36 
Supply and Demand.* Similarly, any stock can 
be solidified by anyone who is sufficiently strong 
financially to absorb the whole floating supply. 
There are also some stocks which are 
permanently solidified in this way and which 
never respond to trade influence. Such 
are stocks of local trading companies and 
local gas and water companies, paying 
steady dividends, whose shares are in a few 
private hands and seldom if ever change 
hands outside the borders of their own 
immediate locality. 
Under these conditions a stock naturally 
ceases to be liquid, and remains unaffected by 
the state of the national trade. 
In selecting stocks for investment it is 
essential to remember that it is the 
geographical position of the country which 
controls the investment demand for the stock 
that has to be considered, and not only the 
geographical position of the security itself. 
For instance, the table which we have given 
in Chapter I. of this book includes the 
Southern Mahratta Railway amongst British 
Trustee stocks. The Southern Mahratta 
* The late Mr. Yerkes was the chief moving spirit of this 
syndicate. He died in 1906. and soon after, the influence of the 
syndicate being removed, Metropolitan District Ordinary fell from 
37^ to 16, to which price they would have fallen long before had 
the above-named influence not existed.