REMINISCENCES OF A STOCK OPERATOR

I went to work when I was just out of grammar school. I got a job as quotation-board
boy in a stockbrokerage office. I was quick at figures. At school I did three years of
arithmetic in one. I was particularly good at mental arithmetic. As quotation-board boy I
posted the numbers on the big board in the customers’ room. One of the customers
usually sat by the ticker and called out the prices. They couldn’t come too fast for me. I
have always remembered figures. No trouble at all.
There were plenty of other employees in that office. Of course I made friends with the
other fellows, but the work I did, if the market was active, kept me too busy from ten
a.m. to three p.m. to let me do much talking. I don’t care for it, anyhow, during business
hours.
But a busy market did not keep me from thinking about the work. Those quotations did
not represent prices of stocks to me, so many dollars per share. They were numbers. Of
course, they meant something. They were always changing. It was all I had to be
interested in the changes. Why did they change? I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I didn’t
think about that. I simply saw that they changed. That was all I had to think about five
hours every day and two on Saturdays: that they were always changing.
That is how I first came to be interested in the behaviour of prices. I had a very good
memory for figures. I could remember in detail how the prices had acted on the previous
day, just before they went up or down. My fondness for mental arithmetic came in very
handy. … …