Phantasmix Stock Blog

Amazing. Today’s WTF find, with W being “why???” in this case.

She lived in a tiny one-bedroom cottage in Lake Forest, Ill.

She bought her clothes at rummage sales, didn’t own a car and worked most of her life as a secretary for a pharmaceutical company.

Yet after her death at age 100, Grace Groner left Lake Forest College a gift of $7 million to be used for scholarships. The money came from three shares of stock she bought — and held on to — in 1935.

Here’s an odd observation (not mine): when people are offered 70% returns they think it’s a scam and majority will avoid investing in the venture. When they’re offered a 200% return, however, they break down and pay up!

Just watched NewsRadio, episode “Stocks” (every sitcom has an episode about stocks, right?).

Beth, the secretary, got several stock tips from billionaire station owner Jimmy James and instead of following them, she sold the tips to someone else.

Beth: I don’t understand. All I did was sell someone something I didn’t even own in the first place that wasn’t worth anything.

Jimmy: Like I said, welcome to the world of high finance!

Re-reading Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre, here’s a possibly relevant excerpt from the book:

One day I saw in the Paris Herald a dispatch from New York that Smelters had declared an extra dividend. They had run up the price of the stock and the entire market had come back quite strong. Of course that changed everything for me in Aix. The news simply meant that the bull cliques were still fighting desperately against conditions – against common sense and against common honesty, for they knew what was coming and were resorting to such schemes to put up the market in order to unload stocks before the storm struck them. It is possible they really did not believe the danger was as serious or as close at hand as I thought. The big men of the Street are as prone to be wishful thinkers as the politicians or the plain suckers. I myself can’t work that way. In a speculator such an attitude is fatal. Perhaps a manufacturer of securities or a promoter of new enterprises can afford to indulge in hope-jags.

“Anyone with average intelligence can learn to trade. This is not rocket science. However, it’s much easier to learn what you should do in trading than to do it. Good systems tend to violate normal human tendencies. Of the people who can learn the basics, only a small percentage will be successful traders.

If a betting game among a certain number of participants is played long enough, eventually one player will have all the money. If there is any skill involved, it will accelerate the process of concentrating all the stakes in a few hands. Something like this happens in the market. There is a persistent overall tendency for equity to flow from the many to the few. In the long run, the majority loses. The implication for the trader is that to win you have to act like the minority. If you bring normal human habits and tendencies to trading, you’ll gravitate toward the majority and inevitably lose.”

William Eckhardt, from The New Market Wizards: Conversations with America’s Top Traders