numbers that interested me and studied the changes, paying full attention to the repetitive price movements. In fact, I was learning to read ticker tape, although I didn't understand it myself at the time.
One day during my lunch break, one of the young people who worked in the office - he was older than me, and quietly asked if I had any money.
- Why do you need to know? I answered with a question.
“Well,” he said, “I have a great tip on Burlington stock.” If anyone keeps me company, I'll bet on them.
- What do you mean "I'll put"? I asked. For me, then only our clients could bet - old eccentrics with a bunch of money. Still would! After all, to enter the game, you need to have hundreds or even thousands of dollars. It was as out of reach as having your own carriage and coachmen in silk top hats.
- This means that I said - I'll put it on! How many do you have?
- And how much do you need?
“Well, I could bet five shares for five dollars.
— How are you going to bet?
“I want to buy as many Burlington shares as I can raise money to pay the margin [Normally, the emphasis is on the first syllable, but margin is more commonly used in colloquial and professional speech.]. It's pure verryak. It's like picking up on the street. We will double our money in an instant.
“Wait a minute,” I said and pulled out my cherished book.
I was not interested in the possibility of doubling the money, but what he said about the growth of Burlington shares. If he's right, my notes should confirm it. And indeed! From my notes, it was clear that these stocks were behaving as they always did before the rise in price. Before this incident, I had never sold or bought anything, and had never even gambled with the boys. The only thing that mattered to me was the opportunity to check the accuracy of my work, my favorite thing. I was struck by the thought that if in practice my calculations are not justified, then no one needs all this. So I gave him all my money, and he went to one of the nearby brokerage houses and bought Burlington stock with all the money. Two days later we withdrew the profit. I made $3.12.
After this first trade, I began to speculate at my own risk. At lunchtime, I went to the nearest brokerage house and bought or sold - it always made no difference to me. I did not listen to other people's opinions, and I did not have favorite stocks. I played by my own system. All my knowledge was reduced to arithmetic. And in fact, my approach was ideal for such brokerage houses, where it all comes down to betting on price fluctuations that crawl out on tape from the telegraph machine.
Very soon it became clear that the game on stock prices brings me much more money than working in an office. So I left from there. My family was against it, but they all fell silent when they found out what and how. I was still a teenager and my salary was not very high. Speculation brought much more.
I was only fifteen when I made my first thousand and put the money on the table in front of my mother. Here was everything that I had earned in a few months, except for what I gave home every week. My mother was terribly upset. She wanted me to take this money to the bank - away from temptations. She said that she had never heard of a boy of fifteen who could earn such money from scratch. She suspected it wasn't real money. She was gnawed by fear and anxiety. But I could think of nothing but the correctness of my calculations. After all, this is the whole charm - to win only at the expense of your own head. If I was right when I tested my calculations by betting ten shares, then I would be ten times more right by betting a hundred shares. The meaning of money was only in one thing - they confirmed the correctness of my calculations, my correctness. The bigger the stake, the more courage needed? Doesn't matter! If I have only ten dollars and I risk it, I act more boldly than when I bet a million, while having another million in my stash.
Be that as it may, at the age of fifteen I was making good money on the stock exchange. I started out in the smallest underground stock exchanges, where a man who bought twenty shares at once was looked upon as J.W. Gates in disguise or J.P. Morgan traveling incognito. In those days, bookmakers rarely pressed customers. There was no need for this. There were other ways to swindle customers out of money, even when they were guessing price movements. The business was enormously profitable. When they were operating legally—I mean honestly—price fluctuations just cut the small rates. It was enough for the price to move slightly in the wrong direction to cleanly cut the margin by three-quarters of a point. In addition, a non-paying player was never allowed to play again. For him, the entrance was closed forever.
I worked alone. I didn't let anyone in on my case. In any case, this game is for one. After all, the main thing was my head, right? Prices either moved as I foresaw, and the help of friends or partners was not needed here, or they went the other way, and no one would stop them for me. It just didn't make sense to dedicate anyone into my affairs. I had friends, of course, but business remained business. It was a solo game. This is how I've always played.
It didn't take long for the bookies to get a grudge against me for beating them all the time. I went into the office and laid out money on the counter, but my bets were not accepted. They said there was nothing for me to do there. That's when they called me the young "checkout cleaner." I had to change brokers and move from one gambling house to another, and I got to the point that I began to hide my own name. I started with small stakes - fifteen or twenty shares. Sometimes, if they began to get accustomed to me, I had to lose on purpose, so that later they would be properly heated. Naturally, I was quickly informed that I would go to hell and stop ripping off the establishment.
Once, when the door of a rather large office, in which I had been playing for several months, was slammed in front of me, I decided to take more money from them. This office had branches throughout the city center, in hotel lobbies and in the surrounding suburbs. I went to a branch in one of the hotels, asked the manager a few questions, and finally got down to business. But when I began to work with active stocks in my usual manner, they called him from the central office and asked: “Who is it that is operating there?” The manager forwarded the question to me, and I identified myself as Edward Robinson from Cambridge. He gave his boss the good news over the phone. But on the other end of the phone they wanted to know what I looked like. When the manager told me about this, I advised: "Tell him that I'm a fat short man with black hair and a shaggy beard." But he did not listen and described me. When the manager heard the answer, his face turned purple, he hung up and told me to get out.
- What did they tell you? I asked politely.
“They said: “You are a complete fool, didn’t they tell you that you can’t deal with Larry Livingston? You deliberately let him charge us seven hundred dollars!” He did not retell everything he was told on the phone.
I tried my luck in other branches, but they already knew about me everywhere and they didn’t want to take my money in any of them. I couldn't even go anywhere and look at the quotes without one of the clerks jumping on me. I tried to visit them less often, dividing my time between different departments, but this did not work either.
Finally I have there was only one way out. It was the largest and richest of the city's brokerages, the Cosmopolitan.
The Cosmopolitan had an A-I rating and they were doing great business. They had branches in every industrial city in New England. They let me trade, and I bought and sold shares, won or lost for months, but in the end it worked out here, like everywhere else. They didn't kick me out the door like the little offices did. And not because such an act would look unsportsmanlike, but because if everyone knew that they put a person out just because he won a little, it would be a bad reputation. But they did another nasty thing for me - they changed the conditions of the game. First I posted a margin of three dollars, and then I was forced to pay a premium - first half a point, then a point, and finally one and a half. Steeplechase, that's what it was! How was it done? Very simple! Let's say steel shares are at ninety dollars and you buy them. The receipt reads as usual: "Purchased ten steel at 90 1/8." If you post a one pip margin, it means