New Levels in the Stock Market by Charles Amos Dice

Get the Book: eBook

The Notes

• The book was published in 1929 before the Great Crash.
• The author wrote the book for “constructive” investors “taking a long point of view, try to profit by the movement of the market over the next 2 or 3 years” or “others trade only on the ‘long pull,’ buying stocks when prices are low and holding them year after year to share in the long-time growth of business.”
• “It is the thesis of this book that stocks have moved from a lower level, occupied from 1906 to 1923, to a relatively much higher level which will be permanent for some years to come. Prices will remain on a high plane. This thesis, however, does not imply that we are through with major declines and advances… We shall have them but they will play their part on a new general level of stock prices just as the major cycles of the market from 1906 to 1923 moved with reference to a level higher than that which obtained before 1903.”
• “The progeny of success is legion. Business prosperity multiplies its benefactions; a rising stock market breeds the optimism that gives impulse to masterly advances.”
• The author credits the gradual rise in public interest in stocks combined with easy access to leverage led to a buy the dip mentality that “underwrote the market.”
  • He highlights market declines that got smaller throughout the period 1926 to early 1929. (DJIA)
  • March 1926 – 16.3% decline.
  • October 1926 – 12.4% decline.
  • October 1927 – 9.8% decline.
  • June 1928 – 8.6% decline.
  • December 1928 – 13.1% decline.
  • May 1929 – 10.4% decline.
• “There is no institution in this country that is so sensitive to all economic changes and social and psychological developments as the Stock Market. Almost at once it registers on the ticker tape every hope and fear, every constructive plan or destructive scheme, every surge of confidence or every wave of alarm. Nothing significant escapes it for long. The ticker registers the pulse of the nation, in so far as it can be interpreted and recorded, in terms of dollars and cents.”
• “A study of the past often reveals factors and forces that are significant for the future. Though history never repeats itself in all respects yet complete novelty is very rare.”
• “The movement of stock prices is made up of four distinct factors. These factors are: (1) a general trend, (2) cyclical movements or major fluctuations superimposed upon the general trend, (3) secondary movements, and (4) accidental or temporary movements.”
• “Society is usually quite ready to condemn the bear and restrict his operation on the short side when drastic liquidation is under way and values are disappearing over night, but society is ever ready to encourage the bear and give him the keys of the city when the bulls are rampant and values are being pushed to the sky.”
• “During the transitional markets it is typical that those who are most market-wise make the least money. They are baffled, their courage vanishes, they are in confusion. It is only after the market has gone upward that they begin to realize that something new and bigger is in process and they too, even if very belated, rush into the market to retrieve their earlier losses… But now, having thrown aside their measures of conservative action, they also fling caution to the winds. What else can they do? They have nothing to guide their steps.”
• “Enterprising men throughout the country are constantly registering their hopes and fears, their convictions and doubts, their optimism and pessimism in the market by their purchase and sale of stocks and bonds.”
• “The elder Morgan is reputed to have made the cautious observation that whatever the market may do it will be certain to fluctuate. He might have added with equal truth that at certain times its fluctuations will be much more violent than at others.”
• “The background of a great stock and bond market is always a business situation of proportionate activity and promise.”
• “A further warning lies in the fact that years of prosperity lead to unreasonable optimism.”
• “Today, we have our partial-payment plans, and our installment credit systems in great profusion. Always, the extension of consumer credit has been one of the means of getting larger purchases by the consumers. Easy credit plans break down sales resistance… The amount of installment credit outstanding at any time has been estimated variously from $ 4,000,000,000, to 7,000,000,000 and $8,000,000,000.”
• “A well-diversified list of securities covering many industries and sections of the world is one of the best means of a constant flow of interest and dividends. A large, well-diversified holding of securities forms a buffer against the fluctuations in the earnings of the corporation concerned.”
• “The student of economic affairs should be wary of simple explanations. His analysis of business situations should have taught him, long since, that every situation involves many factors, some being causes and others effects. The truths of our economic world rarely come in small packages. They come in complex form.”
• “As we get farther away from the mere satisfaction of hunger, the more the future means to us and the more we will bestir ourselves to provide for needs of that future.”
• “‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ is a strenuous life.”
• Dow Jones Averages
  • Industrials index
    • Created in 1896 made up of 12 industrial stocks.
    • 8 stocks were added in 1916.
    • 10 stocks were added October 1, 1928.
  • Railroad index
    • Created in 1896 made up of 20 railroad stocks.
• 1928
  • “During the year 1928, du Pont went from 310 to 525, was 157 in 1926; Case Threshing Machine, from 247 to 515, was 62½ in 1926; New York and Harlem, from 168 to 505; Radio Corporation of America , from 85 1/4 to 420 was 49 in May, 1927; American Express, from 195 to 425, was 105 7/8 in 1926; American Smelting and Refining, from 169 to 293, was 109 5/8 in 1926; Hocking Valley Railway, from 340 to 473, was 147 in 1926; International Nickel, from 1942 to 275, was 38 1/4 in 1927; International Harvester, from 224 to 394 3/4, was 112 1/4 in 1926; Motor Products, from 94 to 218 3/4; Montgomery Ward, from 117 to 439 7/8, was 603 3/8 in 1927; Sears, Roebuck, from 82 1/8 to 197 1/2, was 51 in 1927; Utah Copper, from 139 to 260, was 93 in 1926; Wright Aeronautic, from 69 to 289, was 24 1/2 in 1927.”
  • “No such galaxy of shooting stars of the first magnitude has ever occurred in the firmament of the heavens. The oldest and most tried prognosticators have been put to confusion by the brilliance of the spectacle. Never before has sheer luck been so large a factor in the gains of successful humans.”
  • “Before 1925, by far the most active year, was the tremendous market of 1919 with a total of 313,000,000 shares. The total for 1927 was 557,000,000 and for 1928, 922,000,000 shares.” (NYSE)
  • “The Chicago Stock Exchange, during 1928, listed the stocks of 205, and the bonds of 89, corporations. Trading amounted to nearly 40,000,000 shares compared to 10,600,000 shares in 1927.”
  • “In August 1927, memberships in the Chicago Stock Exchange were priced at $3,000. By January 1928, the price was up to $22,000, and in November, to $75,000.”
  • “Since 1913 the number of different issues of stocks has more than doubled, increasing from 521 on Jan. 1, 1913, to 1,332, Jan. 1, 1929… During 1928, the number of new issues of stocks and bonds listed totaled 469 compared to 405 in 1927.” (NYSE)
  • “From June 30, 1925, to June 30, 1928, commercial loans to all member banks of the Federal Reserve System increased only about $600,000,000, while loans secured by stocks and bonds other than government obligations increased four times as much.”
  • 55% of new capital issues was done with new shares issuance in 1928.
  • NYSE bond sales fell below the 1927 totals by $500,000,000. 1928 sales were exceeded each of the prior 10 years, except 1923. 1928 bond sales were 25% less than 1922. Stocks were the rage.
  • Over half of all new securities issued were stocks. Prior years, new bonds and notes dominated.
  • Corporations, out-of-town banks, individuals, firms, and foreign agencies took advantage of the higher interest rates on brokers’ loans and margin loans compared to Liberty bonds and rates paid by banks. Liberty bonds paid about 2 – 3%.
• 1929
  • “The average prices of leading industrial stocks on August 3, 1929, stood about 4.0 times as high as in 1923.”
  • “1929 promises still larger things with 541,650,000 shares sold the first 6 months.” (NYSE)
  • “As recently as July or August 1924, a seat might have been bought for $76,000. From that point the price was carried up to $625,000 in January 1929.” (NYSE)
  • “Early in February 1929, however, with sales running above 5,000,000 shares day after day, the membership voted to increase the number of members by 25%, or 275, making a total of 1,375 members.” (NYSE)
  • Q1 1929 saw 70% of new capital issues done through share issuance.
  • Pennsylvania Railroad Company had 157,650 names in its stockholder list, averaging about 71.35 shares per shareholder.
  • US Steel Corporation had about 100,000 individual shareholders.
  • Standard Gas & Electric Company had over 285,000 stock and bondholders.
  • “Recent studies by Professor Irving Fisher show that 1,000,000 new stockholders have been registered within the last 5 years on the books of corporations listed on the New York Stock Exchange. A frequently quoted estimate puts the total number of security holders at 15,000,000. A study made by the United States Treasury, September 1928, shows that this estimate is too high and that 4,000,000 is nearer the truth.”
  • Investment trust bonds yielded from 5.15% to 6.50%. Investment trust preferreds yielded from 6% to 7%.
  • “Many [investment trust] stocks are selling much above the liquidating value of the assets behind them. Stocks of investment companies were intended as investments for people of moderate means, but many have been subject to the same speculative maneuvers typical of the stock market. Prices of the stocks of quite a few investment trust companies seem entirely too high.”
  • “Short-swing trading in stocks has occupied the attention and considerable of the time of the managers of many investment trust companies during the last 12 months and longer. The activity of the stock market and the opportunities for speculative profits, which it afforded, proved too great a temptation, and the managers of many trusts had to participate.”
• Chain Stores
  • Began popping up pre-WWI with Woolworth, Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, United Cigar Stores and United Drug Stores.
  • By 1929, there were 34 grocery chains with about 30,000 stores, 14 chains of 5-cent and 10-cent stores with about 3,250 stores, 5 apparel chains with 1,275 stores, 13 drug chains with over 1,000 stores, 4 cigar chains with about 3,650 stores, 7 shoe chains with 700 stores, 4 candy chains with 300 stores.
  • Chains existed in movie theaters, bakeries, hotels, laundries, hardware, and more.
  • Montgomery Ward was adding 200 stores per year.
• Investment Trusts
  • “The establishment of investment trusts by banks, banking houses, and by independent groups has almost become a fad. Every week sees new trusts offering the public their securities. The public appetite for them seems to grow even more rapidly than the trusts. They represent a buying power in the market which appears to be without a saturation point.”
  • Most investment trusts were organized as corporations not trusts.
  • The trusts issued common stock, preferred stock, and bonds.
  • Trusts came in several forms.
    • Fixed – trust owned select stocks and management had no say on buying or selling.
    • Limited – well-defined limits existed that management must operate within. For example, limits on percentage of funds in stocks or bonds.
    • Specialized – usually focused on one industry like banks or oil companies.
    • General – management could invest funds as they saw fit.
  • British Investment Trusts
    • First trust was organized in the 1860s.
    • 18 trusts listed on the London Stock Exchange by 1888.
    • “The investment trust became the one panacea for all their investment troubles. England was prosperous in the latter ‘eighties and the trust promoters profited by the frenzy with which Englishmen were seized. The golden age of investments seemed to have come. By 1890 the mania was at its height. The trusts were flooded with funds and, finding difficulty in securing the best bonds and stocks, they bought securities of low grade. Furthermore, they bought the securities of each other, thus causing prices to mount and speculation in trust securities to predominate. Pyramids of interdependent investment trusts were built one upon the other, and accounts were often doctored to maintain the show of high earnings.”
    • The British Trust Mania ended after 1890.
    • “In February, 1893, the London Economist, in referring to the unfortunate situation among the investment companies stated: ‘It may be said with truth that, having sown the wind, they are now reaping the whirlwind.’ It was not until 1896 that the investment trusts were again making headway.”
    • 1929 saw an increase in new issues from British trusts totaling 8.5% of all money raised.
    • Book value of British trusts at year end 1928 was $1.2 billion.
    • Typical fee was 0.5% of invested capital.
  • US Investment Trusts
    • Become more common around 1920.
    • The bulk of new trust creation came in 1928 and 1929.
    • Investment trusts were marketed to the public as a providing “safety and high income through diversification and expert management.”
    • “It has been estimated that $600,000,000 of investment company securities were issued from Oct. 1, 1928, to the end of January 1929.”
    • “There appears to be a close relationship between the increasing activity of the stock market and the number of new investment trust companies organized and the amount of new securities issued by them.”
    • “Investment trust business has been so profitable both to the promoters and the investors that the investment trust company in the brief period of less than a decade has won for itself a permanent place in American finance… The dangers involved in severe declines in security prices, however, should be reduced to a minimum by the high type of management employed by the best trusts. The prosperity of the trusts has enabled them to command ability of the highest order in engineering, economic, and investment lines.”
    • “American trusts do not diversify as widely as do the British. In fact, some of our large companies do not hold more than 50 issues.”
    • “The argument in favor of wide diversification is that it is a guaranty of safety of principal and, at the same time, yields a high average return. Furthermore, mistakes of management cannot be as disastrous as when only a restricted list of securities are held. Those who hold the opposite point of view claim that a wide variety of investments can, at best, yield only an average return.”
    • Fees
      • Many adopted the British fee of 0.5% of invested capital.
      • Some paid managers 20% of profits over 8%. If 8% is not earned, there’s no compensation for the year, and until profits equal more than 8% plus the amount in arrears.
      • One charged 4% of gross profits after taxes.
      • Some paid management in stock, options, or warrants instead of fees.
    • NYSE refused to list investment trusts until 1929. At that time, the Exchange provided a list of standards for trusts to meet. 2 trusts were listed in June of that year.
  • Argument in favor of investment trusts at the time:
    • Better diversification than investors could get buying individual stocks and bonds.
    • “It has made available to the humblest investor a means of investment that secures reasonable safety of principal and, at the same time, returns a higher yield than could be obtained otherwise.”
    • Would improve financial education and lead to a public more confident investing in markets.
    • “Great masses of people have learned that the purchase of stocks involves a considerable degree of risk and that investing funds should be left to the guidance of experts. This new undertaking should tend to relieve the market of its speculative diseases.”
    • Trust management would pressure businesses into better management practices.
    • The trust, it was said, would be a stabilizing force in the markets. Trusts would be ready buyers when the market fell and ready sellers as the market rose. It would lead security prices to stay closer to its intrinsic values.
    • “The trusts will be a powerful influence in keeping stock prices at their new high levels. The investment companies are an entirely new market for securities and, on the whole, correspond to the investor who takes stocks out of the market and puts them into his strong box for safe keeping. The effect will be a material decrease of the floating supply on the market, thus keeping the stock price level high.”
• The “Small Investor”
  • “The day of the small investor is here. Once despised and turned away, he is now sought out day and night. Regularly his mail is full of appeals to come into the fold of the respectable and contented through the purchase of stocks and bonds.”
  • The huge success of the Liberty bond campaign in WWI taught the public what investing in bonds could offer. It also opened investment banks and brokerages to a bigger market by showing them how to successfully sell bonds, and later stocks, to the public.
  • Liberty bonds were issued in denominations as low as $50 and could be bought through an installment plan.
  • Wall Street targeted small investors with smaller face value bonds — “baby” bonds — priced below $100.
  • “In the field of the stock market the same movement is almost a fad. As soon as a stock sells much over $100 in the market rumors of a contemplated split-up are started. High-priced stocks do not appeal to the public nearly as much as those of lower price.”
  • Companies began offering the opportunity of stock ownership to employees and customers. Utility holding companies focused on customers.
• Old Rules-of-Thumb
  • Many of the rules below where repeated as reasons to sell in 1926, 1927, 1928, and 1929 but the market ignored the old “rules” and kept rising.
  • “The rules or norms of traders and investors share a like fate. Transition periods break them up and smash them to the ground in a few short years though they may represent the combined experience of many men during recurring stable years. Transition periods break the old rules but do not yield consolidated and commonly accepted new measures.”
  • “The rule that whenever the yield of stocks falls below the yield of competing bonds by 1/4 to 1/2% the top of the market is dangerously near has been the source of much caution by traders and investors.”
  • “There was the conviction that whatever goes up must sooner or later come down. This seeming truism carried tucked safely away the implication that the distance of the fall would approximate the number of points gained in the preceding rise. Furthermore, it implied that the major advances and declines followed one another in more or less regular recurrence.”
  • “It was a common pre-war and also post-war belief that the market might reasonably be expected to be at the end of a major advance after 20 to 24 months of consistent climbing… Furthermore, major declines might well be expected to run their course in about 11 to 15 months. Before the tragedy of 1920, there was but one exception to this almost mechanical rule since 1903.”
  • “It was a common belief, generally acted upon, that the stocks of a sound, well-managed, growing corporation with a good outlook might sell up to ten times its net income or reasonably assured net earnings available for dividends on the common stock per share. If the price should go much over ten times the amount available per share, then the price was looked upon as getting outside reasonable bounds.”
  • “In the case of railroad stocks, the ratio of a fairly reasonable price to earnings available for dividends per share might be 12 to 1. Any price much beyond this figure would be considered high and possibly inflated.”
  • “When the prices of the junior securities rise to the point where the yield is lower than the yield on the senior securities, investors will switch out of the stocks to the senior or better paying and more secure bonds. This was the reasonable thing to do.”
  • “Another tried and true doctrine gave warning of major turning points. It taught that whenever the prices of a representative list of leading stocks reached the point where dividend yields were below the rate of interest which customers paid their brokers on their loans month after month, the top of the current advance was about reached. Long stock should be sold and short lines might be put out. For 20 years this rule had worked admirably well.”
  • “It was almost an infallible rule that when after a substantial decline, the volume of sales was down to an average of from 250,000 to 400,000 shares sold per day for 2 to 4 months, the market was in the buying zone and the constructive investor was safe in buying either outright or with adequate margin. At a time, like this, average prices were at or near the bottom of the trough between the preceding swell and an approaching one.”
  • “Through the years the old adage, ‘Buy when everybody is selling and sell when the public is buying,’ has well justified itself. But what help does it give today? Old definitions of the public no longer suffice.”
  • “A common practice among experienced investors in giving advice to the novice was to send the amateur to the customers’ rooms at brokerage houses with the admonition to buy when the rooms are empty and sell when every seat in such rooms are occupied by customers or prospective customers of the house.”
  • “What help does the past activity of the stock market give us? What tools does it provide? What methods does it bring? What measures does it vouchsafe? None! And we fumble in a maze and a complex of terrible dynamic conditions.”
  • “It must always be recommended, however, that no rules, norms, standards, or mechanical devices can be depended upon fully. They must never be used as a substitute for hard study of all the relevant facts, careful analysis and thinking, and the use of common sense.”
• “Stocks for the Long Run”
  • A number of studies came out in the 1920s that drew attention to stocks as better long-term investments than bonds. Combine that with the knowledge that bonds failed to keep up with inflation during and after WWI.
  • “A generation ago, if one bought stocks or other than gilt-edged bonds, one did not rank as an investor. Surely, appreciation in price was not sought. Equities were not in the vocabulary of the genuine investor.”
  • “Today, this attitude on the part of investors has changed. They want to share in the growth of commerce and industry. They believe that the prosperity of the best railroads, public utilities, and industrials is so completely assured that their equities involve no more than a reasonable risk and, furthermore, carry a high degree of certainty of income together with a substantial appreciation in price as the country grows.”
  • “The original and best study of the comparative value of bonds and common stocks as investments was made by Edgar L. Smith in his book “Common Stocks as Long-term Investments,” published in 1925. Smith showed that an investment of $10,000 in high-grade bonds was much less profitable than an equal amount invested in 10 stocks selected on an arbitrary basis over an extended period of years, both in the case of a rising price level and a falling price level.”
  • “[Laurence H.] Sloan has shown that an investment of $1,000 in the common stock of the United States Steel Corporation arbitrarily each Jan. 1, from 1914 to 1925, would have yielded an annual average return of 18.3% if the stock had been sold on Jan. 1, 1926… If the investment had been diversified to include 18 representative stocks covering various industries, stocks being bought on Jan. 1, 1914, and each succeeding January until Jan. 1, 1926, when all the stocks were sold out, there would have accrued to the investor an average annual return of 21.2%. A diversified list thus would have yielded a larger income than the same investment in U. S. Steel common stock.”
  • “The winner of the $1,000 prize offered by Barron’s Weekly for the best plan of investing $100,000 by a business man, recommended that 70% of the investment be made in a well-diversified list of common stocks and only 30% held in cash and high-grade bonds and notes.”
  • “Several of the best investment services are advising the purchase of well-selected stocks as well as bonds. From 40 to 60 % of the total amount of the investment, depending upon the situation in the stock market, should be put into common stocks, according to these services.”
• “New Level” Market Optimism
  • The author argues that improving manufacturing efficiency, large supply of natural resources, growing population and workforce, rise of higher wages and discretionary spending, rising standard of living, lack of regulation, improved transportation, improved sales techniques, research and invention, and the ability to fund new businesses through the markets, all justify a higher market level.
  • “It occasionally appears that average prices have discounted the growth of the country for some years into the future and, in so far, are fictitious. This may be true, but the fact remains that the tremendous advances made since 1923 have been based for the most part on unprecedented fundamental developments in wealth, in the habits of people, in mass production, in efficient distribution, in the world of finance, in the attitude toward investments, and in public confidence.”
  • “One reason why prices go up so readily is that great amounts of stock have been taken out of the market by the people as more or less permanent investments.”
  • “What is the significance of future prospects for the present price? Probably not since the organization and financing of the United States Steel Corporation has the expected development of the future meant so much in affecting present prices. Who can judge the future development of radio? Of the airplane? Of vitaphone? Of the automobile? Of steel alloys? Of the chain store? Of agricultural mechanization? Some see the possibilities with unbounded faith, others with a more critical sense. Where shall the balance of intrinsic value be struck? Old tools are useless and new ones have not yet been developed. Meanwhile, we are all experimenting but all loyal to the faith that something big is just ahead.”
  • “Today, no one believes that the business or the earning statements of any of our great corporations will be manipulated by their management so that stock prices will be driven to high levels and stocks unloaded upon the public and when well distributed then earnings will be made to show bankruptcy conditions until the public at great loss sells its stocks to the manipulators who forthwith make the company look prosperous.”
  • “That large amounts of surplus funds were not used in business, but were sent to New York to be loaned on call, is a matter of common knowledge. This present method of financing the stock market was not understood a few years ago. Then the boards of directors would have considered such procedure very reckless and questionable finance. Today, however, both small and large concerns adjust their cash surplus through the call-loan money market and consider it perfectly sound finance and, moreover, quite profitable.”
  • “The point to be stressed is that a new level of prices has been attained whatever its high and low points may ultimately turn out to be. That the present high average at nearly 350 should at the next swing of the cycle drop back to 65 or even to 100 seems impossible. A decline of 250 points in the next 2 or 3 years would be so terrific in its effect upon all economic values that nothing comparable could be found in all history. Such a collapse could not break unless some unspeakable calamity should befall all our economic institutions. And such dire destruction does not seem to be in the cards at all. A return to the old level seems so highly improbable that a new and higher level may be confidently affirmed.”
  • “Slowly but surely, the different lines of trade and industry are developing standards of business ethics that will eliminate the extraordinary wastes of unfair competition. No game or contest can go on unless there are carefully developed rules of play to which there is strict adherence.”
  • “Soundness and stability will be the fruit of the seed the corporations are sowing. The stock speculators, active under the old conditions, cannot understand present stock prices considering the earnings and dividend yield. They forget the size of surplus and reserves, the promise of regularity of earnings, the new type of financing and the future possibilities which a creative economic and industrial society holds. Here surely are some of the explanations of the high prices of stocks; the reasons for claiming that the level of stock prices will remain high for some years.”
  • “Large corporations have learned that they must assume a larger responsibility to the stock market. Would any great corporation see the price of its stock break wide open without rushing to its support? Nothing of the kind could happen as long as the company was prosperous and the break was due only to withdrawal of funds. A break under these conditions would be too costly in every respect to be tolerated. This is especially true of corporations with large employee or customer ownership.”
  • “The great electrical equipment producers, the agricultural machinery manufacturers, the large mail-order houses and chain stores, the great public utilities, the railroads, and other lines have so well built during the comparatively prosperous years since 1922 that the status of their common stock today is incomparably superior to anything known to students of the stock market of a preceding generation.”
  • “Scientific discoveries have come so rapidly of late years that the public now expects something greater and greater every year and thoroughly believes that its expectations will materialize. Education in mechanics, physics, and chemistry in high schools, trade schools, night schools, the colleges, and universities has given the public an understanding and appreciation of scientific discoveries and a belief in their ability to practically revolutionize our methods of production and our standards of living… The possibilities of electrical development are not only conceived in romance, but have their definite place in creating the unbounded belief in the future.”
  • “The growing standards of living compel men to work more efficiently and produce goods and services in greater quantity with the least expenditure of energy. Furthermore, the wide distribution of wealth and income makes possible a still higher standard and these two factors have, during the last 5 years, formed the very basis and backbone of our business prosperity. Finally, the forces, both natural and artificial, creating higher and cumulatively higher standards, have gathered so great a momentum that business must remain at a new level. Moreover, these forces will maintain commerce and industry at a new plane.”
  • “No one is a bear on the United States except for the short swings in the cycle. For the long-time trend we are all bulls. The prevailing attitude is well summed up in the stock market proverb, ‘Never sell the United States short.’”

Get the Book: eBook

Or read other book notes.