Flutters on Wall Street

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17964, 8 March 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

Flutters on Wall Street

IF the gambling Instinct of the Englishman is served largely by the institution of horse-racing, that of the American finds its chief outlet in the stock markets. Hence, far more people are affected by a slump 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 I similar to those which would follow some such development as a decision by every bookmaker in the kingdom to halve his odfds. Given prominence. One has only to notice the attention paid to stock and bond quotations by any large American newspaper to realise that stockmarket 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-markets . tips are passed about exactly as racing tips are in London. The lift-attendant who pilots you to the -'forty-second floor has heard from 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 is going to go up. For one member of the general public w T ho sells stocks short, there are a hundred who buy for a rise. Why? The answer covers the whole gamut of human emotions.' Perhaps the most potent reason which impels the American to gamble in stocks is to be found in naiional psychology, in New York particularly, there is a sort of dynamic force everywhere which finds expression in continual expansion and increase. Long Views. ' The bootblack who shines your shoes is looking forward to the day when he will have a “shoe-shining parlour" of his own; the man who is putting up a sixty-storey building hopes to erect a seventy-storey one next year. In such an atmosphere there is" something unpatriotic, anti-social in the suggestion of retrogression or stability. ".Moreover, during the past few years it has seemed so easy to make money in Now York. There have been times when any list of stocks selected at random — even blindfolded —would have shown a

American Wage-Earners Gambles,

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 old-age -protection has been convinced that five per cent., without capital appreciation is a “piker’s game.” The stenographer who has managed to put aside £IOO 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 woman, 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.” “Sucker” Lists. So they have gone into Wall-street brokerage offices, have opened up-town branches, where 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 and reputable services, and have circularised 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 who 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. Tho Easy Way Out. Here and there some individual who has “borrowed” trust funds for speceulat.ion, 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 tread-mills of their daily toil—am? grow more wool against the next shearinaa