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, as a ' cover' or deposit upon a hundred times that amount in some stock which he fancies, or thinks he knows, will rise or fall in price. He maybe either a buyer or a seller (always nominally), either a bull or a bear. It is not necessary, if he is a buyer, that there should be any real seller, or, if he is a seller, that there should be any real buyer. Nothing is necessarily bought or sold -(except the speculator himself, who is both). The account having been now opened for that particular stock, all that has to be done is to wait until the account can be closed at a profit.
If stock has been nominally bought, the speculator waits for it to rise, so that when it has risen high enough he may close the account and gather in his gains; or, if stock has been sold, he waits in like manner until it shall fall. When it is rising or falling to his advantage he is in pleasing doubt whether the time has arrived to close to the greatest attainable advantage. If he waits too long and it begins to move the wrong way, he is apt to wait a little longer for the motion in that wrong direction to cease--often with disastrous results; but if he does not wait long enough,
and after the account has been closed the stock still continues to move in what would have been the right direction had the account been kept open, then he is made miserable by the thought that he has thrown away money which he might have gained. As he very seldom hits the precise moment when the greatest possible profit is to be reaped, he nearly always has the discomfort which arises from the thought that he has closed the account too soon or too late.
So much when fortune favors the speculator, as it very often does at the beginning. It is even said, and doubtless it is the case, that stockbrokers of the class we are considering, those who lend themselves to the gambling game which seems so inviting, take care that beginners who have plenty of money to lose, are led on by early successes. A poor fellow who cannot afford to lose more than a paltry ten or twenty pounds, and may even have had to borrow from his employer's till to get that, may be cleared out at once; but manifestly it would not do to dishearten a young fellow who has thousands to lose. Still, with one or the other, losing transactions have to be considered, sooner or later. Here the refined torture arising from anxiety as to the exact moment when the gain is as great as it is likely to be is wanting. The speculator scarcely ever troubles himself even to inquire when his loss, if he closes, is as great as he can reasonably let it be. So long as the loss is within the limit of the ' cover' he holds on. He may even, rather than lose the chance of a change of luck, extend the cover. But whenever his cover, whether left
unchanged or extended as far as he is prepared to go, is reached by the amount of loss, the account is closed and his deposit is forfeited.
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