UU Fowler. Stock exchange

UU Fowler. Stock exchange

Understanding UU Fowler, the New York Stock Exchange proved to be useful to more than one historian, and any student of Wall Street should have to read his writings. As a speculator in force in the middle of the XIX century, he spoke with Daniel Aru and Cornelius Vanderbilt. "These people, - he said - the real Nimrod the mighty hunter of the stock market, they are big pike in a pond populated by smaller size of flakes of the family." Sam Fowler was acting according tothe theory of natural selection by Charles Darwin: "In the struggle for life win a few. strong, decisive and privileged people. This primarily refers to Wall Street. "

Fowler - witness lifting shares of railroads. Beginning in the 1840s, they were given by the stock market. In the early 1860s, took stock of railways only a strong position, on Wall Street had expected a boom, but a civil warrior. Fowler wrote: "The roar of gunfire Fort Sumter quickly dispelled such illusions. For three days thirteen leading shares fell by an average of twenty percent." After the initial panic on Wall Street understood that the warrior can make money. The result is a bull market ". Boyny birth to the generals, and revolution - political figures - he said. - Times of financial turmoil in the stock market improves skill and agility in the field and give birth to leaders of bulls. "According to Fowler, the attractiveness of investing half is to watch as the bulls and bears are fighting face to face, trying to gain control over the exchange.

Fowler and myself have had some experience in those battles. In particular, he and some of his friends acted like bears in the pork market, and he personally sold short 1,000 barrels. "We thought about pork - he said - talking about pork, pork, discussing, dreaming of pork and do it all, just do not eat, because it cost too much." On the other side of the front was a group of people who have decided to make a corner in pork - and they did it by keeping the price inflated. Fowler conclusion was: short sales are no different from gambling - and indeed, even the great Aru, in the end, is bankrupt, too often the visiting bear. Based on his extensive experience, Fowler paints an accurate picture of those early days in the "Stock Exchange".



Stream of people flowing through the Broadway split on Wall Street and carried off in an easterly direction, between the mighty walls of granite and sandstone along this famous street. Two mouth, Nyustrit and Broad Street, it (the flow) is sucked into this swirling, whirling, roaring maelstrom - the stock market. Expressed in ordinary language, these two streets merely roads in the lower part of the city for the passage of people and loaded wagons, and for business. But these streets also form the Stock Exchange on Wednesday, which is the focus of a giant parabolic reflector throws light, more or less vivid, for all the financial community. This stately facade on Broad Street, built as the snow marble from the island of Paros, "naikoroleveyshy masonry" goes to a modest two-story back wall of bricks on New Street, representing the state forbidding sitting with this majestic facade and quietly go out of this modest .

This is our palace of Aladdin. Here you can find a magic lamp, which gives a fast and fabulous riches to those who seize it. Here is a wonderful horse. As a rider, he often flies away and leaves her in a kind of rider a desert island, called Ruin.

The building was built to withstand the forces of fire and air elements - the massive, stone, iron, brick and glass, with a fine finishing of wooden floors, so its ruins are aging, we think, be among those to which the New Zealander will be able to come to stare, Sitting on a hill of ashes that was once the old Trinity, and arguing on the fall of nations.

When you stand in front of this building to the ear hears sound like a dull murmur in remote waters. Sign in with Corinthian columns through the door to Broad Street. Dark lobby with a majestic ceiling, supported by fluted iron columns, is in the length and width of the ground floor area having the shape of the letter L. Through the openings in the thick walls of the front and back and through the frosted glass sheets from above shines dim, though secular world, in which hardly recognizable faces in loud screaming, raging mob. This so-called "long room". To the left of the entrance a wide staircase with a solid balustrade leading to the upper room, where they spend their regular meeting of the members of the Stock Exchange. Directly in front of us a strong guard, which done in, where it sits Cerberus of Hades, whose duty not to pass a barrier no one except members of the exchange and outsiders who paid a hundred dollars for the privilege of watching and buying and selling on the spot to give his instructions to buy or sell to brokers, whom they hired. Going inside the fence, we find ourselves on the marble floor of a fifty-fifty feet, above which rises cradle seventy-fifty, with adjoining west side of the street on New Street Center of the platform (built in an elliptical cavity, divided by rows of steps, surrounded by iron rails) can accommodate several hundred people standing closely. Only brokers are allowed to be inside the enclosure. Over the fence are those who secured this privilege by paying a fee for entrance, as mentioned above.

Today on the Stock Exchange the big day. Shares rise slowly over many weeks, now jump up, growing by ten percent per hour. The long room like a bedlam of lunatics at large. Pit packed with buyers and sellers, waving hands, screaming at all the colors from the rumbling bass to the shrill tenor. This morning, Wall Street is fully represented on the exchange. Major banking and brokerage firm located on the site, fulfilling orders and reaping the golden harvest of fees. Rapid step in and out of wary Tightened people, each holding a stack of papers, which recorded the last quote. With an endless clicking of the telegraph urgently sends prices in each market town of the United States. There are all speculators, both internal and external. Clever inventors 'rings' and finders 'pools' in the crowd moving from place to place, watching the effect of their manipulation, and cheering on their team members hired. That veteran Drew, silent Shelton, active Woodward and gladiator Morrissey, Tobin with opal eyes, Stimpson with elegant Roman nose and Dick Schell, looking as merry Punchinello, all of them here. The benevolent features of Henry Kip No, but it is absolutely black beard and blond hair Gould fearless Fisk are close, that for the "Commodore," had a massive delivery in this game he is playing nearby in the office through the wires.

Almost all observers are in varying degrees, interested in developments in the market. Some of them are at the fence surrounding the pit, while others watched the battle from afar, standing between the entrance to the fence and doors. On the faces of these external speculators stirring life they lead, and left a strong imprint. Features of their faces often express a constant feeling of anxiety. They look at the scale of prices with obvious indifference, but for a moment disturbed the pain of loss or illuminating the pleasure of winning. It seems that some of them wear a mask of wax.

They appear on the faces of players, covering every emotion and rarely discharged, except when a certain pang or a strong emotion catches them by surprise.

The battle between bulls and bears begins with a mild skirmish. In descending order of the day monolithic columns are moving against each other under the fire of heavy artillery. Bears are beginning to give way, and their banners turn into a mess. Suddenly, a deafening noise comes out of the pit. Shares "New York Central" have grown by ten percent over the same number of minutes. Some big buys Bear shares to cover their contracts, his followers in a hurry for him, and soon the whole army of bears already at work by buying or paying. Bulls have won the day, and after counting the dead, wounded and missing, and summing up the trophies and losses, respectively, the army retreating to their camps and prepare for new campaigns.

The association, known as the New York Stock Exchange, formed in the beginning of this century. She gave sprouts sixty years ago in a small clique of stock traders, numbering almost a full dozen, have used to meet under a plane tree, standing on Wall Street, opposite the modern banking house, "Brown Brothers and Company", and repurchased small batches government securities or shares "Manhattan campaign" or "Bank of New York." In 1816 there was already a permanent organization of twenty-eight members. The names of most people who make up this favorite range is now stored only in memory of old New Yorkers, or recorded on a "dull cold marble," which indicates to regular expressions of the old times of the virtues of these people exchanges. Two of them, and AN Gifford and Warren Lawton, veterans and surviving hundreds of companies after fifty years of sharp vicissitudes of Wall Street is still used, or enjoyed, their old age.

Already by 1837 the organization has grown and become a force, but rather the force of evil than good, because the community has stimulated the thirst of speculation. In the same year was the fall of the banking house and a brokerage firm, estimated at 5,000,000 dollars, "End S. Josephs JL," Rothschild family of agents, carried away for a spread in many other collapse. Heirs and successors of twenty-eight brokers in 1816 in the reptile actually took a healthy diet and have grown in large quantities. In 1870, their number ranges from ten to eleven ssten, and under their ownership or management of wealth is estimated at ten million dollars. Old sycamore rotted and fell during a storm, and they appear no longer under the "deciduous tree" (though in a place of the meeting groups of bulls and bears there are poetic line), and in the marble temple dedicated to the god of wealth Mammon, the massive iron gates which open as miltonovskie gates of the heavenly city in the gold hinges.