From Hamon’s New York Stock Exchange Manual (1865): “Great gains usually alternate with great losses in this kind of business. “One would think that jobbers would soon die of worry and anxiety, and often enough they are seen to be very ‘down in the mouth. But nature is kind, and fits the back to the burden.” “These are the men whose sole business is stock speculation,” wrote William W Fowler. “When they have once entered the street, they never leave it except in a pine box or a rosewood case, according to circumstances. “If they lose money, they stay there to regain it, and if they make money, they stay there to make more. Constitutionally, and by temperament, they are speculators. Hear them talk, and you would suppose they lived on hope … those saddest words of tongue or pen, ‘It might have been’, enter largely into the thoughts and conversation of the speculator. If and but are the most frequent conjunctions in his vocabulary. His whole life is a series of regrets, and strange to ...
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