ONE-WAY POCKETS: The Book of Books on Wall Street Speculation

By Don Guyon

The circulation of a mere rumor that the Morgan interests are accumulating Steel or that the Standard Oil crowd is getting out of St. Paul is sure at any time to create a market following. Most of the tips that are hawked about the Street are based on the supposition that somebody-or-other of consequence is buying or selling certain stocks. I do not know of a single case where anyone has been able to make money consistently by following information of this character, even when the information comes to him first hand. -from "A Speculative Decision" In 1917, an insider at a Wall Street brokerage firm took a close look at his company's most active traders and analyzed their trades to glean the secrets of their success... and what he found is still applicable today. Writing pseudonymously, he here offers a wide range of sage advice about: . buying on the way down . determining trends . how a bull market starts . the correct use of stop orders . when and what to sell short . and more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cosimo Classics
• Release date: Dec 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781616409753

Book preview

ONE-WAY POCKETS:

THE BOOK OF BOOKS ON

WALL STREET SPECULATION

By Don Guyon

New York

ONE-WAY POCKETS: The Book of Books on Wall Street Speculationwas originally published by Capstone Publishing Company in 1917. Cover © 2005 Cosimo, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

Cover design by www.wiselephant.com

ISBN: 978-1-61640-975-3

Table of Contents

ONE-WAY POCKETS

The Ninety-five Per Cent

A Speculative Delusion

Detecting Bad Buying and Selling

Losses in War Brides

What the Order Book Showed

Buying on the Way Down

Waves of Public Buying and Selling

The Same Speculative Errors

Coppering the Public

Determining the Trend

How a Bull Market Starts

The Bell Cow

Anent Order Cancellations

The Menace of News

The Correct Use of Stop Orders

Seeing the First Reaction Through

The First Selling Point

The Great Distributive Stage

When and What to Sell Short

Covering Shorts Too Soon

The Effect of Short Sales

Playing for a Pull

The Method and the Man

ONE-WAY POCKETS

The Ninety-five Per Cent

AT the fag-end of the never-to-be-forgotten war brides market, or, to be more exact, in December, 1915, I began in a casual sort of way to analyze the accounts of half a dozen of the firm’s most active traders. Like the great majority of our customers, these traders had been bullish on the munition and standard industrial stocks during the great speculative boom of that year, and now, with the stocks in which they had been operating up from 15 to 100 points each, their profits were relatively small and their commitments larger than at any preceding stage of the movement.

This in itself was not a Wall Street phenomenon. The same condition prevailed in most of our active accounts and, in fact, had prevailed at the top of every bull market throughout my experience in the brokerage business. It was obvious that the precepts so sagely laid down by writers of market letters and authors of works on speculation had been disregarded or forgotten by the public. The latter had been told time and again to buy securities when they are low and to sell them when they are high; to take small losses’; and large profits; to avoid over-trading," and to do many other equally indefinite things which seem so easy to do when one embarks on a speculative venture that all thought of actually doing them is soon forgotten.

These venerable Wall Street dos and don’ts have always reminded me of the "Stop! Look!