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

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter XVII. The stock exchange and American business

Collection:: Economics Books

476 THE WORK OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE and every other pleasing personification of the forces of evil that mankind has ever evoked in order to shudder at. Par- ticularly villainous in this demonic financial company is the “bear raider,” who in the popular mind combines the daring bloodthirstiness of Captain Kidd with the grisly hideousness of Fi-fo-fum. Such conceptions are an immemorial heritage of the human imagination. After the bear raider has changed his smart metropolitan attire for a tropical costume, the West Indian negro voodoo-worshipper is waiting to sacrifice his white cock to him. And so it goes. The Human-Interest Factor in News.—If these supposed personal factors in the stock market are to such a degree mythi- cal and imaginary, it might well be asked why the papers con- tinually give this personal flavor to what should be a cold, im- personal, and statistical account of the stock market. The younger and less experienced reporters and editors can hardly be blamed if they quite sincerely believe some of the commoner myths of Wall Street, particularly when it is realized that even members of the Exchange themselves occasionally lapse into this almost instinctive and yet fallacious mode of thought. The older financial writers, as a matter of fact, are well aware of the impersonal economic forces which really create Stock Ex- change prices. Nevertheless, they help more or less to keep alive these superstitious myths which haunt the market place, because after all they have to write in a language which the great mass of people can understand. If an editor states that, “The short interest having been depleted by previous covering, liquidation and short selling found little resistance, and lower prices resulted,” he might in a given case quite accurately describe the factors in the market making for a price decline. But lest such technical abstractions prove “caviar to the gen- eral,” he will usually garnish his report with an inaccurate but vastly more appealing human-interest motif. He will hint at “a prominent bear raider” to whom the decline may be attrib- ated, or suggest that the “Waldorf crowd” or the “Palm Beach

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