Excerpt from Investment and Speculation, Vol. 7: A Description of the Modern Money Market and Analysis of the Factors Determining the Value of Securities; Modern Business Speculation 1s an investment of money in which large risk 18 taken in expectation of great gain. But it is not easy to draw the line where investment ends and speculation begins. In Wall Street such a line is drawn, but it is an arbitrary division. When a security is bought and paid for in full, put away in a place of safe keeping and held for the income it yields - that is called an investment. The great bulk of the dealings in bonds are for investment. When a security is bought on margin and held for sale as soon as the price advances - that is speculation. The bulk of the dealings in stocks is speculative. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Investment and Speculation, Vol. 7: A Description of the Modern Money Market and Analysis of the Factors Determining the Value of Securities; Modern Business It is no part of the purpose of this volume to teach the reader how to speculate. It is hoped, on the contrary, that the book will discourage speculation by the emphasis which it places on the importance of patience, intelligence and foresight in the art of investing. In the minds of many people speculation is a very sinister word, and a speculator a man morally no better than a gambler. It is the purpose of this volume to make clear the distinction between speculation and investment, to explain and illustrate the conditions which determine a safe investment, and to describe and illustrate the hazards inherent in all forms of speculation. The investor seeks to have his capital employed in the actual production of wealth; he is especially concerned in the security of the principal and in the certainty of income in the form of interest on bonds and dividends on stocks. The speculator, on the other hand, is primarily concerned in the values or prices of things. He is a trader, hoping to buy cheap and sell dear, and in the process he does not desire either to produce or handle the goods. Economists are generally agreed that speculation, whether in commodities or in stocks, has a beneficial effect upon the production of wealth. It tends as a rule to prevent sudden and great fluctuations in the prices of goods and securities. It causes to be recorded in the world's great markets the effect upon prices of the smallest changes in industrial conditions. Does a late frost injure the corn crop? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Investment and Speculation Every head Of a corporation, every business man, in fact everyone employed in a responsible position and upon whose judgment the success Of an enterprise largely de pends, should provide himself with a general knowledge of the problem of investments and speculation. Investment and speculation are so closely associated with the well-being of trade that the two are inseparable. Figuratively speaking, they are the propelling forces gov erning the money market, which, in turn, is the vital life blood Of business. This is an indisputable fact. 'it cannot be denied. Many a merchant and many a manufacturer who has mastered the problem of investment and speculation has been able to put his knowledge to great financial advantage in his ability to foresee a drain upon the money market and its consequent effect upon interest rates by providing for all his banking accommodations long before interest rates have hardened. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

A lively, original, and challenging history of stock market speculation from the 17th century to present day. Is your investment in that new Internet stock a sign of stock market savvy or an act of peculiarly American speculative folly? How has the psychology of investing changed—and not changed—over the last five hundred years? In Devil Take the Hindmost, Edward Chancellor traces the origins of the speculative spirit back to ancient Rome and chronicles its revival in the modern world: from the tulip scandal of 1630s Holland, to “stockjobbing” in London's Exchange Alley, to the infamous South Sea Bubble of 1720, which prompted Sir Isaac Newton to comment, “I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.” Here are brokers underwriting risks that included highway robbery and the “assurance of female chastity”; credit notes and lottery tickets circulating as money; wise and unwise investors from Alexander Pope and Benjamin Disraeli to Ivan Boesky and Hillary Rodham Clinton. From the Gilded Age to the Roaring Twenties, from the nineteenth century railway mania to the crash of 1929, from junk bonds and the Japanese bubble economy to the day-traders of the Information Era, Devil Take the Hindmost tells a fascinating story of human dreams and folly through the ages.