The Stock Exchange from Within

Every now and then some one who has not given much thought to the matter asks the questions, “Of what real use is the Stock Exchange?” “What does it accomplish?” “Is it a necess...

Somewhere in each one of us lurks Stevenson’s spirit of “divine unrest,” the parent of speculation. To-day, as in wise old Greece in the morning of the world, philosophers sit u...

The operations of “bears” in the great speculative markets and the practice of “short selling” are riddles which the layman but dimly comprehends. Buying in the hope of selling...

“A million in the hands of a single banker is a great power,” said Walter Bagehot; “he can at once lend it where he will, and borrowers can come to him because they know or beli...

If a list of “don’ts” were compiled for the public that is interested in the Stock Exchange, the first prohibition would be “don’t believe all you read in the newspapers”; at le...

A panic is a state of mind. It cannot be regulated by statute law nor preached down by press or pulpit. At such times, suspicion, apprehension, and alarm take possession; reflec...

In the Middle Ages the notion prevailed that there was a just and equitable price for everything, and that any person who tried to obtain more than this price was a sinner. Trad...

The stockbroker’s praises are never sung; if he has good qualities, one seldom hears of them. Doctor Parker once defined the Stock Exchange as the “bottomless pit”: Doctor Johns...

There were Exchanges in London in the sixteenth century. Merchants from Lombardy had given their name to a street, and had flourished so well that they had branched out in the b...

“Patriotism makes it a duty for us to acknowledge the fact that the Bourse represents one of the live forces of France,” wrote Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu in one of the finest tribut...