The Psychology of Speculation. English-only reading by default; switch among English, Chinese, and Spanish, or compare languages side by side.
This chapter examines EVEN THE STOCK MARKET HAS ITS FARCICAL SIDE, using the author’s early-twentieth-century investment framework to explain how investors were expected to judge security quality, income, risk, and market conditions. It opens from the chapter’s own discussion: Some of the stock market philosophies and inventions are quite amusing to the unsophisticated onlooker. When the Amalgamated Copper Company and the Anaconda Copper Company were under separate management a clique of traders became interested in advancing the market price of the latter stock, and forthwith the tipsters and rumor-mongers circulated a report that Amalgamated was buying Anaconda for control.
Readers studying financial history, investment education, and the chapter’s specific subject—clique of traders, pool members, unload holdings—will get the most from this section. It is not suitable as a modern trading or investment checklist.
Read this chapter as historical investment education. The market rules, disclosure practices, securities, commissions, interest-rate conditions, and investor protections around clique of traders, pool members, unload holdings may differ sharply from modern markets.