Making It In The Bucket Shops
I had put out my 3509 shares of Sugar at 105-1/4. There was another fellow in the room, Henry Williams, who was short 2500 shares. I used to sit by the ticker and call out the quotations for the board boy. The price behaved as I thought it would. It promptly went down a couple of points and paused a little to get its breath before taking another dip. The general market was pretty soft and everything looked promising.
The Cosmopolitan, as I said, was my last resort. It was the richest bucket shop in New England, and as a rule they put no limit on a trade. I think I was the heaviest individual trader they had that is, of the steady, every-day customers. They had a fine office and the largest and completest quotation board I have ever seen anywhere.
It ran along the whole length of the big room and every imaginable thing was quoted. I mean stocks dealt in on the New York and Boston Stock Exchanges, cotton, wheat, provisions, metals everything that was bought and sold in New York, Chicago, Boston and Liverpool.
He said he would, and I got up and gave him my place by the ticker so he could call out the prices for the boy. I took my seven Sugar tickets out of my pocket and walked over to the counter, to where the clerk was who marked the tickets when you closed your trades.
He also put down the time on the ticket so that it almost read like a regular broker's report that is, that they had bought or sold for you so many shares of such a stock at such a price at such a time on such a day and how much money they received from you. When you wished to close your trade you went to the clerk the same or another, it depended on the shop and you told him. He took the last price or if the stock had not been active he waited for the next quotation that came out on the tape.
He wrote that price and the time on your ticket, O.K.'d it and gave it back to you, and then you went to the cashier and got whatever cash it called for. Of course, when the market went against you and the price went beyond the limit set by your margin, your trade automatically closed itself and your ticket became one more scrap of paper.
According to my dope Sugar should have broken 103 by now. The engine wasn't hitting right. I had the feeling that there was a trap in the neighborhood. At all events, the telegraph instrument was now going like mad and I noticed that Tom Burnham, the clerk, had left my tickets unmarked where I laid them, and was listening to the clicking as if he were waiting for something.
He played that game several times all over the country, punishing the bigger bucket shops of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cincinnati and St. Louis.
One of his favorite stocks was Western Union, because it was so easy to move a semi active stock like that a few points up en-down. His agents bought it at a certain figure, sold at two points profit, went short and took three points more. By the way, I read the other day that that man died, poor and obscure. If he had died in 1896 he would have got at least a column on the first page of every New York paper. As it was he got two lines on the fifth.
Say, the distance from Tom's place to the cashier's cage "wasn't over eight feet. But I hadn't got to the cashier to get my money when Dave Wyman by the ticker yelled excitedly: "Gosh! Sugar, 108!" But it was too late; so I just laughed and called over to Tom, "It didn't work that time, did it, old boy? - 23226
The Cosmopolitan, as I said, was my last resort. It was the richest bucket shop in New England, and as a rule they put no limit on a trade. I think I was the heaviest individual trader they had that is, of the steady, every-day customers. They had a fine office and the largest and completest quotation board I have ever seen anywhere.
It ran along the whole length of the big room and every imaginable thing was quoted. I mean stocks dealt in on the New York and Boston Stock Exchanges, cotton, wheat, provisions, metals everything that was bought and sold in New York, Chicago, Boston and Liverpool.
He said he would, and I got up and gave him my place by the ticker so he could call out the prices for the boy. I took my seven Sugar tickets out of my pocket and walked over to the counter, to where the clerk was who marked the tickets when you closed your trades.
He also put down the time on the ticket so that it almost read like a regular broker's report that is, that they had bought or sold for you so many shares of such a stock at such a price at such a time on such a day and how much money they received from you. When you wished to close your trade you went to the clerk the same or another, it depended on the shop and you told him. He took the last price or if the stock had not been active he waited for the next quotation that came out on the tape.
He wrote that price and the time on your ticket, O.K.'d it and gave it back to you, and then you went to the cashier and got whatever cash it called for. Of course, when the market went against you and the price went beyond the limit set by your margin, your trade automatically closed itself and your ticket became one more scrap of paper.
According to my dope Sugar should have broken 103 by now. The engine wasn't hitting right. I had the feeling that there was a trap in the neighborhood. At all events, the telegraph instrument was now going like mad and I noticed that Tom Burnham, the clerk, had left my tickets unmarked where I laid them, and was listening to the clicking as if he were waiting for something.
He played that game several times all over the country, punishing the bigger bucket shops of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cincinnati and St. Louis.
One of his favorite stocks was Western Union, because it was so easy to move a semi active stock like that a few points up en-down. His agents bought it at a certain figure, sold at two points profit, went short and took three points more. By the way, I read the other day that that man died, poor and obscure. If he had died in 1896 he would have got at least a column on the first page of every New York paper. As it was he got two lines on the fifth.
Say, the distance from Tom's place to the cashier's cage "wasn't over eight feet. But I hadn't got to the cashier to get my money when Dave Wyman by the ticker yelled excitedly: "Gosh! Sugar, 108!" But it was too late; so I just laughed and called over to Tom, "It didn't work that time, did it, old boy? - 23226
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