Buy This Stock Now Before It Is Too Late!

The next problem was what to do. There must be a different way. Could I improve my approach to the stock market? It had been proved to me that it was wrong to listen to nightclub customers, headwaiters, stage-hands. They were only amateurs like myself and, however confidently they offered their tips, they did not know any more about the stock market than I did. I gazed at page after page of my brokerage statements from the stock market, which said: Bought 90 cents, sold 82 ... Bought 65 cents, sold 48

Who could help me to discover the secrets of the stock market? I had started to read Canadian financial publications as well as Canadian stock tables. I had begun increasingly to glance at advisory news sheets, which gave tips about stocks listed on the stock market.

I had already decided that if I was to keep pursuing the stock market, I would need professional help, so I subscribed to some advisory services that gave financial information about the stock market. After all, I reasoned, these were the experts. I would follow their professional advice and quit buying stock on the odd tip from a stranger or an amateur stock-fancier like myself. If I followed their skilled, sensible teaching, I must succeed in the stock market.

There were financial advisory services that offered a trial subscription of four copies of their information-sheets for one dollar. You could have these as a goodwill taste before you began seriously to buy their valuable service. I put down a dozen or so dollars for trial subscriptions and eagerly read the sheets about the stock market.

In New York, there are reputable financial services, but the Canadian sheets that I bought were strictly for the sucker trade. How was I to know this? These financial advice sheets delighted and excited me. They made the stock market speculation sound so urgent and easy.

They would come out with huge headlines saying:

"Buy this stock now before it is too late! " "Buy to the full extent of your resources!"

"If your broker advises you against it, get rid of your broker!"

"This stock will give you a profit of 100% or more!"

This, of course, seemed like real, red-hot information. This was much more authentic than the odd tip picked up in a restaurant.

I read the stock market promotion sheets eagerly. They were always filled with much unselfishness and brotherly love. One of them said: "For the first time in the history of Canadian finance the little fellow will have the fantastic opportunity of getting in on the ground floor of a brilliant new development.

"The plutocrats of Wall Street have been trying to acquire all the stock market shares in our company, but in clear defiance of the evil traditions we are only interested in the participation of investors of moderate means. People like you... "

But this was me! They understood my position in the stock market exactly. I was the typical little fellow to be pitied for the way he was pushed around by the Wall Street plutocrats. I should only have been pitied for my stupidity.

I would rush to the telephone to buy the stock they recommended. It invariably went down. I could not understand this but I was not the slightest bit worried. They must know what they were talking about. The next stock must go up in the stock market. It seldom did.

I did not know it but I was already coming up against one of the great pitfalls of the small operator - the almost insoluble problem of when to enter the stock market. These sudden drops immediately after he has invested his money are one of the most mystifying phenomena facing the amateur. It took me years to realize that when these financial tipsters advise the small operator to buy shares in the stock market, those professionals who have bought the stock much earlier on inside information are selling.

Simultaneously with the withdrawal of the inside-track money, the small sucker money is coming in. They are not firstest with the mostest, but lastest with the leastest. They are far too late to enter the stock market, and their money is always too small to support the stock at its false high point once the professionals are out.

I know this now, but at that time I had no idea why shares behaved like that in the stock market. I thought it was just bad luck that they dropped after I bought them. When I look back I know that I was all set at this period to lose everything I had.  

copyright 2005 The Stock Market
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