the theory of it to interest anybody. So I gave him all I had, and with our\ \ pooled resources he went to one of the near-by bucket shops and bought some\ \ Burlington. Two days later we cashed in. I made a profit of $3.12. After that\ \ first trade, I got to speculating on my own hook in the bucket shops. I\u2019\ d go during my lunch hour and buy or sell\u2014it never made any difference to\ \ me. I was playing a system and not a favorite stock or backing opinions. All\ \ I knew was the arithmetic of it. As a matter of fact, mine was the ideal way\ \ to operate in a bucket shop, where all that a trader does is to bet on fluctuations\ \ as they are printed by the ticker on the tape. It was not long before I was\ \ taking much more money out of the bucket shops than I was pulling down from\ \ my job in the brokerage office. So I gave up my position. My folks objected,\ \ but they couldn\u2019t say much when they saw what I was making. I was only\ \ a kid and office-boy wages were not very high. I did mighty well on my own hook.\ \ I was fifteen when I had my first thousand and laid the cash in front of my\ \ mother\u2014all made in the bucket shops in a few months, besides what I had\ \ taken home. My mother carried on something awful. She wanted me to put it away\ \ in the savings bank out of reach of temptation. She said it was more money than\ \ she ever heard any boy of fifteen had made, starting with nothing. She didn\u2019\ t quite believe it was real money. She used to worry and fret about it. But I\ \ didn\u2019t think of anything except that I could keep on proving my figuring\ \ was right. That\u2019s all the fun there is\u2014being right by using your head.\ \ If I was right when I tested my convictions with ten shares I would be ten times\ \ more right if I traded in a hundred shares. That is\n" - name: source artifact_id: source/chapter-01-part-003.md kind: source title: I Part 3 path: artifacts/sources/chapter-01-part-003.md slug: chapter-01-part-003 content: "# I\n\nall that having more margin meant to me\u2014I was right more emphatically.\ \ More courage? No! No difference! If all I have is ten dollars and I risk it,\ \ I am much braver than when I risk a million, if I have another million salted\ \ away. Anyhow, at fifteen I was making a good living out of the stock market.\ \ I began in the smaller bucket shops, where the man who traded in twenty shares\ \ at a clip was suspected of being John W. Gates in disguise or J. P. Morgan traveling\ \ incognito. Bucket shops in those days seldom lay down on their customers. They\ \ didn\u2019t have to. There were other ways of parting customers from their money,\ \ even when they guessed right. The business was tremendously profitable. When\ \ it was conducted legitimately\u2014I mean straight, as far as the bucket shop\ \ went\u2014the fluctuations took care of the shoestrings. It doesn\u2019t take\ \ much of a reaction to wipe out a margin of only three quarters of a point. Also,\ \ no welsher could ever get back in the game. Wouldn\u2019t have any trade. I\ \ didn\u2019t have a following. I kept my business to myself. It was a one-man\ \ business, anyhow. It was my head, wasn\u2019t it? Prices either were going the\ \ way I doped them out, without any help from friends or partners, or they were\ \ going the other way, and nobody could stop them out of kindness to me. I couldn\u2019\ t see where I needed to tell my business to anybody else. I\u2019ve got friends,\ \ of course, but my business has always been the same\u2014a one-man affair. That\ \ is why I have always played a lone hand. As it was, it didn\u2019t take long\ \ for the bucket shops to get sore on me for beating them. I\u2019d walk in and\ \ plank down my margin, but they\u2019d look at it without making a move to grab\ \ it. They\u2019d tell me there was nothing doing. That was the time they got\ \ to calling me the Boy Plunger. I had to be changing brokers all the time, going\ \ from one bucket shop to another. It got so that I had to give a fictitious name.\ \ I\u2019d begin light, only fifteen or twenty shares. At times, when they got\ \ suspicious, I\u2019d lose on purpose at first and then sting them proper. Of\ \ course after a while they\u2019d find me too expensive and they\u2019d tell\ \ me to take myself and my business elsewhere and not interfere with the owners\u2019\ \ dividends. Once, when the big concern I\u2019d been trading with for months\ \ shut down on me I made up my mind to take a little more of their money away\ \ from them. That bucket shop had branches all over the city, in hotel lobbies,\ \ and in near-by towns. I went to one of the hotel branches and asked the manager\ \ a few questions and finally got to trading. But as soon as I played an active\ \ stock my especial way he began to get messages from the head office asking who\ \ it was that was operating. The manager told me what they asked him and I told\ \ him my name was Edward Robinson, of Cambridge. He telephoned the glad news to\ \ the big chief. But the other end wanted to know what I looked like. When the\ \ manager told me that I said to him, \u201CTell him I am a short fat man with\ \ dark hair and a bushy beard!\u201D But he described me instead, and then he\ \ listened and his face got red and he hung up and told me to beat it. \u201C\ What did they say to you?\u201D I asked him politely. \u201CThey said, \u2018\ You blankety-blank fool, didn\u2019t we tell you to take no business from Larry\ \ Livingston? And you deliberately let him trim us out of $700!\u2019\u201D He\ \ didn\u2019t say what else they told him. I tried the other branches one after\ \ another, but they all got to know me, and my money wasn\u2019t any good in any\ \ of their offices. I couldn\u2019t even go in to look at the quotations without\ \ some of the clerks making cracks at me. I tried to get them to let me trade\ \ at long intervals by dividing my visits among them all. But that didn\u2019\ t work. Finally there was only one left to me and that was the biggest and richest\ \ of all\u2014the Cosmopolitan Stock Brokerage Company. The Cosmopolitan was rated\ \ as A-1 and did an enormous business. It had branches in every manufacturing\ \ town in New England. They took my trading all right, and I bought and sold stocks\ \ and made and lost money for months, but in the end it happened with them as\ \ usual. They didn\u2019t refuse my business point-blank, as the small concerns\ \ had. Oh, not because it wasn\u2019t sportsmanship, but because they knew\n" - name: source artifact_id: source/chapter-01-part-004.md kind: source title: I Part 4 path: artifacts/sources/chapter-01-part-004.md slug: chapter-01-part-004 content: "# I\n\nit would give them a black eye to publish the news that they wouldn\u2019\ t take a fellow\u2019s business just because that fellow happened to make a little\ \ money. But they did the next worse thing\u2014that is, they made me put up a\ \ three-point margin and compelled me to pay a premium at first of a half point,\ \ then a point, and finally, a point and a half. Some handicap, that! How? Easy!\ \ Suppose Steel was selling at 90 and you bought it. Your ticket read, normally:\ \ \u201C Bot ten Steel at 90\u215B. \u201D If you put up a point margin it meant\ \ that if it broke 89\xBC you were wiped out automatically. In a bucket shop the\ \ customer is not importuned for more margin or put to the painful necessity of\ \ telling his broker to sell for anything he can get. But when the Cosmopolitan\ \ tacked on that premium they were hitting below the belt. It meant that if the\ \ price was 90 when I bought, instead of making my ticket: \u201C Bot Steel at\ \ 90\u215B ,\u201D it read: \u201C Bot Steel at 91\u215B .\u201D Why, that stock\ \ could advance a point and a quarter after I bought it and I\u2019d still be\ \ losing money if I closed the trade. And by also insisting that I put up a three-point\ \ margin at the very start they reduced my trading capacity by two-thirds. Still,\ \ that was the only bucket shop that would take my business at all, and I had\ \ to accept their terms or quit trading. Of course I had my ups and downs, but\ \ was a winner on balance. However, the Cosmopolitan people were not satisfied\ \ with the awful handicap they had tacked on me, which should have been enough\ \ to beat anybody. They tried to double-cross me. They didn\u2019t get me. I escaped\ \ because of one of my hunches. The Cosmopolitan, as I said, was my last resort.\ \ It was the richest bucket shop in New England, and as a rule they put no limit\ \ on a trade. I think I was the heaviest individual trader they had\u2014that\ \ is, of the steady, every-day customers. They had a fine office and the largest\ \ and completest quotation board I have ever seen anywhere. It ran along the whole\ \ length of the big room and every imaginable thing was quoted. I mean stocks\ \ dealt in on the New York and Boston Stock Exchanges, cotton, wheat, provisions,\ \ metals\u2014everything that was bought and sold in New York, Chicago, Boston\ \ and Liverpool. You know how they traded in bucket shops. You gave your money\ \ to a clerk and told him what you wished to buy or sell. He looked at the tape\ \ or the quotation board and took the price from there\u2014the last one, of course.\ \ He also put down the time on the ticket so that it almost read like a regular\ \ broker\u2019s report\u2014that is, that they had bought or sold for you so many\ \ shares of such a stock at such a price at such a time on such a day and how\ \ much money they received from you. When you wished to close your trade you went\ \ to the clerk\u2014the same or another, it depended on the shop\u2014and you\ \ told him. He took the last price or if the stock had not been active he waited\ \ for the next quotation that came out on the tape. He wrote that price and the\ \ time on your ticket, O.K.\u2019d it and gave it back to you, and then you went\ \ to the cashier and got whatever cash it called for. Of course, when the market\ \ went against you and the price went beyond the limit set by your margin, your\ \ trade automatically closed itself and your ticket became one more scrap of paper.\ \ In the humbler bucket shops, where people were allowed to trade in as little\ \ as five shares, the tickets were little slips\u2014different colors for buying\ \ and selling\u2014and at times, as for instance in boiling bull markets, the\ \ shops would be hard hit because all the customers were bulls and happened to\ \ be right. Then the bucket shop would deduct both buying and selling commissions\ \ and if you bought a stock at 20 the ticket would read 20\xBC. You thus had only\ \ \xBE, of a point\u2019s run for your money. But the Cosmopolitan was the finest\ \ in New England. It had thousands of patrons and I really think I was the only\ \ man they were afraid of. Neither the killing premium nor the three-point margin\ \ they made me put up reduced my trading much. I kept on buying and selling as\ \ much as they\u2019d let me. I sometimes had a line of 5000 shares. Well, on\ \ the day the thing happened that I am going to tell you, I was short\n" - name: source artifact_id: source/chapter-01-part-005.md kind: source title: I Part 5 path: artifacts/sources/chapter-01-part-005.md slug: chapter-01-part-005 content: "# I\n\nthirty-five hundred shares of Sugar. I had seven big pink tickets\ \ for five hundred shares each. The Cosmopolitan used big slips with a blank space\ \ on them where they could write down additional margin. Of course, the bucket\ \ shops never ask for more margin. The thinner the shoestring the better for them,\ \ for their profit lies in your being wiped. In the smaller shops if you wanted\ \ to margin your trade still further they\u2019d make out a new ticket, so they\ \ could charge you the buying commission and only give you a run of \xBE of a\ \ point on each point\u2019s decline, for they figured the selling commission\ \ also exactly as if it were a new trade. Well, this day I remember I had up over\ \ $10,000 in margins. I was only twenty when I first accumulated ten thousand\ \ dollars in cash. And you ought to have heard my mother. You\u2019d have thought\ \ that ten thousand dollars in cash was more than anybody carried around except\ \ old John D., and she used to tell me to be satisfied and go into some regular\ \ business. I had a hard time convincing her that I was not gambling, but making\ \ money by figuring. But all she could see was that ten thousand dollars was a\ \ lot of money and all I could see was more margin. I had put out my 3500 shares\ \ of Sugar at 105\xBC. There was another fellow in the room, Henry Williams, who\ \ was short 2500 shares. I used to sit by the ticker and call out the quotations\ \ for the board boy. The price behaved as I thought it would. It promptly went\ \ down a couple of points and paused a little to get its breath before taking\ \ another dip. The general market was pretty soft and everything looked promising.\ \ Then all of a sudden I didn\u2019t like the way Sugar was doing its hesitating.\ \ I began to feel uncomfortable. I thought I ought to get out of the market. Then\ \ it sold at 103\u2014that was low for the day\u2014but instead of feeling more\ \ confident I felt more uncertain. I knew something was wrong somewhere, but I\ \ couldn\u2019t spot it exactly. But if something was coming and I didn\u2019\ t know where from, I couldn\u2019t be on my guard against it. That being the case\ \ I\u2019d better be out of the market. You know, I don\u2019t do things blindly.\ \ I don\u2019t like to. I never did. Even as a kid I had to know why I should\ \ do certain things. But this time I had no definite reason to give to myself,\ \ and yet I was so uncomfortable that I couldn\u2019t stand it. I called to a\ \ fellow I knew, Dave Wyman, and said to him: \u201CDave, you take my place here.\ \ I want you to do something for me. Wait a little before you call out the next\ \ price of Sugar, will you?\u201D He said he would, and I got up and gave him\ \ my place by the ticker so he could call out the prices for the boy. I took my\ \ seven Sugar tickets out of my pocket and walked over to the counter, to where\ \ the clerk was who marked the tickets when you closed your trades. But I didn\u2019\ t really know why I should get out of the market, so I just stood there, leaning\ \ against the counter, my tickets in my hand so that the clerk couldn\u2019t see\ \ them. Pretty soon I heard the clicking of a telegraph instrument and I saw Tom\ \ Burnham, the clerk, turn his head quickly and listen. Then I felt that something\ \ crooked was hatching, and I decided not to wait any longer. Just then Dave Wyman\ \ by the ticker, began: \u201CSu\u2014\u201D and quick as a flash I slapped my\ \ tickets on the counter in front of the clerk and yelled, \u201CClose Sugar!\u201D\ \ before Dave had finished calling the price. So, of course, the house had to\ \ close my Sugar at the last quotation. What Dave called turned out to be 103\ \ again. According to my dope Sugar should have broken 103 by now. The engine\ \ wasn\u2019t hitting right. I had the feeling that there was a trap in the neighbourhood.\ \ At all events, the telegraph instrument was now going like mad and I noticed\ \ that Tom Burnham, the clerk, had left my tickets unmarked where I laid them,\ \ and was listening to the clicking as if he were waiting for something. So I\ \ yelled at him: \u201CHey, Tom, what in hell are you waiting for? Mark the price\ \ on these tickets\u2014103! Get a gait on!\u201D Everybody in the room heard\ \ me and began to look toward us and ask what was the trouble, for, you see, while\ \ the Cosmopolitan had never laid down, there was no telling,\n" - name: source artifact_id: source/chapter-01-part-006.md kind: source title: I Part 6 path: artifacts/sources/chapter-01-part-006.md slug: chapter-01-part-006 content: "# I\n\nand a run on a bucket shop can start like a run on a bank. If one\ \ customer gets suspicious the others follow suit. So Tom looked sulky, but came\ \ over and marked my tickets \u201CClosed at 103\u201D and shoved the seven of\ \ them over toward me. He sure had a sour face. Say, the distance from Tom\u2019\ s place to the cashier\u2019s cage wasn\u2019t over eight feet. But I hadn\u2019\ t got to the cashier to get my money when Dave Wyman by the ticker yelled excitedly:\ \ \u201CGosh! Sugar, 108!\u201D But it was too late; so I just laughed and called\ \ over to Tom, \u201CIt didn\u2019t work that time, did it, old boy?\u201D Of\ \ course, it was a put-up job. Henry Williams and I together were short six thousand\ \ shares of Sugar. That bucket shop had my margin and Henry\u2019s, and there\ \ may have been a lot of other Sugar shorts in the office; possibly eight or ten\ \ thousand shares in all. Suppose they had $20,000 in Sugar margins. That was\ \ enough to pay the shop to thimblerig the market on the New York Stock Exchange\ \ and wipe us out. In the old days whenever a bucket shop found itself loaded\ \ with too many bulls on a certain stock it was a common practice to get some\ \ broker to wash down the price of that particular stock far enough to wipe out\ \ all the customers that were long of it. This seldom cost the bucket shop more\ \ than a couple of points on a few hundred shares, and they made thousands of\ \ dollars. That was what the Cosmopolitan did to get me and Henry Williams and\ \ the other Sugar shorts. Their brokers in New York ran up the price to 108. Of\ \ course it fell right back, but Henry and a lot of others were wiped out. Whenever\ \ there was an unexplained sharp drop which was followed by instant recovery,\ \ the newspapers in those days used to call it a bucket-shop drive. And the funniest\ \ thing was that not later than ten days after the Cosmopolitan people tried to\ \ double-cross me a New York operator did them out of over seventy thousand dollars.\ \ This man, who was quite a market factor in his day and a member of the New York\ \ Stock Exchange, made a great name for himself as a bear during the Bryan panic\ \ of \u201996. He was forever running up against Stock Exchange rules that kept\ \ him from carrying out some of his plans at the expense of his fellow members.\ \ One day he figured that there would be no complaints from either the Exchange\ \ or the police authorities if he took from the bucket shops of the land some\ \ of their ill-gotten gains. In the instance I speak of he sent thirty-five men\ \ to act as customers. They went to the main office and to the bigger branches.\ \ On a certain day at a fixed hour the agents all bought as much of a certain\ \ stock as the managers would let them. They had instructions to sneak out at\ \ a certain profit. Of course what he did was to distribute bull tips on that\ \ stock among his cronies and then he went in to the floor of the Stock Exchange\ \ and bid up the price, helped by the room traders, who thought he was a good\ \ sport. Being careful to pick out the right stock for that work, there was no\ \ trouble in putting up the price three or four points. His agents at the bucket\ \ shops cashed in as prearranged. A fellow told me the originator cleaned up seventy\ \ thousand dollars net, and his agents made their expenses and their pay besides.\ \ He played that game several times all over the country, punishing the bigger\ \ bucket shops of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cincinnati and St.\ \ Louis. One of his favorite stocks was Western Union, because it was so easy\ \ to move a semiactive stock like that a few points up or down. His agents bought\ \ it at a certain figure, sold at two points profit, went short and took three\ \ points more. By the way, I read the other day that that man died, poor and obscure.\ \ If he had died in 1896 he would have got at least a column on the first page\ \ of every New York paper. As it was he got two lines on the fifth.\n" stages: - stage_id: summarize-source kind: assisted status: completed input_artifact_id: source/chapter-01-part-001.md output_artifact_id: generated/chapter-01-part-001-summary.md provider: openrouter metadata: model: openai/gpt-4o-mini request_id: gen-1779144579-N5GuKMq38HrQCN7lYPf2 usage: prompt_tokens: 1135 completion_tokens: 344 total_tokens: 1479 cost: 0.00037665 is_byok: false prompt_tokens_details: cached_tokens: 0 cache_write_tokens: 0 audio_tokens: 0 video_tokens: 0 cost_details: upstream_inference_cost: 0.00037665 upstream_inference_prompt_cost: 0.00017025 upstream_inference_completions_cost: 0.0002064 completion_tokens_details: reasoning_tokens: 0 image_tokens: 0 audio_tokens: 0 retry_count: 0 duration_seconds: 9.839 - stage_id: summarize-source kind: assisted status: completed input_artifact_id: source/chapter-01-part-002.md output_artifact_id: generated/chapter-01-part-002-summary.md provider: openrouter metadata: model: openai/gpt-4o-mini request_id: gen-1779144589-BbhIlM9dxkxjy8mDTG2M usage: prompt_tokens: 1154 completion_tokens: 358 total_tokens: 1512 cost: 0.0003879 is_byok: false prompt_tokens_details: cached_tokens: 0 cache_write_tokens: 0 audio_tokens: 0 video_tokens: 0 cost_details: upstream_inference_cost: 0.0003879 upstream_inference_prompt_cost: 0.0001731 upstream_inference_completions_cost: 0.0002148 completion_tokens_details: reasoning_tokens: 0 image_tokens: 0 audio_tokens: 0 retry_count: 0 duration_seconds: 10.226 - 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stage_id: summarize-source kind: assisted status: completed input_artifact_id: source/chapter-01-part-005.md output_artifact_id: generated/chapter-01-part-005-summary.md provider: openrouter metadata: model: openai/gpt-4o-mini request_id: gen-1779144619-yzZaJpkgpqeI1kE5eBq6 usage: prompt_tokens: 1143 completion_tokens: 423 total_tokens: 1566 cost: 0.00042525 is_byok: false prompt_tokens_details: cached_tokens: 0 cache_write_tokens: 0 audio_tokens: 0 video_tokens: 0 cost_details: upstream_inference_cost: 0.00042525 upstream_inference_prompt_cost: 0.00017145 upstream_inference_completions_cost: 0.0002538 completion_tokens_details: reasoning_tokens: 0 image_tokens: 0 audio_tokens: 0 retry_count: 0 duration_seconds: 10.24 - stage_id: summarize-source kind: assisted status: completed input_artifact_id: source/chapter-01-part-006.md output_artifact_id: generated/chapter-01-part-006-summary.md provider: openrouter metadata: model: openai/gpt-4o-mini request_id: gen-1779144629-bQdO064dOo5T3jdhbflC usage: prompt_tokens: 1046 completion_tokens: 394 total_tokens: 1440 cost: 0.0003933 is_byok: false prompt_tokens_details: cached_tokens: 0 cache_write_tokens: 0 audio_tokens: 0 video_tokens: 0 cost_details: upstream_inference_cost: 0.0003933 upstream_inference_prompt_cost: 0.0001569 upstream_inference_completions_cost: 0.0002364 completion_tokens_details: reasoning_tokens: 0 image_tokens: 0 audio_tokens: 0 retry_count: 0 duration_seconds: 9.827 outputs: - stage_id: summarize-source artifact_id: generated/chapter-01-part-001-summary.md path: artifacts/generated/chapter-01-part-001-summary.md kind: generated title: I Part 1 Summary input_artifact_id: source/chapter-01-part-001.md written: true - stage_id: summarize-source artifact_id: generated/chapter-01-part-002-summary.md path: artifacts/generated/chapter-01-part-002-summary.md kind: generated title: I Part 2 Summary input_artifact_id: source/chapter-01-part-002.md written: true - stage_id: summarize-source artifact_id: generated/chapter-01-part-003-summary.md path: artifacts/generated/chapter-01-part-003-summary.md kind: generated title: I Part 3 Summary input_artifact_id: source/chapter-01-part-003.md written: true - stage_id: summarize-source artifact_id: generated/chapter-01-part-004-summary.md path: artifacts/generated/chapter-01-part-004-summary.md kind: generated title: I Part 4 Summary input_artifact_id: source/chapter-01-part-004.md written: true - stage_id: summarize-source artifact_id: generated/chapter-01-part-005-summary.md path: artifacts/generated/chapter-01-part-005-summary.md kind: generated title: I Part 5 Summary input_artifact_id: source/chapter-01-part-005.md written: true - stage_id: summarize-source artifact_id: generated/chapter-01-part-006-summary.md path: artifacts/generated/chapter-01-part-006-summary.md kind: generated title: I Part 6 Summary input_artifact_id: source/chapter-01-part-006.md written: true assisted_requests: - stage_id: summarize-source workflow_id: generic-source-summary input_artifact_id: source/chapter-01-part-001.md prompt: "# Summarize Trading-Literature Source\n\nProfile: trading-literature\n\n\ Summarize the source chunk as Markdown for a trading-literature infospace.\nPreserve\ \ in this order:\n\n- the narrator's actions and the market events they reacted\ \ to\n- named strategies, instruments, venues, and institutions\n- explicit lessons,\ \ rules of thumb, or warnings the text states\n- evidence phrases (dollar figures,\ \ dates, tape behaviour, counter-party\n names) that should guide later entity\ \ and relation extraction\n- ambiguities or anachronisms that a reviewer should\ \ flag\n\nKeep the summary to a single page; do not paraphrase the moral of the\n\ chapter, only the material a downstream extractor needs.\n\nSource title: I Part\ \ 1\nSource artifact: source/chapter-01-part-001.md\n\n## Source\n\n# I\n\nI went\ \ to work when I was just out of grammar school. I got a job as quotation-board\ \ boy in a stock-brokerage office. I was quick at figures. At school I did three\ \ years of arithmetic in one. I was particularly good at mental arithmetic. As\ \ quotation-board boy I posted the numbers on the big board in the customers\u2019\ \ room. One of the customers usually sat by the ticker and called out the prices.\ \ They couldn\u2019t come too fast for me. I have always remembered figures. No\ \ trouble at all. There were plenty of other employes in that office. Of course\ \ I made friends with the other fellows, but the work I did, if the market was\ \ active, kept me too busy from ten A.M. to three P.M. to let me do much talking.\ \ I don\u2019t care for it, anyhow, during business hours. But a busy market did\ \ not keep me from thinking about the work. Those quotations did not represent\ \ prices of stocks to me, so many dollars per share. They were numbers. Of course,\ \ they meant something. They were always changing. It was all I had to be interested\ \ in\u2014the changes. Why did they change? I didn\u2019t know. I didn\u2019t\ \ care. I didn\u2019t think about that. I simply saw that they changed. That was\ \ all I had to think about five hours every day and two on Saturdays: that they\ \ were always changing. That is how I first came to be interested in the behaviour\ \ of prices. I had a very good memory for figures. I could remember in detail\ \ how the prices had acted on the previous day, just before they went up or down.\ \ My fondness for mental arithmetic came in very handy. I noticed that in advances\ \ as well as declines, stock prices were apt to show certain habits, so to speak.\ \ There was no end of parallel cases and these made precedents to guide me. I\ \ was only fourteen, but after I had taken hundreds of observations in my mind\ \ I found myself testing their accuracy, comparing the behaviour of stocks to-day\ \ with other days. It was not long before I was anticipating movements in prices.\ \ My only guide, as I say, was their past performances. I carried the \u201Cdope\ \ sheets\u201D in my mind. I looked for stock prices to run on form. I had \u201C\ clocked\u201D them. You know what I mean. You can spot, for instance, where the\ \ buying is only a trifle better than the selling. A battle goes on in the stock\ \ market and the tape is your telescope. You can depend upon it seven out of ten\ \ cases. Another lesson I learned early is that there is nothing new in Wall Street.\ \ There can\u2019t be because speculation is as old as the hills. Whatever happens\ \ in the stock market to-day has happened before and will happen again. I\u2019\ ve never forgotten that. I suppose I really manage to remember when and how it\ \ happened. The fact that I remember that way is my way of capitalizing experience.\ \ I got so interested in my game and so anxious to anticipate advances and declines\ \ in all the active stocks that I got a little book. I put down my observations\ \ in it. It was not a record of imaginary transactions such as so many people\ \ keep merely to make or lose millions of dollars without getting the swelled\ \ head or going to the poorhouse. It was rather a sort of record of my hits and\ \ misses, and next to the determination of probable movements I was most interested\ \ in verifying whether I had observed accurately; in other words, whether I was\ \ right. Say that after studying every fluctuation of the day in an active stock\ \ I would conclude that it was behaving as it always did before it broke eight\ \ or ten points. Well, I would jot down the stock and the price on Monday, and\ \ remembering past performances I would write down what it ought to do on Tuesday\ \ and Wednesday. Later I would check up with actual transcriptions from the tape.\ \ That is how I first came to take an interest in the message of the tape. The\ \ fluctuations were from the first associated in my mind with upward or downward\ \ movements. Of course there is always a reason for fluctuations, but the tape\ \ does not concern itself with the why and wherefore. It doesn\u2019t go into\ \ explanations. I didn\u2019t ask the tape why when I was fourteen, and I don\u2019\ t ask it to-day, at forty. The reason for what a certain stock does to-day may\ \ not be known for two or three days, or weeks, or months. But what the dickens\ \ does that matter? Your business with the tape is now\u2014not to-morrow. The\ \ reason can wait. But you must act\n\n" provider_hint: openrouter metadata: output: path: artifacts/generated/{{ input.slug }}-summary.md kind: generated artifact_id: generated/{{ input.slug }}-summary.md title: '{{ input.title }} Summary' - stage_id: summarize-source workflow_id: generic-source-summary input_artifact_id: source/chapter-01-part-002.md prompt: "# Summarize Trading-Literature Source\n\nProfile: trading-literature\n\n\ Summarize the source chunk as Markdown for a trading-literature infospace.\nPreserve\ \ in this order:\n\n- the narrator's actions and the market events they reacted\ \ to\n- named strategies, instruments, venues, and institutions\n- explicit lessons,\ \ rules of thumb, or warnings the text states\n- evidence phrases (dollar figures,\ \ dates, tape behaviour, counter-party\n names) that should guide later entity\ \ and relation extraction\n- ambiguities or anachronisms that a reviewer should\ \ flag\n\nKeep the summary to a single page; do not paraphrase the moral of the\n\ chapter, only the material a downstream extractor needs.\n\nSource title: I Part\ \ 2\nSource artifact: source/chapter-01-part-002.md\n\n## Source\n\n# I\n\ninstantly\ \ or be left. Time and again I see this happen. You\u2019ll remember that Hollow\ \ Tube went down three points the other day while the rest of the market rallied\ \ sharply. That was the fact. On the following Monday you saw that the directors\ \ passed the dividend. That was the reason. They knew what they were going to\ \ do, and even if they didn\u2019t sell the stock themselves they at least didn\u2019\ t buy it. There was no inside buying; no reason why it should not break. Well,\ \ I kept up my little memorandum book perhaps six months. Instead of leaving for\ \ home the moment I was through with my work, I\u2019d jot down the figures I\ \ wanted and would study the changes, always looking for the repetitions and parallelisms\ \ of behaviour\u2014learning to read the tape, although I was not aware of it\ \ at the time. One day one of the office boys\u2014he was older than I\u2014came\ \ to me where I was eating my lunch and asked me on the quiet if I had any money.\ \ \u201CWhy do you want to know?\u201D I said. \u201CWell,\u201D he said, \u201C\ I\u2019ve got a dandy tip on Burlington. I\u2019m going to play it if I can get\ \ somebody to go in with me.\u201D \u201CHow do you mean, play it?\u201D I asked.\ \ To me the only people who played or could play tips were the customers\u2014\ old jiggers with oodles of dough. Why, it cost hundreds, even thousands of dollars,\ \ to get into the game. It was like owning your private carriage and having a\ \ coachman who wore a silk hat. \u201CThat\u2019s what I mean; play it!\u201D\ \ he said. \u201CHow much you got?\u201D \u201CHow much you need?\u201D \u201C\ Well, I can trade in five shares by putting up $5.\u201D \u201CHow are you going\ \ to play it?\u201D \u201CI\u2019m going to buy all the Burlington the bucket\ \ shop will let me carry with the money I give him for margin,\u201D he said.\ \ \u201CIt\u2019s going up sure. It\u2019s like picking up money. We\u2019ll double\ \ ours in a jiffy.\u201D \u201CHold on!\u201D I said to him, and pulled out my\ \ little dope book. I wasn\u2019t interested in doubling my money, but in his\ \ saying that Burlington was going up. If it was, my note-book ought to show it.\ \ I looked. Sure enough, Burlington, according to my figuring, was acting as it\ \ usually did before it went up. I had never bought or sold anything in my life,\ \ and I never gambled with the other boys. But all I could see was that this was\ \ a grand chance to test the accuracy of my work, of my hobby. It struck me at\ \ once that if my dope didn\u2019t work in practice there was nothing in the theory\ \ of it to interest anybody. So I gave him all I had, and with our pooled resources\ \ he went to one of the near-by bucket shops and bought some Burlington. Two days\ \ later we cashed in. I made a profit of $3.12. After that first trade, I got\ \ to speculating on my own hook in the bucket shops. I\u2019d go during my lunch\ \ hour and buy or sell\u2014it never made any difference to me. I was playing\ \ a system and not a favorite stock or backing opinions. All I knew was the arithmetic\ \ of it. As a matter of fact, mine was the ideal way to operate in a bucket shop,\ \ where all that a trader does is to bet on fluctuations as they are printed by\ \ the ticker on the tape. It was not long before I was taking much more money\ \ out of the bucket shops than I was pulling down from my job in the brokerage\ \ office. So I gave up my position. My folks objected, but they couldn\u2019t\ \ say much when they saw what I was making. I was only a kid and office-boy wages\ \ were not very high. I did mighty well on my own hook. I was fifteen when I had\ \ my first thousand and laid the cash in front of my mother\u2014all made in the\ \ bucket shops in a few months, besides what I had taken home. My mother carried\ \ on something awful. She wanted me to put it away in the savings bank out of\ \ reach of temptation. She said it was more money than she ever heard any boy\ \ of fifteen had made, starting with nothing. She didn\u2019t quite believe it\ \ was real money. She used to worry and fret about it. But I didn\u2019t think\ \ of anything except that I could keep on proving my figuring was right. That\u2019\ s all the fun there is\u2014being right by using your head. If I was right when\ \ I tested my convictions with ten shares I would be ten times more right if I\ \ traded in a hundred shares. That is\n\n" provider_hint: openrouter metadata: output: path: artifacts/generated/{{ input.slug }}-summary.md kind: generated artifact_id: generated/{{ input.slug }}-summary.md title: '{{ input.title }} Summary' - stage_id: summarize-source workflow_id: generic-source-summary input_artifact_id: source/chapter-01-part-003.md prompt: "# Summarize Trading-Literature Source\n\nProfile: trading-literature\n\n\ Summarize the source chunk as Markdown for a trading-literature infospace.\nPreserve\ \ in this order:\n\n- the narrator's actions and the market events they reacted\ \ to\n- named strategies, instruments, venues, and institutions\n- explicit lessons,\ \ rules of thumb, or warnings the text states\n- evidence phrases (dollar figures,\ \ dates, tape behaviour, counter-party\n names) that should guide later entity\ \ and relation extraction\n- ambiguities or anachronisms that a reviewer should\ \ flag\n\nKeep the summary to a single page; do not paraphrase the moral of the\n\ chapter, only the material a downstream extractor needs.\n\nSource title: I Part\ \ 3\nSource artifact: source/chapter-01-part-003.md\n\n## Source\n\n# I\n\nall\ \ that having more margin meant to me\u2014I was right more emphatically. More\ \ courage? No! No difference! If all I have is ten dollars and I risk it, I am\ \ much braver than when I risk a million, if I have another million salted away.\ \ Anyhow, at fifteen I was making a good living out of the stock market. I began\ \ in the smaller bucket shops, where the man who traded in twenty shares at a\ \ clip was suspected of being John W. Gates in disguise or J. P. Morgan traveling\ \ incognito. Bucket shops in those days seldom lay down on their customers. They\ \ didn\u2019t have to. There were other ways of parting customers from their money,\ \ even when they guessed right. The business was tremendously profitable. When\ \ it was conducted legitimately\u2014I mean straight, as far as the bucket shop\ \ went\u2014the fluctuations took care of the shoestrings. It doesn\u2019t take\ \ much of a reaction to wipe out a margin of only three quarters of a point. Also,\ \ no welsher could ever get back in the game. Wouldn\u2019t have any trade. I\ \ didn\u2019t have a following. I kept my business to myself. It was a one-man\ \ business, anyhow. It was my head, wasn\u2019t it? Prices either were going the\ \ way I doped them out, without any help from friends or partners, or they were\ \ going the other way, and nobody could stop them out of kindness to me. I couldn\u2019\ t see where I needed to tell my business to anybody else. I\u2019ve got friends,\ \ of course, but my business has always been the same\u2014a one-man affair. That\ \ is why I have always played a lone hand. As it was, it didn\u2019t take long\ \ for the bucket shops to get sore on me for beating them. I\u2019d walk in and\ \ plank down my margin, but they\u2019d look at it without making a move to grab\ \ it. They\u2019d tell me there was nothing doing. That was the time they got\ \ to calling me the Boy Plunger. I had to be changing brokers all the time, going\ \ from one bucket shop to another. It got so that I had to give a fictitious name.\ \ I\u2019d begin light, only fifteen or twenty shares. At times, when they got\ \ suspicious, I\u2019d lose on purpose at first and then sting them proper. Of\ \ course after a while they\u2019d find me too expensive and they\u2019d tell\ \ me to take myself and my business elsewhere and not interfere with the owners\u2019\ \ dividends. Once, when the big concern I\u2019d been trading with for months\ \ shut down on me I made up my mind to take a little more of their money away\ \ from them. That bucket shop had branches all over the city, in hotel lobbies,\ \ and in near-by towns. I went to one of the hotel branches and asked the manager\ \ a few questions and finally got to trading. But as soon as I played an active\ \ stock my especial way he began to get messages from the head office asking who\ \ it was that was operating. The manager told me what they asked him and I told\ \ him my name was Edward Robinson, of Cambridge. He telephoned the glad news to\ \ the big chief. But the other end wanted to know what I looked like. When the\ \ manager told me that I said to him, \u201CTell him I am a short fat man with\ \ dark hair and a bushy beard!\u201D But he described me instead, and then he\ \ listened and his face got red and he hung up and told me to beat it. \u201C\ What did they say to you?\u201D I asked him politely. \u201CThey said, \u2018\ You blankety-blank fool, didn\u2019t we tell you to take no business from Larry\ \ Livingston? And you deliberately let him trim us out of $700!\u2019\u201D He\ \ didn\u2019t say what else they told him. I tried the other branches one after\ \ another, but they all got to know me, and my money wasn\u2019t any good in any\ \ of their offices. I couldn\u2019t even go in to look at the quotations without\ \ some of the clerks making cracks at me. I tried to get them to let me trade\ \ at long intervals by dividing my visits among them all. But that didn\u2019\ t work. Finally there was only one left to me and that was the biggest and richest\ \ of all\u2014the Cosmopolitan Stock Brokerage Company. The Cosmopolitan was rated\ \ as A-1 and did an enormous business. It had branches in every manufacturing\ \ town in New England. They took my trading all right, and I bought and sold stocks\ \ and made and lost money for months, but in the end it happened with them as\ \ usual. They didn\u2019t refuse my business point-blank, as the small concerns\ \ had. Oh, not because it wasn\u2019t sportsmanship, but because they knew\n\n" provider_hint: openrouter metadata: output: path: artifacts/generated/{{ input.slug }}-summary.md kind: generated artifact_id: generated/{{ input.slug }}-summary.md title: '{{ input.title }} Summary' - stage_id: summarize-source workflow_id: generic-source-summary input_artifact_id: source/chapter-01-part-004.md prompt: "# Summarize Trading-Literature Source\n\nProfile: trading-literature\n\n\ Summarize the source chunk as Markdown for a trading-literature infospace.\nPreserve\ \ in this order:\n\n- the narrator's actions and the market events they reacted\ \ to\n- named strategies, instruments, venues, and institutions\n- explicit lessons,\ \ rules of thumb, or warnings the text states\n- evidence phrases (dollar figures,\ \ dates, tape behaviour, counter-party\n names) that should guide later entity\ \ and relation extraction\n- ambiguities or anachronisms that a reviewer should\ \ flag\n\nKeep the summary to a single page; do not paraphrase the moral of the\n\ chapter, only the material a downstream extractor needs.\n\nSource title: I Part\ \ 4\nSource artifact: source/chapter-01-part-004.md\n\n## Source\n\n# I\n\nit\ \ would give them a black eye to publish the news that they wouldn\u2019t take\ \ a fellow\u2019s business just because that fellow happened to make a little\ \ money. But they did the next worse thing\u2014that is, they made me put up a\ \ three-point margin and compelled me to pay a premium at first of a half point,\ \ then a point, and finally, a point and a half. Some handicap, that! How? Easy!\ \ Suppose Steel was selling at 90 and you bought it. Your ticket read, normally:\ \ \u201C Bot ten Steel at 90\u215B. \u201D If you put up a point margin it meant\ \ that if it broke 89\xBC you were wiped out automatically. In a bucket shop the\ \ customer is not importuned for more margin or put to the painful necessity of\ \ telling his broker to sell for anything he can get. But when the Cosmopolitan\ \ tacked on that premium they were hitting below the belt. It meant that if the\ \ price was 90 when I bought, instead of making my ticket: \u201C Bot Steel at\ \ 90\u215B ,\u201D it read: \u201C Bot Steel at 91\u215B .\u201D Why, that stock\ \ could advance a point and a quarter after I bought it and I\u2019d still be\ \ losing money if I closed the trade. And by also insisting that I put up a three-point\ \ margin at the very start they reduced my trading capacity by two-thirds. Still,\ \ that was the only bucket shop that would take my business at all, and I had\ \ to accept their terms or quit trading. Of course I had my ups and downs, but\ \ was a winner on balance. However, the Cosmopolitan people were not satisfied\ \ with the awful handicap they had tacked on me, which should have been enough\ \ to beat anybody. They tried to double-cross me. They didn\u2019t get me. I escaped\ \ because of one of my hunches. The Cosmopolitan, as I said, was my last resort.\ \ It was the richest bucket shop in New England, and as a rule they put no limit\ \ on a trade. I think I was the heaviest individual trader they had\u2014that\ \ is, of the steady, every-day customers. They had a fine office and the largest\ \ and completest quotation board I have ever seen anywhere. It ran along the whole\ \ length of the big room and every imaginable thing was quoted. I mean stocks\ \ dealt in on the New York and Boston Stock Exchanges, cotton, wheat, provisions,\ \ metals\u2014everything that was bought and sold in New York, Chicago, Boston\ \ and Liverpool. You know how they traded in bucket shops. You gave your money\ \ to a clerk and told him what you wished to buy or sell. He looked at the tape\ \ or the quotation board and took the price from there\u2014the last one, of course.\ \ He also put down the time on the ticket so that it almost read like a regular\ \ broker\u2019s report\u2014that is, that they had bought or sold for you so many\ \ shares of such a stock at such a price at such a time on such a day and how\ \ much money they received from you. When you wished to close your trade you went\ \ to the clerk\u2014the same or another, it depended on the shop\u2014and you\ \ told him. He took the last price or if the stock had not been active he waited\ \ for the next quotation that came out on the tape. He wrote that price and the\ \ time on your ticket, O.K.\u2019d it and gave it back to you, and then you went\ \ to the cashier and got whatever cash it called for. Of course, when the market\ \ went against you and the price went beyond the limit set by your margin, your\ \ trade automatically closed itself and your ticket became one more scrap of paper.\ \ In the humbler bucket shops, where people were allowed to trade in as little\ \ as five shares, the tickets were little slips\u2014different colors for buying\ \ and selling\u2014and at times, as for instance in boiling bull markets, the\ \ shops would be hard hit because all the customers were bulls and happened to\ \ be right. Then the bucket shop would deduct both buying and selling commissions\ \ and if you bought a stock at 20 the ticket would read 20\xBC. You thus had only\ \ \xBE, of a point\u2019s run for your money. But the Cosmopolitan was the finest\ \ in New England. It had thousands of patrons and I really think I was the only\ \ man they were afraid of. Neither the killing premium nor the three-point margin\ \ they made me put up reduced my trading much. I kept on buying and selling as\ \ much as they\u2019d let me. I sometimes had a line of 5000 shares. Well, on\ \ the day the thing happened that I am going to tell you, I was short\n\n" provider_hint: openrouter metadata: output: path: artifacts/generated/{{ input.slug }}-summary.md kind: generated artifact_id: generated/{{ input.slug }}-summary.md title: '{{ input.title }} Summary' - stage_id: summarize-source workflow_id: generic-source-summary input_artifact_id: source/chapter-01-part-005.md prompt: "# Summarize Trading-Literature Source\n\nProfile: trading-literature\n\n\ Summarize the source chunk as Markdown for a trading-literature infospace.\nPreserve\ \ in this order:\n\n- the narrator's actions and the market events they reacted\ \ to\n- named strategies, instruments, venues, and institutions\n- explicit lessons,\ \ rules of thumb, or warnings the text states\n- evidence phrases (dollar figures,\ \ dates, tape behaviour, counter-party\n names) that should guide later entity\ \ and relation extraction\n- ambiguities or anachronisms that a reviewer should\ \ flag\n\nKeep the summary to a single page; do not paraphrase the moral of the\n\ chapter, only the material a downstream extractor needs.\n\nSource title: I Part\ \ 5\nSource artifact: source/chapter-01-part-005.md\n\n## Source\n\n# I\n\nthirty-five\ \ hundred shares of Sugar. I had seven big pink tickets for five hundred shares\ \ each. The Cosmopolitan used big slips with a blank space on them where they\ \ could write down additional margin. Of course, the bucket shops never ask for\ \ more margin. The thinner the shoestring the better for them, for their profit\ \ lies in your being wiped. In the smaller shops if you wanted to margin your\ \ trade still further they\u2019d make out a new ticket, so they could charge\ \ you the buying commission and only give you a run of \xBE of a point on each\ \ point\u2019s decline, for they figured the selling commission also exactly as\ \ if it were a new trade. Well, this day I remember I had up over $10,000 in margins.\ \ I was only twenty when I first accumulated ten thousand dollars in cash. And\ \ you ought to have heard my mother. You\u2019d have thought that ten thousand\ \ dollars in cash was more than anybody carried around except old John D., and\ \ she used to tell me to be satisfied and go into some regular business. I had\ \ a hard time convincing her that I was not gambling, but making money by figuring.\ \ But all she could see was that ten thousand dollars was a lot of money and all\ \ I could see was more margin. I had put out my 3500 shares of Sugar at 105\xBC\ . There was another fellow in the room, Henry Williams, who was short 2500 shares.\ \ I used to sit by the ticker and call out the quotations for the board boy. The\ \ price behaved as I thought it would. It promptly went down a couple of points\ \ and paused a little to get its breath before taking another dip. The general\ \ market was pretty soft and everything looked promising. Then all of a sudden\ \ I didn\u2019t like the way Sugar was doing its hesitating. I began to feel uncomfortable.\ \ I thought I ought to get out of the market. Then it sold at 103\u2014that was\ \ low for the day\u2014but instead of feeling more confident I felt more uncertain.\ \ I knew something was wrong somewhere, but I couldn\u2019t spot it exactly. But\ \ if something was coming and I didn\u2019t know where from, I couldn\u2019t be\ \ on my guard against it. That being the case I\u2019d better be out of the market.\ \ You know, I don\u2019t do things blindly. I don\u2019t like to. I never did.\ \ Even as a kid I had to know why I should do certain things. But this time I\ \ had no definite reason to give to myself, and yet I was so uncomfortable that\ \ I couldn\u2019t stand it. I called to a fellow I knew, Dave Wyman, and said\ \ to him: \u201CDave, you take my place here. I want you to do something for me.\ \ Wait a little before you call out the next price of Sugar, will you?\u201D He\ \ said he would, and I got up and gave him my place by the ticker so he could\ \ call out the prices for the boy. I took my seven Sugar tickets out of my pocket\ \ and walked over to the counter, to where the clerk was who marked the tickets\ \ when you closed your trades. But I didn\u2019t really know why I should get\ \ out of the market, so I just stood there, leaning against the counter, my tickets\ \ in my hand so that the clerk couldn\u2019t see them. Pretty soon I heard the\ \ clicking of a telegraph instrument and I saw Tom Burnham, the clerk, turn his\ \ head quickly and listen. Then I felt that something crooked was hatching, and\ \ I decided not to wait any longer. Just then Dave Wyman by the ticker, began:\ \ \u201CSu\u2014\u201D and quick as a flash I slapped my tickets on the counter\ \ in front of the clerk and yelled, \u201CClose Sugar!\u201D before Dave had finished\ \ calling the price. So, of course, the house had to close my Sugar at the last\ \ quotation. What Dave called turned out to be 103 again. According to my dope\ \ Sugar should have broken 103 by now. The engine wasn\u2019t hitting right. I\ \ had the feeling that there was a trap in the neighbourhood. At all events, the\ \ telegraph instrument was now going like mad and I noticed that Tom Burnham,\ \ the clerk, had left my tickets unmarked where I laid them, and was listening\ \ to the clicking as if he were waiting for something. So I yelled at him: \u201C\ Hey, Tom, what in hell are you waiting for? Mark the price on these tickets\u2014\ 103! Get a gait on!\u201D Everybody in the room heard me and began to look toward\ \ us and ask what was the trouble, for, you see, while the Cosmopolitan had never\ \ laid down, there was no telling,\n\n" provider_hint: openrouter metadata: output: path: artifacts/generated/{{ input.slug }}-summary.md kind: generated artifact_id: generated/{{ input.slug }}-summary.md title: '{{ input.title }} Summary' - stage_id: summarize-source workflow_id: generic-source-summary input_artifact_id: source/chapter-01-part-006.md prompt: "# Summarize Trading-Literature Source\n\nProfile: trading-literature\n\n\ Summarize the source chunk as Markdown for a trading-literature infospace.\nPreserve\ \ in this order:\n\n- the narrator's actions and the market events they reacted\ \ to\n- named strategies, instruments, venues, and institutions\n- explicit lessons,\ \ rules of thumb, or warnings the text states\n- evidence phrases (dollar figures,\ \ dates, tape behaviour, counter-party\n names) that should guide later entity\ \ and relation extraction\n- ambiguities or anachronisms that a reviewer should\ \ flag\n\nKeep the summary to a single page; do not paraphrase the moral of the\n\ chapter, only the material a downstream extractor needs.\n\nSource title: I Part\ \ 6\nSource artifact: source/chapter-01-part-006.md\n\n## Source\n\n# I\n\nand\ \ a run on a bucket shop can start like a run on a bank. If one customer gets\ \ suspicious the others follow suit. So Tom looked sulky, but came over and marked\ \ my tickets \u201CClosed at 103\u201D and shoved the seven of them over toward\ \ me. He sure had a sour face. Say, the distance from Tom\u2019s place to the\ \ cashier\u2019s cage wasn\u2019t over eight feet. But I hadn\u2019t got to the\ \ cashier to get my money when Dave Wyman by the ticker yelled excitedly: \u201C\ Gosh! Sugar, 108!\u201D But it was too late; so I just laughed and called over\ \ to Tom, \u201CIt didn\u2019t work that time, did it, old boy?\u201D Of course,\ \ it was a put-up job. Henry Williams and I together were short six thousand shares\ \ of Sugar. That bucket shop had my margin and Henry\u2019s, and there may have\ \ been a lot of other Sugar shorts in the office; possibly eight or ten thousand\ \ shares in all. Suppose they had $20,000 in Sugar margins. That was enough to\ \ pay the shop to thimblerig the market on the New York Stock Exchange and wipe\ \ us out. In the old days whenever a bucket shop found itself loaded with too\ \ many bulls on a certain stock it was a common practice to get some broker to\ \ wash down the price of that particular stock far enough to wipe out all the\ \ customers that were long of it. This seldom cost the bucket shop more than a\ \ couple of points on a few hundred shares, and they made thousands of dollars.\ \ That was what the Cosmopolitan did to get me and Henry Williams and the other\ \ Sugar shorts. Their brokers in New York ran up the price to 108. Of course it\ \ fell right back, but Henry and a lot of others were wiped out. Whenever there\ \ was an unexplained sharp drop which was followed by instant recovery, the newspapers\ \ in those days used to call it a bucket-shop drive. And the funniest thing was\ \ that not later than ten days after the Cosmopolitan people tried to double-cross\ \ me a New York operator did them out of over seventy thousand dollars. This man,\ \ who was quite a market factor in his day and a member of the New York Stock\ \ Exchange, made a great name for himself as a bear during the Bryan panic of\ \ \u201996. He was forever running up against Stock Exchange rules that kept him\ \ from carrying out some of his plans at the expense of his fellow members. One\ \ day he figured that there would be no complaints from either the Exchange or\ \ the police authorities if he took from the bucket shops of the land some of\ \ their ill-gotten gains. In the instance I speak of he sent thirty-five men to\ \ act as customers. They went to the main office and to the bigger branches. On\ \ a certain day at a fixed hour the agents all bought as much of a certain stock\ \ as the managers would let them. They had instructions to sneak out at a certain\ \ profit. Of course what he did was to distribute bull tips on that stock among\ \ his cronies and then he went in to the floor of the Stock Exchange and bid up\ \ the price, helped by the room traders, who thought he was a good sport. Being\ \ careful to pick out the right stock for that work, there was no trouble in putting\ \ up the price three or four points. His agents at the bucket shops cashed in\ \ as prearranged. A fellow told me the originator cleaned up seventy thousand\ \ dollars net, and his agents made their expenses and their pay besides. He played\ \ that game several times all over the country, punishing the bigger bucket shops\ \ of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cincinnati and St. Louis. One of\ \ his favorite stocks was Western Union, because it was so easy to move a semiactive\ \ stock like that a few points up or down. His agents bought it at a certain figure,\ \ sold at two points profit, went short and took three points more. By the way,\ \ I read the other day that that man died, poor and obscure. If he had died in\ \ 1896 he would have got at least a column on the first page of every New York\ \ paper. As it was he got two lines on the fifth.\n\n" provider_hint: openrouter metadata: output: path: artifacts/generated/{{ input.slug }}-summary.md kind: generated artifact_id: generated/{{ input.slug }}-summary.md title: '{{ input.title }} Summary' recorded_at: '2026-05-18T22:50:39.954035+00:00'