POPULAR GAMBLING

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 886, 1 February 1930, Page 6

POPULAR GAMBLING

STOCKS FASCINATE UNITED STATES UNIVERSAL HOBBY If the gambling instinct of the Englishman is served largely by the institution ot horse racing, that of the Americap tiuds its chief outlet in the stock markets. Hence, far more people are affected by such a slump as has just been taking place In Wall Street than are in England'by. say, an affair such as the Hatry one. A major decline on the New York Stock Market produces repercussions similar to those which would follow some such development as a decision by every bookmaker in the kingdom to halve his odds, writes an American correspondent in the London “Morning Post.” One has only to notice the attention paid to stock and bond quotations by any large American newspaper to realist that stock market gambling occupies a not inconsiderable place among the interests of the people in general. The bobby who directs traffic in the Strand may have his ideas as to the probable winner of the 3.30 at Gatwick; his opposite number in Broadway almost certainly is more concerned about the probable course of General Motors or Anaconda. In New York stock market tips are passed about exactly as racing tips are in London. The lift attendant who pilots you to the forty-second floor has heard front a brother-in-law who has a cousin who works in a bank that Amalgamated Doorknobs are a sure thing, and will go to 200. The waiter who serves your lunch has had a tip from a “big man in the Street.” that United Popcorn will shortly declare a stock dividend of five shares for one. For they are all optimists, these people who have invested their few hundreds of dollars as margin cover for their favourite stocks. Everything ts going to go up. For one member of the general public who sells stocks short, there are a hundred who buy for a rise. Why? The answer covers the whole gamut of hi man emotions. Perhaps the most potent reason which impels. the American to gamble in stocks i 3 I to be found in national psychology. In New York particularly there is a sort of dynamic force everywhere which finds expression in continual expansion and increase The bootblack w-ho shines your shoes in looking forward to the day when he will have a “shoe- I shining parlour” of his own; the man ■ who is putting up a six-storey building j hopes to erect a seventy-storey one i next year. In such an atmosphere there Is something unpatriotic, antisocial, in the suggestion of retrogression or stability. Moreover, during the past few years it has seemed so easy to make money in New York. There have been times when any list of stocks selected at random —even blindfolded —would have shown a handsome profit over a period of three months. So money has been withdrawn from savings banks and put into margins. The salaried man who has laboriously accumulated a few- bonds as oldage protection has been convinced that fi\e per cent, without capital appreciation is a “piker’s; game.” The steno-

grapher who has managed to put aside 500 dollars or so for her trousseau has had visions of how wonderful it would be if that little house in the suburbs could be purchased as well. The married women, without children and without a job of her own, has found a new, exciting, and profitable interest in life. The business man has been afforded an opportunity of “getting quick action for his money.” So they have gone into Wall Street. Brokerage offices have opened uptown branches, where customers could sit in comfortable leather chairs and watch stock quotations being chalked on huge blackboards. Hundreds of fly-by-night “investment consultants” and self-styled statisticians have invaded the field hitherto held by a few old reputable services and have circulated their “sucker lists” with pamphlets containing golden promises. To combat this, reputable stockbrokers have advertised more widely than ever —for the New York Stock Exchange places no bar upon advertisements by its members. Only comparatively few of the people of limited means have been content to take their profits and get out of the market. Most of those w-ho have done so have acted because they needed cash for some indulgence—a trip to Europe, a new motor-car. As for the others —those who have been engulfed in the recent tidal waves of falling prices—well, they have had a run for their money. Living up to one’s income is more usual in the United States than in Europe. Many of the people whose accounts have been closed by their brokers have merely 'lost their "paper profits,” and stand financially almost where they did before they started to speculate. Others have lost their little savings—- “ But anyhow, what can" you do with a thousand dollars or two?” is their only lament for spilt milk. They still have their jobs, and wages are adequate. Here and there some individual who has “borrowed” trust funds for speculation, or who sees comparative affluence turning into long years of poverty, takes the easy way out, and "the newspapers record an accidental fall from a twentieth-storey window. But the great majority of these unfortunates whom Wall Street terms “lambs” go back to the treadmills of their daily toil—and grow more wool against the next shearing.