22 
The dominating force which controls the 
realisable value of all stocks and shares 
principally held in any one country is the 
spending and saving power of the people of 
that country. The extent of this spending 
and saving power, again, depends upon the 
state of trade of the country. 
The reason for this is that whenever trade 
is good the earnings of the money-saving 
classes exceed their immediate wants ; they 
therefore hoard their surplus earnings. Pre 
cisely as these surplus earnings increase with 
good trade, so do they dwindle during periods 
of trade depression. Thus the saving power 
of any nation entirely depends upon the pro 
ductiveness of its trade. While trade con 
tinues to be active, a large portion of these 
surplus earnings finds its way back into trade, 
the effect of which is to further augment the 
gross earnings and thus again add to the 
savings ; and so on the whole time of the 
trade boom. As soon as trade begins to 
slacken, and requires less capital to keep it 
going, these accumulated savings are set free 
and an investment outlet has to be found for 
• them. 
In addition to the savings of traders there 
are the savings of a large number of pro 
fessional people. The amount of money which