DIFFERENT CLASSES OF CORPORATIONS 93 
proving or declining. By studying the sales as they 
appear each night in his evening paper, he seems, 
by an almost supernatural intuition, to always 
know the sentiment on the Boston Stock Exchange, 
although he has not been to Boston for many years. 
Diversification 
It doubtless is wise to distribute one’s money 
among a fair number of investments; but certainly 
it is not wise to buy anything which is not known 
to be absolutely good, even for the purpose of 
distributing the risk. It is much better to buy 
a certain number of securities at one time, and 
then base one’s buying and selling simply on the 
average price of this list, irrespective of the indi 
vidual price of any one of the securities. 
More railroad stocks and less miscellaneous stocks 
than given in the above list should be purchased. 
With the above mentioned $100,000 to invest, in 
stead of placing only $20,000 in railroad stocks and 
$80,000 in the stocks of miscellaneous corporations, 
half if not three-fourths might well have been in 
vested in railroad stocks. Of course, many may 
object to this, especially at a time when railroads 
ai;e being harassed by the government and their 
securities are in ill repute. This, however, is not 
a logical reason for not purchasing such stocks un 
less as many think, railroad securities will be in 
still worse repute some time later. It may be frankly 
stated that the best time to purchase good railroad 
or any other good stocks is when such stocks are 
in disrepute, and there are more sellers than