Market share

“ Perhaps, however, the Stock Exchange can best be defined and described as a market. Just as Smithfield is the market for meat and Covent Garden the market for flowers, fruit, and vegetables, so is the Stock Exchange the market for stocks and shares. ”

“ We recognize a short-loan market, a stock exchange, a number of "markets" where lenders and borrowers are brought together by the aid of various intermediaries, such as banks, bill brokers, and stock jobbers, who correspond to dealers in commodities. ”

“ The business of the Stock Exchange may be described as the business of businesses. The institution may be defined as the nerve-centre of the politics and finances of nations, because in this mere market all that makes history is focussed and finds instantaneous expression. It is worthy of being defined as the barometer of their prosperity and adversity, for a glance at the tone of this mere market, whose wares are more mercurial than these of any other mart, suffices to indicate their condition. ”

“ One man, or two, or a hundred cannot make a market, because the immense volume and variety of these securities make it impossible for any unorganized handful of brokers and dealers to determine a fair market price.41 What is required, and what the man whose capital is wanted insists upon, is an organized body of brokers, speculators, and investors competing keenly, seeking to buy cheap and sell dear, gathering and disseminating all the news, and so sharpening the judgment and stimulating the higgling of buyers and sellers as to bring prices to their legitimate level and give them stability. ”

“ This will be especially true of those small and closely-held corporations whose securities are distributed among the original holders and where the direct profit on the output makes the market rate for money a factor more or less negligible. ”

“ In this splendid work of conquering a continent the Stock Exchange has kept pace with the march of industry. It has supplied the one great central market for the expression of the country’s progress as measured by the country’s securities, and it will continue to do so as long as an evergreen faith in America exists among its people. ”

“ But every branch of trade in which the merchant can sell his goods for a price which replaces to him, with the ordinary profits of stock, the whole capital employed in preparing and sending them to market, can be carried on without a bounty. ”

“ At all events, we mailed a few letters to customers explaining the matter, and a business on this basis was commenced and quickly grew to large proportions.
This fact made it dangerous, for the larger the business the greater the risk. We had to continually have an interest in the market either on one side or the other, and if the business was large our interest must be in proportion.
For some time the business was most satisfactory. My judgment of the market was correct, our customers were well pleased, and we made good profits. ”

“ The manner in which the wealth created by the toiling millions, passed through the channels of trade, into the possession of a few wealthy speculators, was illustrated by pictures and printed explanations, in almost endless variety, so that even the most obtuse observers, could not fail to get a clear idea of the practical workings of a system of commercial exchange, under the operation of which, interest, profit and rent were always added to the market price of the product, every time it changed hands. ”

“ While the opening up of what the economists call the 'world market,' has necessitated, as a condition of successful competition, improved methods of production for, and carriage to, the market, a third and less obvious force has effected an important change in the method of distribution in the market. ”

“ If you have much capital invested in trade, divide it into three parts: put one-third into partnerships with men who are permanently located in market boroughs, are trustworthy, and are experienced in business. ”

“ As a matter of Stock Exchange experience such a condition seldom arises, because the Stock Exchange discounts the future, foresees those economic conditions that spell prosperity for the country, and advances the prices of securities on a money market that has not yet felt the demands of improved conditions. ”

“ To corporate enterprise such a market mechanism is a fundamental element in facilitating the successful marshaling of large aggregations of funds that would otherwise be extremely difficult of access. ”

“ Market prices of products and of securities are hourly known in every commercial mart, and the investments of the people extend beyond their own national boundaries into the remotest parts of the earth. ”

“ While the Stock Exchange is in theory a private institution, it fulfills in fact a public function of great national importance.
That function is to afford a free and fair, broad and genuine market for securities and particularly for the tokens of the industrial wealth and enterprise of the country, i.e., stocks and bonds of corporations. ”

“ When this corporation was first organized I subscribed for some stock and was in its first board of directors and its vice-president. If there was to be a new source of supply of the commodity I dealt in so largely, it was important I should know of it. As soon as I became satisfied that it was nothing but a scheme to make money by the sale of stock, I resigned and disposed of my holdings to one of the promoters at a profit of eight dollars per share. ”

“ If we look about us to-day we find in all the great centres of the world Stock Exchanges at work in this important field. We find that just in proportion to the confidence which a country feels in the strength and uprightness of such a market, so enterprise goes forward with vigor, and so the national wealth increases. ”

“ Hence we see that just as every farmer in the West and every cotton-grower in the South must have a stable market for his products, so every laborer in our great industrial field is directly concerned with the maintenance of a stable market for the securities of the company that employs him. The interests of one are the interests of all, and speculation, in one form or another, underlies all industrial progress. ”

“ In this way has the Stock Market been established and forced from its original situation by a set of jobbers and brokers, who are all, it will be seen, interested in keeping their transactions from the eye of the public. These men being always ready either to buy or sell, renders it easy for the brokers to get their business done, having no trouble but merely stepping into the Stock Exchange. ”

“ This is accomplished by a species of middlemen or factors, persons possessing some capital, who, whenever the price of any of the articles in which they deal is greatly reduced, purchase it on their own account, in the hopes of selling at a profit when the market is better. These persons, in ordinary times, act as salesmen or agents, and make up assortments of goods at the market price, for the use of the home or foreign dealer. ”

“ It frequently happens that money to a considerable amount is brought into the country, is there actually invested as capital, and again flows out, without having ever once acted upon the markets of commodities, but only upon the market of securities, or, as it is commonly though improperly called, the money market. ”

“ In large cities the brokers naturally unite for convenience of business in the so-called stock exchange, in which the market price of all current forms of indebtedness or deferred payments is fixed from day to day, or from hour to hour, by the higgling of the market, just as the price of produce is fixed in the produce exchange. Naturally, as in the case of produce, a fictitious business, purely speculative, grows up around the legitimate dealing [pg 163] in stocks and bonds. ”

“ The balance between consumption and production makes price. The market settles, and alone can settle, that price. Market is the meeting and conference of the consumer and producer, when they mutually discover each other's wants. Nobody, I believe, has observed with any reflection what market is, without being astonished at the truth, the correctness, the celerity, the general equity, with which the balance of wants is settled. ”

“ The flow of capital into businesses yielding the largest returns; the buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest; the introduction of more economical modes of manufacture; the development of better agencies for distribution; and all those variations in the currents of trade that are noted in our newspapers and telegrams from hour to hour; exhibit movement taking place in directions where it is met by the smallest total of opposing forces. ”

“ It is true that the rate of profits depends upon the scanty or abundant supply of capital compared with the means of employing it profitably,—and these means will as you say upon the common principles of supply and demand be increased either by a diminution of capital or by an extension of the market for it. ”

“ Of late years there has been a marked tendency towards the formation of large corporations that buy up a very large proportion of competing manufacturing plant, and in this way secure at least a temporary monopoly of the market. ”

“ Capital then takes hold cheerfully; there is a market for the new securities and a proper basis for fresh commercial development, because investors and speculators have learned from the published daily quotations of these Stock Exchange securities that there is good warrant for the flow of capital into such channels, and that a reasonably safe return will follow an investment in them. ”

“ Buyers seek the largest market they can get in order to obtain the lowest prices; sellers, in order to obtain the highest prices; and so it was learned long ago that economy of time and labor, as well as a theoretically perfect market, could be best secured by an organization under one roof of as many dealers in a commodity as could be found.2 Bear in mind that this result, moreover, is best accomplished when the organization is so controlled by rigid rules of business morality as to insure to every one who does business there, great and small, rich and poor, an absolutely square deal. ”

“ If the goodwill of the concern makes a great and rapid gain, e.g. through manoeuvres which put it in a position of monopoly or through changes in the goods market which greatly increase the demand for the concern's product, and the like, it is the quotation of the common stock that measures and registers the advantage which thereby accrues to the concern, and the market fluctuation of the common stock is likewise the instrument by means of which manipulations are carried through that affect these intangible assets. ”

“ It is also argued that to determine whether it is better to manufacture or to buy goods in the open market, and whether it is better policy to manufacture by means of expensive machinery and other equipment or by manual labor, interest on investment must be considered. ”

“ STOCKHOLDERS Or it may be that the manufacturing company does not ask the capitalist to assist, but itself goes to the small investor with a prospectus of the enterprise, and offers to sell stock in the concern at $50 or $100 a share, as the case may be. ”

“ In such a market every purchase is made with the most thorough acquaintance with the conditions involved. Each dealer, each broker, each speculator, strives to obtain the best knowledge7 of the supply and demand, and the earliest news that may affect it, and each buyer or seller has an equal and a fair opportunity to profit by the resultant effect on the market of all these various agencies. The larger the body of brokers and traders, then, the more accurate the standards of value thus created. ”

“ Those outlets, though statistically unimportant from the point of view of the national market, could be a matter of life and death to small, local enterprises.
The largest market which must be taken for comparison is the market actually reached by the company which is being absorbed. ”

“ Production on a large scale is greatly promoted by the practice of forming a large capital by the combination of many small contributions; or, in other words, by the formation of joint stock companies. The advantages of the joint stock principle are numerous and important. ”

“ Contrary to the prevailing notion that there is no public utility in anything which does not produce something, or that does not transform and improve products by the processes of manufacture, or interchange them by the operations of commerce, the Stock Exchange is an institution of the highest utility and of vital necessity in an age and country of progress, of commercial and financial activity and of material development. ”

“ The more speculators there are trading in any particular security, the greater is the opportunity to learn the real conditions of the undertaking. Private investors, from a study of the speculative market in the securities they own, receive in this way a continuous market opinion on the condition of the corporations in which they are shareholders.”11
Another great service rendered by the Stock Exchange is the means it affords of readily transferring22 securities from hand to hand. ”

“ These laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market. ”

“ If seventy men are constituted sole managers of a market for 130,000,000,000 francs of transferable securities, one of two things is sure to happen; either a public market will establish itself outside these seventy men, or the seventy will prevent the establishment of the public market. ”

“ Each is interpreted in the market as reliable, competent, or creative in view of the pragmatics of the transaction: Some people need a good used car, some a cheap, used computer, others a leather wallet, others an education or counsel. The forms of interpretation in the market are diverse and range from simple observation of the market to direct involvement in market mechanisms through products, exchange of goods, or legislation. ”