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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
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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"
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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
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title: I Part 2 Summary
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title: I Part 3 Summary
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title: I Part 4 Summary
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title: I Part 5 Summary
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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
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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"
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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"
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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"
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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"
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metadata:
output:
path: artifacts/generated/{{ input.slug }}-summary.md
kind: generated
artifact_id: generated/{{ input.slug }}-summary.md
title: '{{ input.title }} Summary'
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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'
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