Introduction 
XIX 
the New York Stock Exchange by an estimated 
$26,000,000,000. 
In the bull market stocks had reached a level more 
than double that of 1926—that is, the prices on the 
average of stocks on the New York Exchange had 
risen by more than 100 per cent in three short years. 
Before the November panic, the stock price level was 
not only twice the level of 1926, but nearly four times 
the level of 1913, before the war. 
And that is not all. What has just been said 
applies to stocks which were simply ‘“held,” so to 
speak. If an investor had bought stocks in 1913 and 
held them in his strong-box until September, 1929, 
he would have had $400 for every $100 invested six- 
teen years before, and he would have had $200 for 
every $100 invested in 1926. Moreover, while 
stocks ‘‘held” in this way increased on the average at 
a tremendous rate, stocks in active tradings among 
the market leaders increased still faster. To be 
specific, if in 1926 a trader, as distinguished from 
a strong-box holder, had bought stocks which were 
then market favorites and had changed his holdings 
from week to week, so as each week to possess those 
which had proved most popular that week, instead of 
having merely the $200 for every $100 invested in 
1926, as the strong-box holder had, he, the trader, 
would have $1,000 for every $100 of his original 
investment. These statements are evidenced by my 
two weekly indexes of stocks held and stocks 
traded—called the Investors’ Index and the Traders’ 
Index.