Discover How A 25 Year Old Ballroom Dancer Turned $25,000 into $2.25 million

[FXGenius]

Chapter 9. My Second Crisis:

The half-million-dollar news gave me enormous confidence. I had a very clear conception of how I had done it and I was also convinced I could repeat the feat again. I had no doubt that I had mastered my art. Working with my cables, I had developed a sort of sixth sense. I could "feel" my stocks. This was no different from the feeling that a musical expert develops. His ear will detect a flat note, which is inaudible to the ordinary listener.

I could almost tell what stocks would do. If after an eight-point advance a stock dropped back four points, I did not become alarmed. I expected it to do just that. If a stock started to firm up, I could often predict the day its advance would start. It was a mysterious, unexplainable instinct, but there was no question in my mind that I possessed it. This filled me with a tremendous sense of power.

It is therefore not the slightest bit surprising that I slowly started to imagine I was a Napoleon of finance. I felt I was about to march along a glittering road. I was not aware of any perils. I did not know that along the way a dangerous giant lay in wait. After all, I reasoned to myself rather smugly, how many people could do what I had done?

I decided to really get down to business. If I could make half a million, what was to stop me from making two, three or even five million? Although the margin requirement had recently been raised to 90 per cent, I was convinced that by using the $160,000 I had set aside from my bruce profits, I could lay the basis of a new fortune. I intended to start serious day-to-day dealings on the spot—dealings that would make my previous buying and selling seem like very small potatoes.

The truth was that as my pocket had strengthened, my head had weakened. I became over-confident, and that is the most dangerous state of mind anyone can develop in the stock market. It was not long before I received the bitter lesson the market always hands out to those who think they can carelessly master it.

After a few days in New York, I decided to establish closer contact with the market. Possessing what I thought was a fool­proof system; I believed that if I moved nearer to the market, nothing could stop me from making a fortune each day. As the scene of my future triumphs, I chose the uptown office of one of my brokers.

I was fascinated by my first visit to the office. The boardroom was large, with chairs placed in front of an ever-moving little machine, the stock-ticker. The atmosphere was exciting, filled with electricity. The people in the room, like hangers-on in Monte Carlo, were nervous, exalted. There was an air of action, bustle, and noise. Tickers ticking, typewriters pounding, telegraph machines clacking, clerks busily rushing around. From every direction I heard sentences like: "goodyear doesn't look good to me." "I am getting out of anaconda." "The market is ripe for a reaction."

The first day I was quite unperturbed by this taut, electric atmosphere. With my success behind me I felt I was above the anxieties, hopes and fears of these tense people. But this did not last long. As I began trading day to day from the boardroom, I gradually abandoned my detachment and started to join them. I opened my ears to the confusing combination of facts, opinions and gossip. I read the market letters. I also started to answer questions like, "What do you think of the market?" or "What do you know that's cheap?" All this had a deadly effect on me.

In a few days of trading, I threw overboard everything I had learned over the past six years. I did everything I had trained myself not to do. I talked to brokers. I listened to rumors. I was never off the ticker.

It was as if the "get-rich-quick" demon had gotten hold of me. I completely lost the clear perspective I had so carefully built up through my cables. Step by step I led myself along a path where I began to lose my skill.

The first thing that deserted me was my sixth sense. I did not "feel" anything. All I could see was a jungle of stocks run­ning up and down without rhyme or reason. Then my inde­pendence went. I gradually abandoned my system and adopted the attitude of the others. The first thing I knew, I was follow­ing the crowd. My reason forsook me and emotion took over completely.

It is easier to understand how difficult it was for me to cling to my system if I explain it this way: Yell "fire" in a crowded theatre and what happens? People rush for the exit, killing, in­juring each other. A drowning man will struggle, grasp his would-be rescuer and perhaps pull him under too. They are unreasonable, wrong attitudes, yet instinct will dictate them.

As I followed the crowd I also started to act like this. Instead of being a lone wolf, I became a confused, excited lamb milling around with others, waiting to be clipped. It was impossible for me to say "no" when everybody around me was saying "yes". I got scared when they got scared. I became hopeful when they were hopeful.

Nothing like this, not even in my first novice years, had ever happened to me. I lost all my skill and control. Everything I touched went wrong.

I behaved like a complete amateur. The careful system I had built up collapsed around me. Every transaction ended in disas­ter. I put in dozens of contradictory orders. I bought stocks at 55. They went back to 51. I hung on. Stop-loss? That was the first thing I threw away. Patience? Judgment? I had none. Boxes? I forgot about them.

As the days went by the vicious circle of my operations started to look like this:

I BOUGHT AT THE TOP As
Soon as I bought
The stock started to drop I
Became frightened
AND SOLD AT THE BOTTOM
As soon as I sold
The stock started to rise I became greedy
AND BOUGHT AT THE TOP

I developed a tremendous frustration. Instead of blaming my own stupidity, I invented different reasons for my failures. I started to believe in "They." "They" were selling me dear. "They" were buying stock from me cheap. I could not, of course, tell anyone who "They" were—but that did not stop me from believing in them.

Fighting "Them"—these grey ghosts at the back of the mind —made me reckless. I became stubborn. Even though stocks went on beating me, each time they hit me I just wiped off the blood and came back for more. I kept telling myself that I was more than half-a-million dollars ahead of the market and there­fore this could not possibly be happening to me. How wrong I was!

It was a period of complete disaster. I lost $100,000 in a few weeks. A detailed list of my trading at this time reads like a lunatic's chronicle. I can still hardly believe it. Now I know that it was caused by egotism leading to vanity leading to over-confidence, which in turn led to disaster. It was not the market that beat me. It was my own unreasoning instincts and uncon­trolled emotions.

I bought stocks and sold them a few hours later. I knew that if I bought and sold the same day, I was permitted to operate with as little as 2 5 % margin in my account. Instead of profiting from this, I succeeded in losing several thousand dollars each time. This is how I assured myself of disaster:

2,500 HAVEG INDUSTRIES
Bought at 70 ($176,150.00)
Sold at 63½ ($157,891.34)
Loss $ 18,258.66

1,000 ROME CABLE
Bought at 37 ($ 37,375.00)
Sold at 31 ($ 30,724.48)
Loss $ 6,650.52

1,000 GENERAL TIME
Bought at 47¾ ($48,178.80)
Sold at 44¾ ($ 44,434.32)
Loss $ 3,744.48

500 ADDRESSOGRAPH-MULTIGRAPH
Bought at 124½ ($ 62,507.25)
Sold at 116½ ($ 58,053.90)
Loss $ 4,453.35

1,000 REICHHOLD CHEMICALS
Bought at 63½ ($ 63,953.50)
Sold at 16½ ($ 61,158.37)
Loss $ 2,795.13

2,000 BRUNSWICK-BALKE-COLLENDER
Bought at 55½ ($111,891.00)
Sold at 53½ ($106,443.46)
Loss $ 5,447.54

2,000 RAYTHEON
Bought at 60½ ($121,901.00)
Sold at 57¾ ($114,823.69)
Loss $ 7,077.31

2,000 NATIONAL RESEARCH
Bought at 24½ ($ 49,625.00)
Sold at 22 ($ 43,501.52)
Loss $ 6,123.48

4,000 AMERICAN METALS-CLIMAX
Bought at 32? ($132,917.60)
Sold at 31? ($125,430.47)
Loss $ 7,487.13

3,000 AMERICAN MOTORS
Bought at 41¼ ($124,938.90)
Sold at 40 ($119,094.60)
Loss $ 5,844.30

2,000 MOLYBDENUM
Bought at 49½ ($ 99,875.00)
Sold at 47½ ($ 94,352.50)
Loss $ 5,522.50

2,000 SHARON STEEL
Bought at 48¼ ($ 97,362.60)
Sold at 43¼ ($ 85,877.27)
Loss $ 11,485.33

1,000 WARNER LAMBERT
Bought at 98½ ($ 98,988.50)
Sold at 95½ ($ 95,127.09)
Loss $ 3,861.41

1,000 LUKENS STEEL
Bought at 88 ($ 88,478.00)
Sold at 81 ($ 80,640.48)
Loss $ 7,837.52

Total Loss $ 96,588.66

Do you wonder, after this melancholy table, why I shuddered whenever I looked at stocks?

The plain fact was that I was reading too much, trying to do too much. That is why I rapidly reached the stage where I could read the figures on the stock market quotations but they no longer told me anything. Not long afterwards came an even worse phase. Haunted by never-ending losses, terrified by the confusion, racked by rumors, I got so I could not even see the figures. My coordination broke down. I used to pore all day over columns of figures, which my eyes scanned, but I could not assimilate. My mind had become blurred. This last phase really frightened me. I felt like a drunk who loses touch with reality and cannot understand why.

At the end of a few disastrous weeks, I sat down soberly to examine the reasons why this should have happened to me. Why should I have the touch in Hong Kong, Calcutta, Saigon and Stockholm, and lose it when I was within half a mile of Wall Street? What was the difference?

There was no easy solution to the problem and for a long time I was baffled. Then one day, as I sat in the Plaza Hotel afraid to make a telephone call, I suddenly realized something. When I was abroad, I visited no boardrooms, talked to no one, received no telephone calls, watched no ticker.

The solution was whispering to me but at first I could not credit it. It was so surprising, so simple and yet so extraordinary that I could hardly believe it. It was: My ears were my enemy.
It dawned on me like a revelation that when I was traveling abroad I had been able to assess the market, or rather the few stocks in which I was interested, calmly, neutrally, without in­terruption or rumor, completely without emotion and ego.

I had operated simply on the basis of my daily telegram, which gave me my perspective. It showed me the way my stocks were behaving. There were no other influences, because I did not see or hear anything else.

In New York it was nothing like that. There were interruptions, rumors, panics, contradictory information, all floating into my ear. As a result of this my emotions became involved with the stocks—and the cold, clinical approach had gone.

I decided there was only one answer. I must try to find myself. I must go away at once, a long way from New York, before I lost all my money.

There was only one thing, which saved me from complete ruin during this period. And that was that universal controls and thiokol were behaving well and I left them alone. I now realize I only did this because I was too busy to bother about them? I was trading in other stocks, which were losing me money.

I reviewed the situation and got rid of every stock except for these two. Then I took a plane for Paris. Before I left, however, I made a very important decision. I gave instructions to my brokers that they must never telephone me or give me any in­formation of any sort on any pretext whatsoever. The only communication I wanted from them and from Wall Street was my usual daily telegram.

I wandered around Paris in a daze, my head still spinning with blurred, meaningless columns of stock market quotations. My daily telegrams arrived—and they did not make much sense to me. I had completely lost my touch. I felt like a man who has had a terrible accident and feels he will never be well again. I was thoroughly demoralized.

Then just when I thought my condition was permanent something happened. I had been in Paris about two weeks when one day I picked up my daily telegram in the Hotel Georges V. As I scanned it dispiritedly somehow the figures seemed less dim. At first I could not believe it. I felt myself gazing at them as though I had never seen them before. I was afraid I was only imagining things.

I impatiently waited for the next day's cable. When I re­ceived it, there was no doubt: the figures were clearer and more familiar. As though a veil was being lifted, once again images started to form before my eyes, giving me some view of the stock's future.

In the days that followed my telegrams became clearer and clearer; I started reading the quotes like my old self. Once more I could see that some of the stocks were stronger, others weaker. Simultaneously my "feeling" started to return. Gradually, like an invalid, I began to regain my confidence. I recovered enough courage to try to approach the market again.
But I had learned my lesson. I decided to make it a permanent rule that I must never visit a brokerage office again. Also my brokers must be prohibited from picking up the telephone and calling me. I must only have stock quotations by cable—and nothing else.

Even if I returned to the New York hotel, the scene of my disastrous dealings, which is within a short taxi ride of Wall Street, my instructions would be unyielding. I must place Wall Street thousands of miles away from me. Every day my brokers must send me a telegram just as if I were in Hong Kong, Karachi or Stockholm.

Also, my brokers must never quote any stock to me, except the ones I asked for. They must not tell me about any new stock because that would immediately come into the rumor class. I would pick new stocks myself, as I had always done, by reading my weekly financial paper. When I saw one that interested me and seemed to be preparing for a rise, I would ask for quotations. I would only ask for one new quotation at a time. Then, as I did before, I would study it carefully before deciding if it was worth going into.

Like a man who has survived a plane crash and knows he must fly again immediately or lose his nerve, I knew only one way of making this method foolproof. I booked myself on a plane back to New York.

[FXGenius]

Chapter 10. Two Million Dollars:

When I came back to New York in the third week of February 1959, I had completely recovered from the shock of my mad period, and I began to invest in the market again.

I could still feel the bruises of my own foolishness but I was like a man who feels stronger and better after a bad experience. I had learned my last lesson. I knew now that I had to keep rigidly to the system I had carved out for myself. I had learned that if I deviated from it even once, I would be in trouble. My whole financial structure was immediately in danger—it could crash like a house of cards.

My first move in New York was to erect an iron fence around myself to ensure that I did not repeat any of my previous errors.

I first decided to spread out my deals among six brokers. This way my operations would not be followed. To guard my­self against any possible interference from them, I put up my barrier. It is a way of protection I am still using today.

This is how I worked it out. I asked my brokers to send out their telegrams after Wall Street closing time, so they would reach me at 6 p.m. This is about the time I get up—the result of performing in nightclubs for many years. Meanwhile, during the day, the telephone operator is instructed not to let any calls through.

In this way everything happens in Wall Street while I am in bed. I am sleeping while they are working, and they cannot reach me nor worry me. My delegate, the stop-loss order, rep­resents me in case something unforeseen happens.

At 7 p.m. I start to work studying my daily telegram and deciding what my future dealings will be. Before I do this, I buy a copy of an afternoon paper that contains Wall Street closing prices. I tear out the pages giving the day's quotations and throw the rest of the financial section away. I do not wish to read any financial stories or commentaries, however well informed. They might lead me astray.

Then, with my telegram and my page out of the newspaper, I settle down to work while Wall Street sleeps.

During the weeks I spent repairing my injured confidence, the two stocks I did not sell continued to rise, universal controls almost uninterruptedly advanced until it stood around 60. This was more than a 40% rise since my last New York visit. thiokol behaved equally well and now was pushing over 110.

This was very promising indeed. I decided I had no reason whatever to touch them. Armed by my bitter experience and well entrenched behind my new strong fence, I began to move into the market with cautious confidence.

These were some of my successful operations:

l,000 GENERAL TIRE & RUBBER
Bought at 56 ($56,446.00)
Sold at 69½ ($69,151.01)
Profit $12,705.01

1,000 CENCO INSTRUMENTS
Bought at 19½ ($19,775.00)
Sold at 23½ ($23,247.63)
Profit $ 3,472.63

500 AMERICAN PHOTOCOPY
Bought at 71½ ($35,980.75)
Sold at 79½ ($39,570.92)
Profit $ 3,590.17

1,000 UNION OIL OF CALIF
Bought at 46 ($46,420.00)
Sold at 50 ($49,669.00)
Profit $ 3,249.00

500 POLAROID
Bought at 121 ($60,755.50)
Sold at 127 ($63,299.08)
Profit $ 2,543.58

500 BRUNSWICK-BALKE-COLLENDER
Bought at 71¼ ($35,855.65)
Sold at 77 ($38,322.08)
Profit $ 2,466.43

500 BELL & HO WELL
Bought at 93 ($46,741.50)
Sold at 99¼ ($49,436.81)
Profit $ 2,695.3

This being the stock market, not all my deals were successful. A number of stocks I bought did not behave as I had predicted.

These are some of my transactions ending with a loss:

1,000 CENCO INSTRUMENTS
Bought at 23 ($23,300.00)
Sold at 22 ($21,755.76)
Loss $ 1,544.24

500 REICHHOLD CHEMICALS
Bought at 65 ($32,727.50)
Sold at 63% ($31,703.17)
Loss $ 1,024.33

1,000 FANSTEEL
Bought at 63½ ($63,953.50)
Sold at 62 ($61,6S7.96)
Loss $ 2,295.54

500 PHILADELPHIA & READING
Bought at 131 ($65,760.50)
Sold at 129¾ ($64,672.79)
Loss $ 1,087.71

These two tables confirm my method completely. You will notice that in each case I was successful in taking larger profits than losses in proportion to the amounts invested. Remember that all these operations were entirely done by telegram from New York to New York. I had never seen or spoken to my brokers even once. Many times during the day's trading when some of my holdings began to flutter and fail like dying birds, they must have itched to pick up a telephone and alert me. They must have felt I was the biggest fool in the world to forbid them to do it. But my rule was rigid. I heard the news—good or bad —every day at 6 p.m. when my telegrams arrived. Then I began to act.

During the few weeks I spent trading like this in New York, signs of trouble started to show up in universal controls. It began to lose its steady upward marching progress. Its ac­tivity and price advance became wild—too wild.

This spelled trouble and trouble surely came. After an ad­vance from 66in the first week of March, the stock rose within three weeks to 102. It was at this point that it switched its momentum and began to go in the other direction. I did not like the look of this drop at all. It fell as if in an air pocket and there seemed no sign of a rise. I had little doubt that the holiday was over. If I were not careful I might get caught in a nose-dive, so I brought up my stop-loss within two points of the day's closing price. I was sold out of universal controls next morn­ing at varying prices between 86% and 89%. This was more than 12 points from the high. I was well content with this. There was no reason why I should be unhappy. I had had a good long ride and my total selling price was $524,669.97. This gave me a profit of $409,356.48.

I now had a very large capital to invest. I took a careful look at the market, looking as usual for an actively traded, high-priced stock. Another problem arose at this point which made a suitable stock more difficult to find. With this amount of money to spend I must be careful not to allow my own buying unduly to influence the market.

After some search I alighted on a stock, which fulfilled all these difficult requirements. It was texas instruments.

I bought my first 2,000 shares at an average price of 94? in the second week of April and another 1,500 at 97?. As the stock continued to act well, I added to my holdings 2,000 shares.

The average price of this last purchase was 101 %. This, as you realize, involved big money, more than half a million dollars in fact. The details of my Texas instruments purchases looked like this:
2,000 shares at 94¾ ($189,718.80)
1,500 shares at 97? ($147,544.35)
2,000 shares at 101? ($204,733.80)
Total 5,500 shares $541,996.95

Now that the capital I had taken out of universal controls was reinvested, I devoted my attention once again to thiokol.

thiokol and I were now partners of long standing and had, like all old-time partners, a special relationship. I had always allowed thiokol a greater leeway than other stocks—partly because I really "felt" this stock, and also because I had the great advantage afforded by the special subscription account.

It would have been foolish to give up such a unique credit arrangement, so I always kept my trailing stop-loss far behind its rise. This I would do with no other stock, but in the case of thiokol it saved me twice from being sold out. The second time was when it had a very bad reaction in the first week of April. This reaction came on the heels of the announcement of a 3-for-l split. It was so severe that I thought we would have to part, but I decided to let my stop-loss decide.

This was not touched off, and the sinking spell was quickly followed by a vigorous rise. However, I was not the only one who liked thiokol. The newly split stock was met by a hectic public response which shot it up to 72 in the first week of May.

The response was too good. It led to this amazing situation:

Its activity for the week was an incredible volume of 549,400 shares.
Its advance for the week was 13¼ points.

The trading volume represented an aggregate value of $40,000,000.

The price difference for the week was $7,000,000.

It looked as if every trader on the New York Stock Exchange had done nothing else all week but rush in and out of thiokol.

Of course, it could not last. The governors of the New York Stock Exchange decided to suspend all stop orders. The effect of this was that the majority of traders left the stock alone. They would not buy and sell a stock where they could not protect themselves. It also meant that I was automatically out of the stock myself. They had taken my most powerful tool away, and I could not work without it.

I sold my thiokol holdings, at an average price of 68. This gave me, under the 3-for-l split, over $200 for each of my original 6,000 shares. I had paid a total of $350,820. For my 18,000 split shares I received $1,212,851.52. My profit was $862,031.52.

The prospect of putting a million dollars back into the market posed an enormous problem. I would have to be doubly careful. This was too much money to switch into another stock easily. It was such a big sum that my buy was bound to influence the market.

I also had to face the fact that my stop-loss would be no longer practical, because no trader or specialist would absorb such a large quantity of stock in a matter of seconds.

There was only one thing to do: I decided to divide my funds into two parts. Once I had made up my mind to do this, selection was comparatively easy. I had only to decide among four stocks:

ZENITH RADIO, LITTON INDUSTRIES, FAIRCHILD CAMERA and BECKMAN INSTRUMENTS.

I had watched all of these for a long time. They were all suit­able as far as my techno-fundamentalist theories were concerned. Now all that remained was to see which two of them I should choose. There was only one way to do this—to let their strength in the market be the judge.

Using the technique I had employed so successfully with universal controls and thiokol, I made a pilot buy into all four of them on May 13, 1959:
500 shares zenith radio at 104 ($52,247)
500 shares beckman instruments at 66 ($3 3,228)
500 shares fairchild camera at 128 ($64,259)
500 shares litton industries at 112 ($ 56,251)

On each of these stocks I put a stop-loss order of 10 per cent below buying price.

I was fully aware that these stop-losses were vague and too mechanical. It was a deliberate, if clumsy, method. I purposely used this system because I knew sooner or later it would eliminate those of the four that were weakest.

On May 18th I was stopped out of beckman instruments at 60, and on May 19th I decided to sell litton industries, which was acting worse than the others, at 106¼. Now I adjusted my stop-losses on the remaining stocks.

It was the fourth week of May when I proceeded to switch more than $1,000,000 into the two stronger stocks. These were my total purchases:

ZENITH RADIO
500 shares at 104 ($52,247.00)
1,500 shares at 99¾ ($ 150,359.70)
1,000 shares at 104 ($104,494.00)
1,000 shares at 105¼ ($105,745.30)
1,500 shares at 107½ ($161,996.25)
Total 5,500 shares $574,842.25

FAIRCHILD CAMERA
500 shares at 128 ($64,259.00)
1,000 shares at 123¼ ($123,763.30)
1,000 shares at 125 ($125,515.00)
1,000 shares at 126¼ ($ 126,766.30)
1,000 shares at 127 ($127,517.00)
Total 4,500 shares $567,820.60

Discounting my short-term tradings, my funds were switched from stock to stock in the following way:

March-April 1959
Sold UNIVERSAL CONTROLS $ 524,670
Bought TEXAS INSTRUMENTS $ 541,997

May 1959
Sold THIOKOL CHEMICAL $1,212,850
Bought ZENITHRADIO $ 574,842
Bought FAIRCHILD CAMERA $ 567,821


Total received $1,737,520
Margin debt 274,600
$1,462,920
Available cash from previous operations 274,600
Available for reinvestment $1,532,920
Total reinvested (at 90% margin) $1,684,660

At that time I had six brokers. I closed my account with three of them. Then I sat back and watched the stocks I held. There was nothing else for me to do while texas instruments, zenith radio and fairchild camera went to work for me.

During June the telegrams continued to flash between Wall Street and the Plaza Hotel. They were meaningless to the West­ern Union operators but they were full of meaning for me. For instance, on June 9th I received the following telegram:

"Z 122½ (124-116¾) T 119¼ (121½-117¼) F 125 (126-121)"

The following day's telegram read:

"Z 132? (132½-125) T 123¾ (123?-120?) F 130 (130-126½)"

They were boring, meaningless hieroglyphics to the operator but they meant a lot to me. They told me that the value of my holdings had appreciated $100,000 in that one single day!

It began to be a strange life. I sat in the Plaza every evening, reading my telegram and filing it. There was nothing further I could do. I felt elated and restless, but powerless. I was like a scientist who, after years of work and research, has successfully launched a rocket to the moon, and now as he tracks it climbing higher and higher he has a tremendous sense of achievement and also a strange letdown feeling of inactivity.

Like him, I was now on the sidelines just keeping vigil while my stocks continued to climb steadily like well-made missiles.

Then one day early in July I received an offer to appear in the "Sporting Club" in Monte Carlo. I accepted it gladly. Sitting still was beginning to hold a slight boredom after all my nerve-wracking problems and panics of the past.

Before making arrangements to leave New York I asked my brokers to meet me. I went through my accounts with each of them. I found that if I were to sell out before flying to Europe I could realize my stocks for over $2,250,000.

What was my feeling at this news? Elation? Excitement that I was now more than twice a millionaire? Not exactly. I was happy, but not excited. I had been much more excited when I made my first $10,000 out of diners' club. This time I felt rather like a runner who has trained strenuously and has suffered many defeats, and now trots to victory.

I was also faced with the same dilemma I had known before: Should I sell? Should I get out altogether?

The answer this time was easy. It was the old tried and trusted answer: I did not have any reason to sell a rising stock. I would just continue to jog along with the trend, trailing my stop-loss behind me. As the trend increased, I would buy more. If the trend reversed? I would, as ever, flee like a disturbed burglar.

I put new stop-losses on all my stocks so that if they dropped while I was on my way to Europe I would be sold out and my two million would remain intact.

I felt content and assured as I rode up Fifth Avenue in a taxi after leaving my brokers.

I walked into the lobby of the Plaza Hotel, automatically bought an evening paper, tore out the Wall Street closing prices, threw the rest of the newspaper away, picked up my 6 P.M. telegram and went up in the elevator.

In my room I opened the telegram, spread out the sheet of newspaper, and sat back with a happy sigh. Not only because I had made two million dollars but because I was doing what I liked best.

I was working while Wall Street slept.

[mosad2]

FxGenius, thank u for sharing this story

the best part I liked is how he kept himself isolated from the crowd , thier rumors and mixed info
when he realized that his first enemy is his ears!

really good story to learn from