The work of the Stock Exchange

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1831284952

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-225876

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Meeker, James Edward http://d-nb.info/gnd/126597340

Title:: The work of the Stock Exchange

Edition:: Revised edition

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: The Ronald Press Company

Year of publication:: [1930]

Scope:: XVI, 720 Seiten; Illustrationen, Diagramme

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter V. The dangers and benefits of stock speculation

Collection:: Economics Books

STOCK SPECULATION—DANGERS AND BENEFITS 135 fiction-writers, speculative losses in securities simply deprive the individual of a part of his surplus funds, just as financial losses arising from business or investments do. Yet such losses only too often cause hardships, not merely to the specu- lators themselves, but to their families and dependents, for whose sake, perhaps, they mistakenly engaged in the risks of speculation with inadequate knowledge of securities, of busi- ness, or of those vast economic factors which shape prices in all the markets of the world. Such losses by people who can ill afford them are the real source of the considerable public prejudice against speculation and stock exchanges, and indeed are profoundly human and moving to any man who has been long in Wall Street. Furthermore, speculation is only too apt to distract the ordinary business man from his regular work. He becomes possessed of “an impatience to be rich, a contempt for those slow but sure gains which are the proper reward of industry, patience, and thrift.”** If he has a weak and vacillating char- acter, he is always fidgeting to finger a ticker tape. Often he is utterly ignorant of the economic currents and cross-currents to which he is so blithely entrusting his funds. In fact, he is apt to be the first to deny the significance of economic laws and principles as they affect security prices, and declare cynically that “It’s all a gamble, anyway.” Or else he will assume an owlish wisdom and discourse, with the jargon of “the Street,” on a nondescript lot of economic fallacies and platitudes. It is this type of individual who almost always loses his money in the end. Speculation Impossible to “Abolish.”—Because of the all too frequent losses which men suffer by overtrading which they cannot afford, and also because of the deteriorating effect of speculation on weak and shallow natures, many honest and sincere, but short-sighted and hasty, people rush to the con- clusion that speculation and speculative markets should be "16 Macaulay, “History of England.” Ch. XIX.

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