Quote for the Week
In every bank and brokerage house, in business places, on street corners and in elevators and restaurants — wherever people met — one could hear talk of ”the tip I got on the market.” Token margin requirements enabled anybody to test his luck. Taxi drivers told you what stocks to buy. The shoeshine boy could give you a summary of the day’s financial news. An old beggar, who regularly patrolled the street in front of my office, now gave me market tips — and, I suppose, spent in the market the money I gave him. My cook had a brokerage account and followed the stock ticker closely. Her paper profits were quickly blown away in the gale of 1929, and she had to be rescued from being sold out entirely.
Whenever some cool, calm voice like Sen. Carter Glass’s was raised against this madness, it was jeered. Whenever the market fell back — and there were some sharp setbacks on occasion — assurances that all was well would come from every quarter. Unfailingly the prophets of the New Economics in government and finance promoted the boom and nourished public confidence in it. From the White House itself came President Coolidge’s soothing statement about the mounting loans on stock exchange collateral, that ”five billion isn’t very much.” In those days it was…
There were some who believed that prices would never descend and others who thought that, if they did, it would still be possible to get out in time. But of those who realized that the boom had to end, none knew when the expected break would come. — Bernard Baruch (source)
From the Archives
Last Call
- What High Inflation Means for Stocks, Bonds, and Your Portfolio – A. Arnott
- Doubling the Bear Market Low – Humble Dollar
- The Crash that Wasn’t – Owenomics
- Diversification All the Way Down – L. Swedroe
- How Fast Have Americans Adopted New Technologies? – ABHC
- Worse than Schadenfreude – Klement on Investing
- Demographic “Doomsday” Misses the Mark – Science
- Winner, Winner: The Chicken McNugget Story – Quartr
- The Many Failures of Larry David – Collossus