Stock

“ If the market was for any reason active, the brokers and their agents were apt to be more numerous than if it were dull and the trading indifferent. A gong sounded the call to trading at ten o’clock, and if there was a noticeable rise or decline in a stock or a group of stocks, you were apt to witness quite a spirited scene. Fifty to a hundred men would shout, gesticulate, shove here and there in an apparently aimless manner; endeavoring to take advantage of the stock offered or called for. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As soon as stock has accumulated in the hands of particular persons, some of them will naturally employ it in setting to work industrious people, whom they will supply with materials and subsistence, in order to make a profit by the sale of their work, or by what their labour adds to the value of the materials. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The issue of capital stock is the putting of the incomes of wealth into marketable form. Stock companies, or corporations, are business enterprises which issue stock, or certificates of a share in their wealth and income. Doubtless the convenience of the sale and transfer of invested capital [Pg 128] by the use of stock, has been one of several reasons for the large increase of this form of organization during the past century. ”

“ The profits of stock seem to be very little affected by the easiness or difficulty of learning the trade in which it is employed. All the different ways in which stock is commonly employed in great towns seem, in reality, to be almost equally easy and equally difficult to learn. One branch, either of foreign or domestic trade, cannot well be a much more intricate business than another. ”

“ The profits of stock, it may perhaps be thought, are only a different name for the wages of a particular sort of labor, the labor of inspection and direction. They are, however, altogether different, are regulated by quite different principles, and bear no proportion to the quantity, the hardship, or the ingenuity of this supposed labor of inspection and direction. They are regulated altogether by the value of the stock employed, and are greater or smaller in proportion to the extent of this stock. ”

“ In order to bring more forcibly home to the mind of a man who may know nothing of Stock Exchange matters, the wisdom of imprinting upon his understanding the uselessness, in the long run, of playing at what is nothing better than pitch-and-toss, we will just sketch a case in point as an instance:—Supposing a speculator to enter the office of a stock broker. ”

“ The stock which must commonly be employed, the food, clothes and lodging which must commonly be consumed in bringing them from the mine to the market, determine it. It must at least be sufficient to replace that stock, with the ordinary profits. ”

“ That is to say, if ten thousand purchasers throughout the country should buy even small amounts of a certain stock on a given day, the combined effect of all these purchases would undoubtedly lift its price on the Stock Exchange, and thus we see that each buyer’s action carries with it a privilege of no inconsiderable proportions. ”

“ The agents of production, land, capital, and labour, derive their value from the value of their products, ultimately, therefore, from the utility of those products. As stock is valued by the expected dividend, so is the field by the expected crop. ”

“ In the second, I have endeavoured to explain the nature and operation of money, considered as a particular branch of the general stock of the society. The stock which is accumulated into a capital, may either be employed by the person to whom it belongs, or it may be lent to some other person. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Stock Exchange supports its own hospital wards, its own lifeboats, its boys' home, and so on.
Except in the vague idea of the puritanical faddist, the Stock Exchange is an institution as lovable as it is fascinating. It may be, and often is, the cause of ruin to those who abuse its facilities—to those who are gamblers rather than either investors or speculators. It is quite easy to draw the line between the three classes of business, or rather, the two classes of business and the one class of folly. ”

“ Then the cunning jobber had another set of men employed on purpose to buy, but with privacy and caution, all the stock they could lay their hands on; till, by selling ten thousand pounds at four or five per cent. loss, he would buy a hundred thousand pounds stock at ten or twelve per cent. under price; and, in a few weeks, by just the contrary method, set them all buying, and then sell them their own stock again at ten or twelve per cent. profit. ”

“ In one or other, or all of these three articles, consists the stock which men commonly reserve for their own immediate consumption.
There are two different ways in which a capital may be employed so as to yield a revenue or profit to its employer. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is conceivable that a block of stocks may pass through many hands before it arrives at its ultimate owner, just as a crop of potatoes passes through a long chain of handlers and buyers and dealers before it reaches the ultimate consumer. ”

“ Suppose that the information afforded by public quotations on the stock and produce exchanges were wiped from the slate of human knowledge. How would the average man, how even would a man with the intelligence and foresight of a Pierpont Morgan, determine how new capital should be invested? ”

“ What is stock? says one, unhappily, in consequence of his own laziness and ill-luck, or of the laziness and ill-luck of his fathers before him, not a holder of such. Stock, O benighted individual, is a term applied to the various funds which constitute the National Debt, the interest on which is paid half-yearly. Few persons buy or sell stock except through a broker, and this is the original business of the stockbroker, and it was for this the Stock Exchange was erected in 1803. It is only since the peace that the present immense traffic has sprung up in miscellaneous and railway shares. ”

“ It must be remembered that it is the stock of gold and not the annual production which influences the price level; and that the stock will probably continue to increase for many years after the production has begun to decline,—as long, in fact, as production keeps above consumption. ”

“ If the stock is much larger at the end of the second year than at the end of the first, it might indicate that the business man is speculating in merchandise, that he considers the buyer’s market during the year particularly favorable and has laid in an abnormally large stock. A banker with large experience in similar businesses can formulate a fairly accurate judgment of how much working capital a concern should have invested in merchandise. ”

“ The public will absorb the common stock—on which dividends are probable. We may be extravagant in paying for the mills which shall form our nucleus—but when we have demonstrated our power"—an ungenial smile crossed his face—"we shall be able to recoup by acquiring other properties at bargain prices." ”

“ Nothing, I submit, can be plainer than the fact that the value of the capital stock of a corporation represents all its property, franchises, good will,-indeed, everything owned by it wherever situated. ”

“ If the supply, or present stock in hand, be entirely in the possession of one person, he will naturally endeavour to put such a price upon it as shall produce by its sale the greatest quantity of money; but he will be guided in this estimate of the price at which he will sell, both by the knowledge that increased price will cause a diminished consumption, and by the desire to realize his profit before a new supply shall reach the market from some other quarter. ”

“ A stock is bought up freely at New York because London is taking large amounts of it; a day or two later, the deliveries show that large holders connected 203with the management are unloading on the foreign market upon knowledge of facts damaging to the prospects of the property; the late buyers then rush to realize, and pocket a loss instead of a profit. ”

“ Persons who wonder at the magnitude of Stock Exchange transactions, and who jump to hasty conclusions as to the actual capital involved, may well reflect upon the manner in which this method reduces to a minimum the stockbroker’s drafts upon the banks. ”

“ Immense storerooms for keeping finished stock are shown with pride, unmindful of the fact that every dollar's worth of unnecessary stock on the shelves in the stockroom, every dollar's worth of unnecessary work in the plant, represents idle money and faulty management. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The number of persons who deal in the 3 per cent stock being large, any one desirous of selling can always dispose of his stock at one-eighth per cent under the market price; but those who wish to dispose of bank stock, or of any other securities of more limited circulation, are obliged to make a sacrifice of eight or ten times this amount upon each hundred pounds value. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They are having fresh supplies weekly, and are going to keep a large, well-selected stock constantly on hand, to wit, "field-hands, house-servants, mechanics, cooks, seamstresses, washers, ironers, etc."
Let us respectfully inquire what is the process by which a trader acquires a well-selected stock. He goes to Virginia to select. He has had orders, say, for one dozen cooks, for half a dozen carpenters, for so many house-servants, &c. &c. Each one of these individuals have their own ties; besides being cooks, carpenters and house-servants, they are also fathers, mothers, husbands, wives ”

“ The young corn is beginning to clothe the naked furrow, and the various fruits of the earth are appearing, which only to read and hear of is to fill the eye with a sense of plenty that half converts a Tory Stock Exchange operator into an ultra-radical speculator. ”

“ OPTION DEALING There is a class of business, in which some freely indulge on the Stock Exchange, which, if transacted cautiously, results in the limitation of losses, whilst providing full scope for Bull and Bear proclivities and a great deal of fascination for the skilful operator. This class of business is called option dealing, and although it is not practised to nearly the same extent as is ordinary speculative buying and selling, perhaps because of its intricacies, the fact that it is full of fascination attracts to it many staunch votaries. ”

“ A great majority of them will fling their stock instantly on the market, determined to realise whatever they can on it. That stock my people will purchase, and at once those who sold are out of the running. ”

“ Pessimists may blind their eyes to the manifold evidences of material progress on every hand, but just as the workshop, the farm, the school, the hospital, and the bank, each supplies proof of continuing improvement, so also in its sphere of usefulness does the Stock Exchange. ”

“ Stocks, in the American sense of the term, are properties consisting of shares in joint stock companies or corporations, or in the obligations of a government for its funded debt. In England, government obligations only, are called “stocks,” and the obligations of companies or corporations are called “shares.” ”

“ As the majority of these exhibitors of stock had no special knowledge of stock, they were compelled to place themselves entirely in the hands of their managers and stockman, who generally received by arrangement a certain percentage of the prize money won by the stock. ”