Ainslee's, No. 6, July 1905 Volume 15 (Paperback)

Excerpt: ...out with surprising celerity and certainty. Wall Street men are frank because they have learned it is wisest. The average commission broker secretly regards his clients with a feeling of benevolence delicately tinctured with contempt. Experience teaches him to use a favorite professional phrase, that there are times when "you can't keep the public out of the market with a club," and that when engaged in stock operations they usually display the judgment of a child picking sweets out of a box. His first care, naturally, is to protect himself, financially and otherwise, against the losses which ensue. Hence he surrounds their transactions with every legal and friendly restraint. But his existence depends on their success, or in replacing them. The broker, therefore, is quite as anxious for his clients to make money as they are themselves. More profit, more margin; more margin, more commissions and less risk. There you have it in a nutshell. The stockbroker says to the public: "My dear sir, here is an open market. Nowhere else can you get such large and quick returns on so small an investment. For these opportunities I charge you the ridiculously small percentage of one-eighth of one per cent., and loan you, besides, ninety per cent. of your investment. Could any man with a proper regard for his wife and children do better by you? You own whatever security you buy, and get its dividend. Your margin is your equity in it. In property whose market value fluctuates so widely and rapidly, I naturally require you to keep your margin at the per cent. agreed upon. If, unfortunately, it becomes exhausted, I, as mortgagee, foreclose at the best price obtainable. I shall be pleased to execute all orders with which you may favor me on the above basis, in all securities dealt in on the New York Stock Exchange, reserving to myself, of course, the right to refuse to carry any security I do not care to loan my capital on. Some are risky, some safe, some...