In The Early Day I Had Some Trading Challenges

By Carlyle Paul

I wasn't 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't 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 nearby bucket shops and bought some Burlington. Two days later we cashed in. I made a profit of $3.12.

"What did they say to you?" I asked him politely.

"They said, 'You blankety-blank fool, didn't we tell you to take no business from Larry Livingston? And you deliberately let him trim us out of $700!'' He didn't say what else they told him.

I was fifteen when I had my first thousand and laid the cash in front of my mother all 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't quite believe it was real money. She used to worry and fret about it.

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 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 "dope sheets" in my mind. I looked for stock prices to run on form. I had "clocked" them. You know what I mean.

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't refuse my business point-blank, as the small concerns had. Oh, not because it wasn't sportsmanship, but because they knew it would give them a black eye to publish the news that they wouldn't take a fellow's business just because that fellow happened to make a little money.

They didn't 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 I mean straight, as far as the bucket shop went the fluctuations took care of the shoestrings. It doesn't 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't have any trade.

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: "Bot Steel at 90-l/8," it read: "Bot Steel at 91-1/8." Why, that stock could advance a point and a quarter after I bought it and I'd 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. - 23212

About the Author:

Author: Carlyle P. Paul is a an author that is nationally syndicated Learn Forex Trading a basic overview. Take one more step to learn Forex Trading now.