Pining for the "good old days" of Wall Street?
(NOTE: This is a new edition of the classic work, not a scanned reproduction of an old library book.)
When the New York Stock Exchange's primary purpose was to raise the capital the United States needed to finance the infrastructure of a young and growing country?
When conservative investors bought stocks to buy and hold for the long haul?
When brokers had the best interests of their clients at heart?
When the stock exchange listed only high quality stocks for sale?
When corporations did not deceive creditors by using the same property as the basis for multiple issues of bonds?
When Wall Street investment bank focused on providing good service, not in coming up with new financial products -- that is, inventing ever more new and risky ways to separate ordinary investors from their money?
When a man and a company's word was good, so you didn't have to study the fine print of every security before investing?
When a stock's current market price was fairly representative of its true value?
When Treasury bonds paid enough interest to support retirees?
Then DON'T read this book!
You'll be horribly disillusioned.
The author was a New York broker who wrote to warn ordinary people of the many dangerous ways to invest.
Much of what he wrote reminds us of modern Wall Street, without the complications made possible by computers.
It was the Gilded Age, according to Mark Twain . . .
The "robber barons" were creating industrial fortunes
Financiers got wealthy manipulating stocks on Wall Street
The young United States needed roads, farms, railroads and water works, and investors unknowingly were paying five to six times their actual costs
The western frontier was still being tamed, but every small town could have a speculator running the risk of "stock-gambling" and the resultant bankruptcy and even suicide -- like day trading without your own PC.
So check out book that blows the lid the insider secrets of Wall Street past . . .
Then substitute "biotech or Internet" for "railroad" and the latest craze for "water works" and you'll have a guide to warn you not to fall for the ways investors can lose their shirts in the 21st century . . .
