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Wolfram Donat

Learn Raspberry Pi Programming with

Python
Learn to Program on the World’s Most Popular Tiny
Computer
2nd ed.
Wolfram Donat
Palmdale, California, USA

Any source code or other supplementary material referenced by the

author in this book is available to readers on GitHub via the book’s
product page, located at www.​apress.​com/​978-1-4842-3768-7 . For
more detailed information, please visit http://​www.​apress.​com/​
source-code .

ISBN 978-1-4842-3768-7 e-ISBN 978-1-4842-3769-4

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3769-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018951226

© Wolfram Donat 2018

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To Becky and Reed
Thank you for your patience and support when I disappear for hours,
days, and weeks at a time to build all manner of off-the-wall things and
then write about them.
Preface
It is difficult to believe that it’s been four years since I wrote the first
edition of this book. In 2014, there was one version of the Raspberry Pi,
a comparatively underpowered board with only one core in its ARM
processor and only twenty GPIO pins to play around with. I was excited
to order my first Pi, and I actually had to get on a waiting list to be on
the second shipment list.
In addition, it seemed that every time you turned around, someone
else was introducing a single-board computer (SBC) that was trying to
appeal to the same niche that the Pi did—mainly hobbyists and makers
who were ready to step up from the Arduino to something a bit more
powerful.
The Pi resisted all attacks on its throne, however (not that it was
ever interested in competing), and thrived. There are now seven
models of the Pi: the model 1, the model 2, the model 2B, the model 3,
the model 3B, the Pi Zero, and the Zero W. The Pi 3 is a computing
powerhouse compared to the original model; its quad-core architecture
lets it perform tasks like computer vision and machine learning, and
overclocking it can give you speeds up to 1.5GHz, compared to the
original’s 700MHz. Meanwhile, the Zero and the Zero W have such a
low price point ($5US and $10US, respectively) that I often have to field
questions from readers like “Why should I use an Arduino? The Pi Zero
is cheaper!”
And the Pi is not the only game in town. Depending on how much
you’re willing to spend, there are quite a few other SBCs that can be
used for whatever project you’ve got in mind, ranging from the $30
BeagleBoard to the $550 NVidia Jetson TX2. I still like the Pi, however;
it’s the board that first got me started playing around with embedded
computers and the hobby projects that you can do with them. It’s
inexpensive, so when I burn it up or brick it (as I’ve done quite a few
times) I can replace it without breaking the bank. And it’s still powerful
enough for quite a lot of things.
Thanks for reading this new book with me. If you’re a fan of my
original book, thanks for sticking with me and putting up with the
several mistakes that made it through to publication, and if you’re a
new reader and a new Pi user, welcome! I hope to use the following
pages to introduce you to an exciting new world of projects and
computing.
Introduction
In 2006, when Eben Upton and the other founders of the Raspberry Pi
Foundation looked at the state of computer science (CS) programs at
universities, they were dismayed. Such programs were being reduced to
“CS 101: How to Operate Microsoft Word” and “CS 203: Optimize Your
Facebook Page.” Nobody, they realized, was learning how to program
anymore, least of all before they entered college. So they hatched a plan
—create a small, cheap computer that kids could learn to program on,
like the Amigas, Spectrums, and Commodore 64s of yesteryear. They
put an ARM processor on a board, gave it (eventually) 512MB of RAM
and a VideoCore GPU, and allowed users to interface with it using a USB
keyboard and mouse and an HDMI output. To make it easy to program,
they designed it with Python in mind—a powerful, easy-to-learn
language. And thus the Raspberry Pi was born.
I wrote my first program in BASIC on a Commodore VIC20, longer
ago than I care to admit. At 5KB of RAM, it had less processing power
than many of today’s microcontrollers, but I was still able to write a
simple maze game on it, saving my progress as I went along to a
cassette-tape drive. In the years since, I’ve traversed my way through
the different computing platforms, from Windows 3.1 to Macintosh OS
8 to Linux, my OS of choice. It had been a long time since I was truly
excited by a computer; the Pi was a breath of fresh air in a stale
computing environment. Not only was it small and cheap, but it was
also easy to get it to interact with the physical world—a real boon for
anybody like me who was interested in designing and building physical
systems. So, when I heard about its release, I signed up for the shipment
like about a trillion other hobbyists/hackers/engineers and waited
impatiently for mine to be delivered. Then, I started building stuff with
it and writing about it, and I never looked back.
If you’ve bought (or were gifted) a Pi, but aren’t sure how to get
started with it, this book is for you.
If you’ve got a Pi but aren’t sure about what you can or want to do
with it, this book is for you.
If you’re even considering buying a Pi, for yourself or someone else,
but haven’t yet because you keep wondering “What’s it good for?” or
“Why not buy an Arduino?” then this book is definitely for you.
 This book isn’t meant to be a textbook on Python, nor is it an
exhaustive exploration of the Raspberry Pi and everything it can do. But
it is meant to be a fun getting-started guide to this nifty little computer,
in all of its possible permutations. I hope that after working through
this book you’ll have an understanding of everything you can do with
this little board when you mix it with some ingenuity and creativity.
If you want to work through the projects in order, feel free. If you’d
rather skip around, doing only those projects that interest you, do that.
Along the way, I hope you develop a familiarity with Python and Linux
and the Pi that will enable you to continue on, building projects as you
go, and perhaps inspiring others the way I hope to inspire you. Above
all, I hope you enjoy the book and its projects. It was truly a blast to
write. I always love hearing about your projects; you can reach me
through the publisher or via Twitter: @wolfram_donat .
Happy computing!
Acknowledgments
Even though writing is a solitary activity, no author writes in a void, and
I would like to acknowledge those who have helped this book become a
reality. Rebecca and Reed, your support—as always—is invaluable.
Oliver makes sure the door to the office works. Chloe ensures that all
objects coming out of the workshop or garage have evasive-maneuver
capabilities. Smudge gives and receives emotional support. Doofus and
Pericles supervise.
Couldn’t do it without you guys.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1:​Introducing the Raspberry Pi
The History of the Raspberry Pi
Exploring the Pi
The GPIO Pins
USB &​Ethernet
Audio Jack
Camera Connector
HDMI
Power
Display
The System on a Chip
SD Card
Not Visible
The Pi Zero/​Zero W
GPIO
Camera Connector
Power
USB
HDMI
SD Card
System on a Chip
Not Visible
Comparing the Raspberry Pi to Similar Devices
Getting Started with the Pi
Hardware Requirements of the Pi
 Connecting to Power
Adding a Monitor
Adding a USB Hub
The Pi Operating System
Formatting the Card
Installing the OS
Connecting the Peripherals
Configuring the Pi
Shutting Down the Pi
Summary
Chapter 2:​Linux by the Seat of Your Pants
Getting Started with Linux on the Pi
Linux Files and the File System
Root User Versus sudo
Commands
Exercise:​Navigating in the Linux File System
Shells in Linux
Package Managers
Text Editors
Vim Versus emacs Versus nano
Using Vim
Using emacs
Using nano
Default Text Editor
Summary
Chapter 3:​Introducing Python
 Scripting Versus a Programming Language
The Python Philosophy
Getting Started with Python
Running Python Using IDLE
Running Python Using the Terminal
Running Python Using Scripts
Exploring Python Data Types
Numbers
Strings
Lists
Dictionaries
Tuples and Files
Programming with Python
IF tests
Loops
Functions
Objects and Object-Oriented Programming
Summary
Chapter 4:​Electronics at 100 MPH
Basic Electricity Concepts
Required Tools for Robotics
Screwdrivers
Pliers and Wire Strippers
Wire Cutters
Files
Magnifying Light
 Hot-Glue Gun
Assorted Glues
Multimeter
Power Supplies
Breadboard
Power Strip
Soldering Iron
General Safety Rules
Working with Heat
Working with Sharp Objects
Wear Safety Glasses
Fire Extinguishers at the Ready
Keep a First-Aid Kit Handy
Work in a Ventilated Area
Organizing Your Workplace
Bonus:​Soldering Techniques
Summary
Chapter 5:​The Web Bot
Bot Etiquette
The Connections of the Web
Web Communications Protocols
Web Page Formats
A Request Example
Our Web Bot Concept
Parsing Web Pages
Coding with Python Modules
 Using the Mechanize Module
Parsing with Beautiful Soup
Downloading with the urllib Library
Deciding What to Download
Choosing a Starting Point
Storing Your Files
Writing the Python Bot
Reading a String and Extracting All the Links
Looking For and Downloading Files
Testing the Bot
Creating Directories and Instantiating a List
The Final Code
Summary
Chapter 6:​The Weather Station
A Shopping List of Parts
Using the I2C Protocol
Using an Anemometer
Building the Anemometer
Connecting the Anemometer to the Pi
Correlating Revolutions per Second with Wind Speed
Connecting the Digital Compass
Connecting the Temperature/​Humidity Sensor
Connecting the Barometer
Connecting the Bits
The Final Code
Summary
Chapter 7:​The Media Server
A Shopping List of Parts
Using an NTFS Drive
Installing Samba
Configuring Samba
Setting Linux Permissions
Restarting the Samba Service
Connecting with Linux/​OS X
Kodi and Plex
Where’s Python?​
Summary
Chapter 8:​The Home Security System
Dogs as Security
The Raspberry Pi as Security
Using a Sensor Network
Understanding a Pulldown Resistor
A Shopping List of Parts
Connecting to Your Network Wirelessly
Accessing the GPIO Pins
Setting Up the Motion Sensor
Setting Up the Reed Switch
Setting Up the Pressure Switch
Connecting the Magnetic Sensor
Setting Up the Pi’s Camera
Sending a Text Message from the Pi
Implementing the Callback
 Connecting All of the Bits
The Final Code
Summary
Chapter 9:​The Cat Toy
A Shopping List of Parts
The Concept Behind the Toy
Creating and Using Random Numbers
Using the GPIO Library
Controlling the Servo
Constructing the Servo Mechanism
Constructing the Laser Mechanism
Connecting the Laser to the Servo
Connecting the Motion Sensor
Connecting All the Bits
Final Code
Summary
Chapter 10:​The Radio-Controlled Airplane
A Shopping List of Parts
Connecting the GPS Receiver to the Pi
Setting Up a Log File
Formatting a KML File
Using Threading and Objects
Setting Up Automatic Startup
Connecting the Bits
The Final Code
The Plane Program
 KML Conversion Program
Summary
Chapter 11:​The Weather Balloon
A Shopping List of Parts
Setting Up the GPS Receiver
Storing the GPS Data
Installing PiFM
Installing Festival
Installing FFMPEG
Substituting avconv
Preparing the Pi
Using Threading and Objects
Connecting the Bits
Reviewing the Photo Results
The Final Code
Summary
Chapter 12:​The Submersible
A Shopping List of Parts
Accessing the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO Pins
Installing the Pi Camera Board
Controlling the Sub
Attaching the Wiichuck Adapter
Activating the Pi’s I2C
Reading from the Nunchuk
The Nunchuk and LED Test Side Project
Controlling the Sub Motors and Camera with the Nunchuk
 Starting the Program Remotely
The Final Code
Constructing the Sub
Building the Frame
Creating the Pi’s Enclosure
Waterproofing the Motor Enclosures
Connecting the Nunchuk
Assembling the Final Product
Summary
Chapter 13:​The Raspberry Pi and the Arduino
Exploring the Arduino
Installing the Arduino IDE on the Pi
Running a Servo
Summary
Index
About the Author and About the Technical
Reviewer

About the Author

Wolfram Donat
is a writer, engineer, and maker who has been futzing with computers
and electronics for longer than he cares to admit. He firmly believes
that if something is worth doing, it’s worth overdoing; everything needs
a self-destruct button; and digital watches are still a pretty neat idea.
He has a degree in computer engineering from the University of Alaska,
and—despite several warnings—currently lives in Southern California
with his wife, son, and a small menagerie.

About the Technical Reviewer

Massimo Nardone
has more than 24 years of experience in security, web/mobile
development, cloud, and IT architecture. His true IT passions are
security and Android.
He has been programming and teaching how to program with
Android, Perl, PHP, Java, VB, Python, C/C++, and MySQL for more than
20 years.
He holds a Master of Science degree in Computing Science from the
University of Salerno, Italy.
He has worked as a project manager, software engineer, research
engineer, chief security architect, information security manager,
PCI/SCADA auditor, and senior lead IT security/cloud/SCADA architect
over the years.
Technical skills include security, Android, cloud, Java, MySQL,
Drupal, Cobol, Perl, web and mobile development, MongoDB, D3,
Joomla, Couchbase, C/C++, WebGL, Python, Pro Rails, Django CMS,
Jekyll, Scratch, and more.
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 He has previously worked as visiting lecturer and supervisor for
exercises at the Networking Laboratory of the Helsinki University of
Technology (Aalto University). He holds four international patents (PKI,
SIP, SAML, and Proxy areas).
He currently works as Chief Information Security Office (CISO) for
Cargotec Oyj and is a member of the ISACA Finland Chapter Board.
© Wolfram Donat 2018
Wolfram Donat, Learn Raspberry Pi Programming with Python
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3769-4_1

1. Introducing the Raspberry Pi

Wolfram Donat1

(1) Palmdale, California, USA

So, you’ve got yourself a Raspberry Pi mini-computer and are thinking

to yourself: “Now what?” Maybe it was a gift. Maybe you’d heard about
this “Raspberry Pie thingamabob” and decided to find out what all of
the ruckus was about. Perhaps you’re already experienced with
computers, but not with Linux or Python. Maybe you’re a Linux geek
who’s never made a servo move or lit up an LED with just a few lines of
code and the correct hardware and software installed. Or maybe you’re
familiar with computers only to the point of checking your email and
surfing the web but are eager to learn more. Or perhaps (one of my
favorite scenarios) you’re an educator who’s interested in teaching the
next generation about computers and programming and technology in
general.
Whatever the case may be, welcome! You’re about to join a club—
not a particularly exclusive one, I’m afraid, as the cost of joining is only
about $35 US and a spark of creativity, but a club nonetheless—
populated by students and teachers and hobbyists and artists and
engineers. As a member of this club, you’ll be able to discuss package
managers , ARM processors, and dot config files intelligently with
whomever will listen to your babble. You’ll become familiar with
servos, LEDs, and cameras-on-a-chip. And, perhaps most important,
you’ll be able to connect to your new mini-computer, program it using
one of many programming languages (although this book deals solely
with Python), build projects, and interface those projects with the Pi,
enabling it to interact with the physical world and do some pretty cool
things.
With this book, I hereby induct you into this club. Your experience
doesn’t matter, because I’ll lead you step-by-step through the process of
setting up your Pi so you can work with it with a minimum of
headaches. I’ll give you a solid background in Linux so you have an idea
of what’s going on behind the scenes, and I’ll devote an entire chapter
to Python, the deceptively powerful scripting language used by tech
companies like Facebook, Google, and even NASA. I also plan to
introduce you to the basic nuts and bolts of electronics, something that
many tech-project books either gloss over or neglect completely. There
are safety factors to consider (I’ve nearly had several small explosions
as a result of shorting out LiPo batteries, for instance) as well as good
building practices; you’ll learn the difference between a good and a bad
solder joint, how to avoid slicing off your finger with an X-ACTO knife,
and the difference between a 40Ω and a 40KΩ resistor.
Of course, if you’re already familiar with all of these introductory
items, feel free to skip ahead to the good stuff—the projects. Most of
them can be constructed in a weekend or so, and I’ve tried to keep the
costs within reason as well. All are programmed in Python. At the
beginning of each chapter, I’ll give you a shopping list and suggestions
on where to buy the parts, and then we’ll start building. The projects
don’t necessarily build on each other, nor do you have to do them in
order, though they do tend to increase in complexity from the first
project to the last.
What sorts of projects can you do with a Pi? A better question might
be what sorts of projects can’t you do with a Pi. It’s been used for
everything from web servers to car computers (carputers) to cluster
computing to embedded machine vision devices to CNC controllers . . .
the list just goes on and on. I hope that after finishing this book you’ll
have some ideas of your own as well as the skills required to put those
ideas into practice.
Whatever reason you have for picking up this book, your main
objectives should be to have fun and to learn something. I hope I can
help along the way!
The History of the Raspberry Pi
It may seem to some readers that the Raspberry Pi is new; there are a
surprising number of people who have no idea what it is. Even now,
seven years after the first Pi was produced, a large number of online
articles begin with something along the lines of “The Raspberry Pi is a
small, credit-card sized computer that hobbyists have begun using for . .
.” This is in stark contrast to, say, the Arduino; most people who are up
on current events have at least heard of it, even if they have no idea
what it is or what it’s used for, since it’s been around since 2005 and
has gained an immense, vocal following among hobbyists, geeks, and
do-it-yourselfers around the world.

The Arduino
For those who don’t know, the Arduino is a microcontroller platform,
available in many different form factors and sizes, mounted on a PCB
that plugs easily into most computers’ USB ports. It allows the user
to program the onboard Atmega chip to do various things via a C-like
programming language in programs called sketches . A typical
Arduino sketch might look something like this:

#include <Servo.h>

void setup()
{
myservo.attach(9);
}

void loop()
{
myservo.write(95);
delay(1000);
myservo.write(150);
delay(1000);
}
 This program will move a connected servomotor (a small motor
that can be controlled precisely via software) back and forth, with
one-second delays between movements.
The Arduino is not as powerful as the Pi when it comes to
computing power, but it’s also a completely different animal, as it’s a
microcontroller, not a computer, so comparing them is a bit like
comparing zebras and avocados. The two machines do, however,
complement each other well, and I will discuss how to do that in
Chapter 14.

As I said, the Raspberry Pi has been around for a few years—seven, to

be exact. There are several different models available, with a new,
improved version being released about once every other year.
The Pi’s creators—Eben Upton, Rob Mullins, Jack Lang, and Alan
Mycroft—first floated the idea of a cheap PC for teaching purposes in
2006. They were all based at the University of Cambridge in the United
Kingdom, and they were concerned that the demise of cheap personal
computers like the Commodore 64, the Amiga, and the Spectrum was
adversely affecting young people’s ability to program. With desktop and
laptop machines costing hundreds or thousands of dollars, kids and
teenagers were forbidden to practice programming on the family’s
main computer for fear of breaking it.
At the same time, Upton and the others realized that many
university computer science curricula had been reduced to “Microsoft
Word 101” and “How to Create a Web Page Using HTML.” The four
creators wanted to raise the programming knowledge bar of incoming
students, and thus perhaps computer science and engineering courses
would become a bit more robust and applicable to STEM fields in the
real world.
Obviously, a cheaper computer was necessary. They played around
with microcontrollers and various chips, breadboards, and PCBs (see
Figure 1-1), but it wasn’t until 2008 that the idea became more feasible.
Chips were becoming smaller, cheaper, and more powerful, thanks to
the explosion in mobile devices. These chips enabled them to plan a
device that would be capable of supporting multimedia, not just
command-line programming, which they felt was important in order to
attract all ages of students. Young people were more likely to be
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interest is big enough to make the scarcity worthwhile. One born
every minute!
It so happened some time ago that I was in Florida on my usual
winter vacation. I was fishing and enjoying myself without any
thought of the markets excepting when we received a batch of
newspapers. One morning when the semi-weekly mail came in I
looked at the stock quotations and saw that Tropical Trading was
selling at 155. The last time I’d seen a quotation in it, I think, was
around 140. My opinion was that we were going into a bear market
and I was biding my time before going short of stocks. But there
was no mad rush. That was why I was fishing and out of hearing of
the ticker. I knew that I’d be back home when the real call came. In
the meanwhile nothing that I did or failed to do would hurry matters
a bit.
The behaviour of Tropical Trading was the outstanding feature of
the market, according to the newspapers I got that morning. It
served to crystallise my general bearishness because I thought it
particularly asinine for the insiders to run up the price of TT in the
face of the heaviness of the general list. There are times when the
milking process must be suspended. What is abnormal is seldom a
desirable factor in a trader’s calculations and it looked to me as if the
marking up of that stock were a capital blunder. Nobody can make
blunders of that magnitude with impunity; not in the stock market.
After I got through reading the newspapers I went back to my
fishing but I kept thinking of what the insiders in Tropical Trading
were trying to do. That they were bound to fail was as certain as
that a man is bound to smash himself if he jumps from the roof of a
twenty-story building without a parachute. I couldn’t think of
anything else and finally I gave up trying to fish and sent off a
telegram to my brokers to sell 2000 shares of TT at the market.
After that I was able to go back to my fishing. I did pretty well.
That afternoon I received the reply to my telegram by special
courier. My brokers reported that they had sold the 2000 shares of
Tropical Trading at 153. So far so good. I was selling short on a
declining market, which was as it should be. But I could not fish any
more. I was too far away from a quotation board. I discovered this
after I began to think of all the reasons why Tropical Trading should
go down with the rest of the market instead of going up on inside
manipulation. I therefore left my fishing camp and returned to Palm
Beach; or, rather, to the direct wire to New York.
The moment I got to Palm Beach and saw what the misguided
insiders were still trying to do, I let them have a second lot of 2000
TT. Back came the report and I sold another 2000 shares. The
market behaved excellently. That is, it declined on my selling.
Everything being satisfactory I went out and had a chair ride. But I
wasn’t happy. The more I thought the unhappier it made me to think
that I hadn’t sold more. So back I went to the broker’s office and
sold another 2000 shares.
I was happy only when I was selling that stock. Presently I was
short 10,000 shares. Then I decided to return to New York. I had
business to do now. My fishing I would do some other time.
When I arrived in New York I made it a point to get a line on the
company’s business, actual and prospective. What I learned
strengthened my conviction that the insiders had been worse than
reckless in jacking up the price at a time when such an advance was
not justified either by the tone of the general market or by the
company’s earnings.
The rise, illogical and ill-timed though it was, had developed
some public following and this doubtless encouraged the insiders to
pursue their unwise tactics. Therefore I sold more stock. The
insiders ceased their folly. So I tested the market again and again, in
accordance with my trading methods, until finally I was short 30,000
shares of the stock of the Tropical Trading Company. By then the
price was 133.
I had been warned that the TT insiders knew the exact
whereabouts of every stock certificate in the Street and the precise
dimensions and identity of the short interest as well as other facts of
tactical importance. They were able men and shrewd traders.
Altogether it was a dangerous combination to go up against. But
facts are facts and the strongest of all allies are conditions.
Of course, on the way down from 153 to 133 the short interest
had grown and the public that buys on reactions began to argue as
usual: That stock had been considered a good purchase at 153 and
higher. Now 20 points lower, it was necessarily a much better
purchase. Same stock; same dividend rate; same officers; same
business. Great bargain!
The public’s purchases reduced the floating supply and the
insiders, knowing that a lot of room traders were short, thought the
time propitious for a squeezing. The price was duly run up to 150. I
daresay there was plenty of covering but I stayed pat. Why shouldn’t
I? The insiders might know that a short line of 30,000 shares had
not been taken in but why should that frighten me? The reasons that
had impelled me to begin selling at 153 and keep at it on the way
down to 133, not only still existed but were stronger than ever. The
insiders might desire to force me to cover but they adduced no
convincing arguments. Fundamental conditions were fighting for me.
It was not difficult to be both fearless and patient. A speculator must
have faith in himself and in his judgment. The late Dickson G. Watts,
ex-President of the New York Cotton Exchange and famous author of
“Speculation as a Fine Art,” says that courage in a speculator is
merely confidence to act on the decision of his mind. With me, I
cannot fear to be wrong because I never think I am wrong until I am
proven wrong. In fact, I am uncomfortable unless I am capitalising
my experience. The course of the market at a given time does not
necessarily prove me wrong. It is the character of the advance—or
of the decline—that determines for me the correctness or the fallacy
of my market position. I can only rise by knowledge. If I fall it must
be by my own blunders.
There was nothing in the character of the rally from 133 to 150
to frighten me into covering and presently the stock, as was to be
expected, started down again. It broke 140 before the inside clique
began to give it support. Their buying was coincident with a flood of
bull rumors about the stock. The company, we heard, was making
perfectly fabulous profits, and the earnings justified an increase in
the regular dividend rate. Also, the short interest was said to be
perfectly huge and the squeeze of the century was about to be
inflicted on the bear party in general and in particular on a certain
operator who was more than over-extended. I couldn’t begin to tell
you all I heard as they ran the price up ten points.
The manipulation did not seem particularly dangerous to me but
when the price touched 149 I decided that it was not wise to let the
Street accept as true all the bull statements that were floating
around. Of course, there was nothing that I or any other rank
outsider could say that would carry conviction either to the
frightened shorts or to those credulous customers of commission
houses that trade on hearsay tips. The most effective retort
courteous is that which the tape alone can print. People will believe
that when they will not believe an affidavit from any living man,
much less one from a chap who is short 30,000 shares. So I used
the same tactics that I did at the time of the Stratton corner in corn,
when I sold oats to make the traders bearish on corn. Experience
and memory again.
When the insiders jacked up the price of Tropical Trading with a
view to frightening the shorts I didn’t try to check the rise by selling
that stock. I was already short 30,000 shares of it which was as big
a percentage of the floating supply as I thought wise to be short of.
I did not propose to put my head into the noose so obligingly held
open for me—the second rally was really an urgent invitation. What I
did when TT touched 149 was to sell about 10,000 shares of
Equatorial Commercial Corporation. This company owned a large
block of Tropical Trading.
Equatorial Commercial, which was not as active a stock as TT,
broke badly on my selling, as I had foreseen; and, of course, my
purpose was achieved. When the traders—and the customers of the
commission houses who had listened to the uncontradicted bull dope
on TT—saw that the rise in Tropical synchronised with heavy selling
and a sharp break in Equatorial, they naturally concluded that the
strength of TT was merely a smoke-screen—a manipulated advance
obviously designed to facilitate inside liquidation in Equatorial
Commercial, which was largest holder of TT stock. It must be both
long stock and inside stock in Equatorial, because no outsider would
dream of selling so much short stock at the very moment when
Tropical Trading was so very strong. So they sold Tropical Trading
and checked the rise in that stock, the insiders very properly not
wishing to take all the stock that was pressed for sale. The moment
the insiders took away their support the price of TT declined. The
traders and principal commission houses now sold some Equatorial
also and I took in my short line in that at a small profit. I hadn’t sold
it to make money out of the operation but to check the rise in TT.
Time and again the Tropical Trading insiders and their hard-
working publicity man flooded the Street with all manner of bull
items and tried to put up the price. And every time they did I sold
Equatorial Commercial short and covered it with TT reacted and
carried EC with it. It took the wind out of the manipulators’ sails.
The price of TT finally went down to 125 and the short interest really
grew so big that the insiders were enabled to run it up 20 or 25
points. This time it was a legitimate enough drive against an over-
extended short interest; but while I foresaw the rally I did not cover,
not wishing to lose my position. Before Equatorial Commercial could
advance in sympathy with the rise in TT I sold a raft of it short—with
the usual results. This gave the lie to the bull talk in TT which had
got quite boisterous after the latest sensational rise.
By this time the general market had grown quite weak. As I told
you, it was the conviction that we were in a bear market that started
me selling TT short in the fishing-camp in Florida. I was short of
quite a few other stocks but TT was my pet. Finally, general
conditions proved too much for the inside clique to defy and TT hit
the toboggan slide. It went below 120 for the first time in years;
then below 110; below par; and still I did not cover. One day when
the entire market was extremely weak Tropical Trading broke 90 and
on the demoralisation I covered. Same old reason! I had the
opportunity—the big market and the weakness and the excess of
sellers over buyers. I may tell you, even at the risk of appearing to
be monotonously bragging of my cleverness, that I took in my
30,000 shares of TT at practically the lowest prices of the
movement. But I wasn’t thinking of covering at the bottom. I was
intent on turning my paper profits into cash without losing much of
the profit in the changing.
I stood pat throughout because I knew my position was sound. I
wasn’t bucking the trend of the market or going against basic
conditions but the reverse, and that was what made me so sure of
the failure of an over-confident inside clique. What they tried to do
others had tried before and it had always failed. The frequent rallies,
even when I knew as well as anybody that they were due, could not
frighten me. I knew I’d do much better in the end by staying pat
than by trying to cover to put out a new short line at a higher price.
By sticking to the position that I felt was right I made over a million
dollars. I was not indebted to hunches or to skillful tape reading or
to stubborn courage. It was a dividend declared by my faith in my
judgment and not by my cleverness or by my vanity. Knowledge is
power and power need not fear lies—not even when the tape prints
them. The retraction follows pretty quickly.
A year later, TT was jacked up again to 150 and hung around
there for a couple of weeks. The entire market was entitled to a
good reaction for it had risen uninterruptedly and it did not bull any
longer. I know because I tested it. Now, the group to which TT
belonged had been suffering from very poor business and I couldn’t
see anything to bull those stocks on anyhow, even if the rest of the
market were due for a rise, which it wasn’t. So I began to sell
Tropical Trading. I intended to put out 10,000 shares in all. The price
broke on my selling. I couldn’t see that there was any support
whatever. Then suddenly, the character of the buying changed.
I am not trying to make myself out a wizard when I assure you
that I could tell the moment support came in. It instantly struck me
that if the insiders in that stock, who never felt a moral obligation to
keep the price up, were now buying the stock in the face of a
declining general market there must be a reason. They were not
ignorant asses nor philanthropists nor yet bankers concerned with
keeping the price up to sell more securities over the counter. The
price rose notwithstanding my selling and the selling of others. At
153 I covered my 10,000 shares and at 156 I actually went long
because by that time the tape told me the line of least resistance
was upward. I was bearish on the general market but I was
confronted by a trading condition in a certain stock and not by a
speculative theory in general. The price went out of sight, above
200. It was the sensation of the year. I was flattered by reports
spoken and printed that I had been squeezed out of eight or nine
millions of dollars. As a matter of fact, instead of being short I was
long of TT all the way up. In fact, I held on a little too long and let
some of my paper profits get away. Do you wish to know why I did?
Because I thought the TT insiders would naturally do what I would
have done had I been in their place. But that was something I had
no business to think because my business is to trade—that is, to
stick to the facts before me and not to what I think other people
ought to do.
 XIX
I do not know when or by whom the word “manipulation” was first
used in connection with what really are no more than common
merchandising processes applied to the sale in bulk of securities on
the Stock Exchange. Rigging the market to facilitate cheap
purchases of a stock which it is desired to accumulate is also
manipulation. But it is different. It may not be necessary to stoop to
illegal practices, but it would be difficult to avoid doing what some
would think illegitimate. How are you going to buy a big block of a
stock in a bull market without putting up the price on yourself? That
would be the problem. How can it be solved? It depends upon so
many things that you can’t give a general solution unless you say:
possibly by means of very adroit manipulation. For instance? Well, it
would depend upon conditions. You can’t give any closer answer
than that.
I am profoundly interested in all phases of my business, and of
course I learn from the experience of others as well as from my
own. But it is very difficult to learn how to manipulate stocks to-day
from such yarns as are told of an afternoon in the brokers’ offices
after the close. Most of the tricks, devices and expedients of bygone
days are obsolete and futile; or illegal and impracticable. Stock
Exchange rules and conditions have changed, and the story—even
the accurately detailed story—of what Daniel Drew or Jacob Little or
Jay Gould could do fifty or seventy-five years ago is scarcely worth
listening to. The manipulator to-day has no more need to consider
what they did and how they did it than a cadet at West Point need
study archery as practiced by the ancients in order to increase his
working knowledge of ballistics.
 On the other hand there is profit in studying the human factors
—the ease with which human beings believe what it pleases them to
believe; and how they allow themselves—indeed, urge themselves—
to be influenced by their cupidity or by the dollar-cost of the average
man’s carelessness. Fear and hope remain the same; therefore the
study of the psychology of speculators is as valuable as it ever was.
Weapons change, but strategy remains strategy, on the New York
Stock Exchange as on the battlefield. I think the clearest summing
up of the whole thing was expressed by Thomas F. Woodlock when
he declared: “The principles of successful stock speculation are
based on the supposition that people will continue in the future to
make the mistakes that they have made in the past.”
In booms, which is when the public is in the market in the
greatest numbers, there is never any need of subtlety, so there is no
sense of wasting time discussing either manipulation or speculation
during such times; it would be like trying to find the difference in
raindrops that are falling synchronously on the same roof across the
street. The sucker has always tried to get something for nothing,
and the appeal in all booms is always frankly to the gambling instinct
aroused by cupidity and spurred by a pervasive prosperity. People
who look for easy money invariably pay for the privilege of proving
conclusively that it cannot be found on this sordid earth. At first,
when I listened to the accounts of old-time deals and devices I used
to think that people were more gullible in the 1860’s and ’70’s than
in the 1900’s. But I was sure to read in the newspapers that very
day or the next something about the latest Ponzi or the bust-up of
some bucketing broker and about the millions of sucker money gone
to join the silent majority of vanished savings.
When I first came to New York there was a great fuss made
about wash sales and matched orders, for all that such practices
were forbidden by the Stock Exchange. At times the washing was
too crude to deceive anyone. The brokers had no hesitation in
saying that “the laundry was active” whenever anybody tried to
wash up some stock or other, and, as I have said before, more than
once they had what were frankly referred to as “bucket-shop drives,”
when a stock was offered down two or three points in a jiffy just to
establish the decline on the tape and wipe up the myriad shoe-string
traders who were long of the stock in the bucket shops. As for
matched orders, they were always used with some misgivings by
reason of the difficulty of coordinating and synchronising operations
by brokers, all such business being against Stock Exchange rules. A
few years ago a famous operator canceled the selling but not the
buying part of his matched orders, and the result was that an
innocent broker ran up the price twenty-five points or so in a few
minutes, only to see it break with equal celerity as soon as his
buying ceased. The original intention was to create an appearance of
activity. Bad business, playing with such unreliable weapons. You
see, you can’t take your best brokers into your confidence—not if
you want them to remain members of the New York Stock Exchange.
Then also, the taxes have made all practices involving fictitious
transactions much more expensive than they used to be in the old
times.
The dictionary definition of manipulation includes corners. Now,
a corner might be the result of manipulation or it might be the result
of competitive buying, as, for instance, the Northern Pacific corner
on May 9, 1901, which certainly was not manipulation. The Stutz
corner was expensive to everybody concerned, both in money and in
prestige. And it was not a deliberately engineered corner, at that.
As a matter of fact very few of the great corners were profitable
to the engineers of them. Both Commodore Vanderbilt’s Harlem
corners paid big, but the old chap deserved the millions he made out
of a lot of short sports, crooked legislators and aldermen who tried
to double-cross him. On the other hand, Jay Gould lost in his
Northwestern corner. Deacon S. V. White made a million in his
Lackawanna corner, but Jim Keene dropped a million in the Hannibal
& St. Joe deal. The financial success of a corner of course depends
upon the marketing of the accumulated holdings at higher than cost,
and the short interest has to be of some magnitude for that to
happen easily.
 I used to wonder why corners were so popular among the big
operators of a half-century ago. They were men of ability and
experience, wide-awake and not prone to childlike trust in the
philanthropy of their fellow traders. Yet they used to get stung with
an astonishing frequency. A wise old broker told me that all the big
operators of the ’60’s and ’70’s had one ambition, and that was to
work a corner. In many cases this was the offspring of vanity; in
others, of the desire for revenge. At all events, to be pointed out as
the man who had successfully cornered this or the other stock was
in reality recognition of brains, boldness and boodle. It gave the
cornerer the right to be haughty. He accepted the plaudits of his
fellows as fully earned. It was more than the prospective money
profit that prompted the engineers of corners to do their damnedest.
It was the vanity complex asserting itself among cold-blooded
operators.
Dog certainly ate dog in those days with relish and ease. I think
I told you before that I have managed to escape being squeezed
more than once, not because of the possession of a mysterious
ticker-sense but because I can generally tell the moment the
character of the buying in the stock makes it imprudent for me to be
short of it. This I do by common-sense tests, which must have been
tried in the old times also. Old Daniel Drew used to squeeze the boys
with some frequency and make them pay high prices for the Erie
“sheers” they had sold short to him. He was himself squeezed by
Commodore Vanderbilt in Erie, and when old Drew begged for mercy
the Commodore grimly quoted the Great Bear’s own deathless
distich:
He that sells what isn’t hisn
Must buy it back or go to prisn.

Wall Street remembers very little of an operator who for more

than a generation was one of its Titans. His chief claim to
immortality seems to be the phrase “watering stock.”
 Addison G. Jerome was the acknowledged king of the Public
Board in the spring of 1863. His market tips, they tell me, were
considered as good as cash in bank. From all accounts he was a
great trader and made millions. He was liberal, to the point of
extravagance and had a great following in the Street—until Henry
Keep, known as William the Silent, squeezed him out of all his
millions in the Old Southern corner. Keep, by the way, was the
brother-in-law of Gov. Roswell P. Flower.
In most of the old corners the manipulation consisted chiefly of
not letting the other man know that you were cornering the stock
which he was variously invited to sell short. It therefore was aimed
chiefly at fellow professionals, for the general public does not take
kindly to the short side of the account. The reasons that prompted
these wise professionals to put out short lines in such stocks were
pretty much the same as prompts them to do the same thing to-day.
Apart from the selling by faith-breaking politicians in the Harlem
corner of the Commodore, I gather from the stories I have read that
the professional traders sold the stock because it was too high. And
the reason they thought it was too high was that it never before had
sold so high; and that made it too high to buy; and if it was too high
to buy it was just right to sell. That sounds pretty modern, doesn’t
it? They were thinking of the price, and the Commodore was
thinking of the value! And so, for years afterwards, old-timers tell me
that people used to say, “He went short of Harlem!” whenever they
wished to describe abject poverty.
Many years ago I happened to be speaking to one of Jay Gould’s
old brokers. He assured me earnestly that Mr. Gould not only was a
most unusual man—it was of him that old Daniel Drew shiveringly
remarked, “His touch is Death!”—but that he was head and
shoulders above all other manipulators past and present. He must
have been a financial wizard indeed to have done what he did; there
can be no question of that. Even at this distance I can see that he
had an amazing knack for adapting himself to new conditions, and
that is valuable in a trader. He varied his methods of attack and
defense without a pang because he was more concerned with the
manipulation of properties than with stock speculation. He
manipulated for investment rather than for a market turn. He early
saw that the big money was in owning the railroads instead of
rigging their securities on the floor of the Stock Exchange. He
utilised the stock market of course. But I suspect it was because that
was the quickest and easiest way to quick and easy money and he
needed many millions, just as old Collis P. Huntington was always
hard up because he always needed twenty or thirty millions more
than the bankers were willing to lend him. Vision without money
means heartaches; with money, it means achievement; and that
means power; and that means money; and that means
achievement; and so on, over and over and over.
Of course manipulation was not confined to the great figures of
those days. There were scores of minor manipulators. I remember a
story an old broker told me about the manners and morals of the
early ’60’s. He said:
“The earliest recollection I have of Wall Street is of my first visit
to the financial district. My father had some business to attend to
there and for some reason or other took me with him. We came
down Broadway and I remember turning off at Wall Street. We
walked down Wall and just as we came to Broad or, rather, Nassau
Street, to the corner where the Bankers’ Trust Company’s building
now stands, I saw a crowd following two men. The first was walking
eastward, trying to look unconcerned. He was followed by the other,
a red-faced man who was wildly waving his hat with one hand and
shaking the other fist in the air. He was yelling to beat the band:
‘Shylock! Shylock! What’s the price of money? Shylock! Shylock!’ I
could see heads sticking out of windows. They didn’t have
skyscrapers in those days, but I was sure the second- and third-
story rubbernecks would tumble out. My father asked what was the
matter, and somebody answered something I didn’t hear. I was too
busy keeping a death clutch on my father’s hand so that the jostling
wouldn’t separate us. The crowd was growing, as street crowds do,
and I wasn’t comfortable. Wild-eyed men came running down from
Nassau Street and up from Broad as well as east and west on Wall
Street. After we finally got out of the jam my father explained to me
that the man who was shouting ‘Shylock’ was So-and-So. I have
forgotten the name, but he was the biggest operator in clique stocks
in the city and was understood to have made—and lost—more
money than any other man in Wall Street with the exception of
Jacob Little. I remember Jacob Little’s name because I thought it
was a funny name for a man to have. The other man, the Shylock,
was a notorious locker-up of money. His name has also gone from
me. But I remember he was tall and thin and pale. In those days the
cliques used to lock up money by borrowing it or, rather, by reducing
the amount available to Stock Exchange borrowers. They would
borrow it and get a certified check. They wouldn’t actually take the
money out and use it. Of course that was rigging. It was a form of
manipulation, I think.”
I agree with the old chap. It was a phase of manipulation that
we don’t have nowadays.
 XX
I myself never spoke to any of the great stock manipulators that the
Street still talks about. I don’t mean leaders; I mean manipulators.
They were all before my time, although when I first came to New
York, James R. Keene, greatest of them all, was in his prime. But I
was a mere youngster then, exclusively concerned with duplicating,
in a reputable broker’s office, the success I had enjoyed in the
bucket shops of my native city. And, then, too, at the time Keene
was busy with the U.S. Steel stocks—his manipulative masterpiece—
I had no experience with manipulation, no real knowledge of it or of
its value or meaning, and, for that matter, no great need of such
knowledge. If I thought about it at all I suppose I must have
regarded it as a well-dressed form of thimble-rigging, of which the
lowbrow form was such tricks as had been tried on me in the bucket
shops. Such talk as I since have heard on the subject has consisted
in great part of surmises and suspicions; of guesses rather than
intelligent analyses.
More than one man who knew him well has told me that Keene
was the boldest and most brilliant operator that ever worked in Wall
Street. That is saying a great deal, for there have been some great
traders. Their names are now all but forgotten, but nevertheless
they were kings in their day—for a day! They were pulled up out of
obscurity into the sunlight of financial fame by the ticker tape—and
the little paper ribbon didn’t prove strong enough to keep them
suspended there long enough for them to become historical fixtures.
At all events Keene was by all odds the best manipulator of his day—
and it was a long and exciting day.
 He capitalized his knowledge of the game, his experience as an
operator and his talents when he sold his services to the Havemeyer
brothers, who wanted him to develop a market for the Sugar stocks.
He was broke at the time or he would have continued to trade on his
own hook; and he was some plunger! He was successful with Sugar;
made the shares trading favourites, and that made them easily
vendible. After that, he was asked time and again to take charge of
pools. I am told that in these pool operations he never asked nor
accepted a fee, but paid for his share like the other members of the
pool. The market conduct of the stock, of course, was exclusively in
his charge. Often there was talk of treachery—on both sides. His
feud with the Whitney-Ryan clique arose from such accusations. It is
not difficult for a manipulator to be misunderstood by his associates.
They don’t see his needs as he himself does. I know this from my
own experience.
It is a matter of regret that Keene did not leave an accurate
record of his greatest exploit—the successful manipulation of the
U.S. Steel shares in the spring of 1901. As I understand it, Keene
never had an interview with J. P. Morgan about it. Morgan’s firm
dealt with or through Talbot J. Taylor & Co., at whose office Keene
made his headquarters. Talbot Taylor was Keene’s son-in-law. I am
assured that Keene’s fee for his work consisted of the pleasure he
derived from the work. That he made millions trading in the market
he helped to put up that spring is well known. He told a friend of
mine that in the course of a few weeks he sold in the open market
for the underwriters’ syndicate more than seven hundred and fifty
thousand shares. Not bad when you consider two things: That they
were new and untried stocks of a corporation whose capitalization
was greater than the entire debt of the United States at that time;
and second, that men like D. G. Reid, W. B. Leeds, the Moore
brothers, Henry Phipps, H. C. Frick and the other Steel magnates
also sold hundreds of thousands of shares to the public at the same
time in the same market that Keene helped to create.
Of course, general conditions favoured him. Not only actual
business but sentiment and his unlimited financial backing made
possible his success. What we had was not merely a big bull market
but a boom and a state of mind not likely to be seen again. The
undigested-securities panic came later, when Steel common, which
Keene had marked up to 55 in 1901, sold at 10 in 1903 and at 8⅞ in
1904.
We can’t analyse Keene’s manipulative campaigns. His books are
not available; the adequately detailed record is nonexistent. For
example, it would be interesting to see how he worked in
Amalgamated Copper. H. H. Rogers and William Rockefeller had tried
to dispose of their surplus stock in the market and had failed. Finally
they asked Keene to market their line, and he agreed. Bear in mind
that H. H. Rogers was one of the ablest business men of his day in
Wall Street and that William Rockefeller was the boldest speculator
of the entire Standard Oil coterie. They had practically unlimited
resources and vast prestige as well as years of experience in the
stock-market game. And yet they had to go to Keene. I mention this
to show you that there are some tasks which it requires a specialist
to perform. Here was a widely touted stock, sponsored by America’s
greatest capitalists, that could not be sold except at a great sacrifice
of money and prestige. Rogers and Rockefeller were intelligent
enough to decide that Keene alone might help them.
Keene began to work at once. He had a bull market to work in
and sold two hundred and twenty thousand shares of Amalgamated
at around par. After he disposed of the insiders’ line the public kept
on buying and the price went ten points higher. Indeed the insiders
got bullish on the stock they had sold when they saw how eagerly
the public was taking it. There was a story that Rogers actually
advised Keene to go long of Amalgamated. It is scarcely credible
that Rogers meant to unload on Keene. He was too shrewd a man
not to know that Keene was no bleating lamb. Keene worked as he
always did—that is, doing his big selling on the way down after the
big rise. Of course his tactical moves were directed by his needs and
by the minor currents that changed from day to day. In the stock
market, as in warfare, it is well to keep in mind the difference
between strategy and tactics.
 One of Keene’s confidential men—he is the best fly fisherman I
know—told me only the other day that during the Amalgamated
campaign Keene would find himself almost out of stock one day—
that is, out of the stock he had been forced to take in marking up
the price; and on the next day he would buy back thousands of
shares. On the day after that, he would sell on balance. Then he
would leave the market absolutely alone, to see how it would take
care of itself and also to accustom it to do so. When it came to the
actual marketing of the line he did what I told you: he sold it on the
way down. The trading public is always looking for a rally, and,
besides, there is the covering by the shorts.
The man who was closest to Keene during that deal told me that
after Keene sold the Rogers-Rockefeller line for something like
twenty or twenty-five million dollars in cash Rogers sent him a check
for two hundred thousand. This reminds you of the millionaire’s wife
who gave the Metropolitan Opera House scrub-woman fifty cents
reward for finding the one-hundred-thousand-dollar pearl necklace.
Keene sent the check back with a polite note saying he was not a
stock broker and that he was glad to have been of some service to
them. They kept the check and wrote him that they would be glad to
work with him again. Shortly after that it was that H. H. Rogers gave
Keene the friendly tip to buy Amalgamated at around 130!
A brilliant operator, James R. Keene! His private secretary told
me that when the market was going his way Mr. Keene was irascible;
and those who knew him say his irascibility was expressed in
sardonic phrases that lingered long in the memory of his hearers.
But when he was losing he was in the best of humour, a polished
man of the world, agreeable, epigrammatic, interesting.
He had in superlative degree the qualities of mind that are
associated with successful speculators anywhere. That he did not
argue with the tape is plain. He was utterly fearless but never
reckless. He could and did turn in a twinkling, if he found he was
wrong.
 Since his day there have been so many changes in Stock
Exchange rules and so much more rigorous enforcement of old rules,
so many new taxes on stock sales and profits, and so on, that the
game seems different. Devices that Keene could use with skill and
profit can no longer be utilised. Also, we are assured, the business
morality of Wall Street is on a higher plane. Nevertheless it is fair to
say that in any period of our financial history Keene would have
been a great manipulator because he was a great stock operator and
knew the game of speculation from the ground up. He achieved
what he did because conditions at the time permitted him to do so.
He would have been as successful in his undertakings in 1922 as he
was in 1901 or in 1876, when he first came to New York from
California and made nine million dollars in two years. There are men
whose gait is far quicker than the mob’s. They are bound to lead—
no matter how much the mob changes.
As a matter of fact, the change is by no means as radical as
you’d imagine. The rewards are not so great, for it is no longer
pioneer work and therefore it is not pioneer’s pay. But in certain
respects manipulation is easier than it was; in other ways much
harder than in Keene’s day.
There is no question that advertising is an art, and manipulation
is the art of advertising through the medium of the tape. The tape
should tell the story the manipulator wishes its readers to see. The
truer the story the more convincing it is bound to be, and the more
convincing it is the better the advertising is. A manipulator to-day,
for instance, has not only to make a stock look strong but also to
make it be strong. Manipulation therefore must be based on sound
trading principles. That is what made Keene such a marvellous
manipulator; he was a consummate trader to begin with.
The word “manipulation” has come to have an ugly sound. It
needs an alias. I do not think there is anything so very mysterious or
crooked about the process itself when it has for an object the selling
of a stock in bulk, provided, of course, that such operations are not
accompanied by misrepresentation. There is little question that a
manipulator necessarily seeks his buyers among speculators. He
turns to men who are looking for big returns on their capital and are
therefore willing to run a greater than normal business risk. I can’t
have much sympathy for the man who, knowing this, nevertheless
blames others for his own failure to make easy money. He is a devil
of a clever fellow when he wins. But when he loses money the other
fellow was a crook; a manipulator! In such moments and from such
lips the word connotes the use of marked cards. But this is not so.
Usually the object of manipulation is to develop marketability—
that is, the ability to dispose of fair-sized blocks at some price at any
time. Of course a pool, by reason of a reversal of general market
conditions, may find itself unable to sell except at a sacrifice too
great to be pleasing. They then may decide to employ a
professional, believing that his skill and experience will enable him to
conduct an orderly retreat instead of suffering an appalling rout.
You will notice that I do not speak of manipulation designed to
permit considerable accumulation of a stock as cheaply as possible,
as, for instance, in buying for control, because this does not happen
often nowadays.
When Jay Gould wished to cinch his control of Western Union
and decided to buy a big block of the stock, Washington E. Connor,
who had not been seen on the floor of the Stock Exchange for years,
suddenly showed up in person at the Western Union Post. He began
to bid for Western Union. The traders to a man laughed—at his
stupidity in thinking them so simple—and they cheerfully sold him all
the stock he wanted to buy. It was too raw a trick, to think he could
put up the price by acting as though Mr. Gould wanted to buy
Western Union. Was that manipulation? I think I can only answer
that by saying “No; and yes!”
In the majority of cases the object of manipulation is, as I said,
to sell stock to the public at the best possible price. It is not alone a
question of selling but of distributing. It is obviously better in every
way for a stock to be held by a thousand people than by one man—
better for the market in it. So it is not alone the sale at a good price
but the character of the distribution that a manipulator must
consider.
There is no sense in marking up the price to a very high level if
you cannot induce the public to take it off your hands later.
Whenever inexperienced manipulators try to unload at the top and
fail, old-timers look mighty wise and tell you that you can lead a
horse to water but you cannot make him drink. Original devils! As a
matter of fact, it is well to remember a rule of manipulation, a rule
that Keene and his able predecessors well knew. It is this: Stocks are
manipulated to the highest point possible and then sold to the public
on the way down.
Let me begin at the beginning. Assume that there is some one—
an underwriting syndicate or a pool or an individual—that has a
block of stock which it is desired to sell at the best price possible. It
is a stock duly listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The best
place for selling it ought to be the open market, and the best buyer
ought to be the general public. The negotiations for the sale are in
charge of a man. He—or some present or former associate—has
tried to sell the stock on the Stock Exchange and has not succeeded.
He is—or soon becomes—sufficiently familiar with stock-market
operations to realise that more experience and greater aptitude for
the work are needed than he possesses. He knows personally or by
hearsay several men who have been successful in their handling of
similar deals, and he decides to avail himself of their professional
skill. He seeks one of them as he would seek a physician if he were
ill or an engineer if he needed that kind of expert.
Suppose he has heard of me as a man who knows the game.
Well, I take it that he tries to find out all he can about me. He then
arranges for an interview, and in due time calls at my office.
Of course, the chances are that I know about the stock and
what it represents. It is my business to know. That is how I make
my living. My visitor tells me what he and his associates wish to do,
and asks me to undertake the deal.
 It is then my turn to talk. I ask for whatever information I deem
necessary to give me a clear understanding of what I am asked to
undertake. I determine the value and estimate the market
possibilities of that stock. That and my reading of current conditions
in turn help me to gauge the likelihood of success for the proposed
operation.
If my information inclines me to a favourable view I accept the
proposition and tell him then and there what my terms will be for my
services. If he in turn accepts my terms—the honorarium and the
conditions—I begin my work at once.
I generally ask and receive calls on a block of stock. I insist upon
graduated calls as the fairest to all concerned. The price of the call
begins at a little below the prevailing market price and goes up; say,
for example, that I get calls on one hundred thousand shares and
the stock is quoted at 40. I begin with a call for some thousands of
shares at 35, another at 37, another at 40, and at 45 and 50, and so
on up to 75 or 80.
If as the result of my professional work—my manipulation—the
price goes up, and if at the highest level there is a good demand for
the stock so that I can sell fair-sized blocks of it I of course call the
stock. I am making money; but so are my clients making money.
This is as it should be. If my skill is what they are paying for they
ought to get value. Of course, there are times when a pool may be
wound up at a loss, but that is seldom, for I do not undertake the
work unless I see my way clear to a profit. This year I was not so
fortunate in one or two deals, and I did not make a profit. There are
reasons, but that is another story, to be told later—perhaps.
The first step in a bull movement in a stock is to advertise the
fact that there is a bull movement on. Sounds silly, doesn’t it? Well,
think a moment. It isn’t as silly as it sounded, is it? The most
effective way to advertise what, in effect, are your honourable
intentions is to make the stock active and strong. After all is said and
done, the greatest publicity agent in the wide world is the ticker, and
by far the best advertising medium is the tape. I do not need to put
out any literature for my clients. I do not have to inform the daily
press as to the value of the stock or to work the financial reviews for
notices about the company’s prospects. Neither do I have to get a
following. I accomplish all these highly desirable things by merely
making the stock active. When there is activity there is a
synchronous demand for explanations; and that means, of course,
that the necessary reasons—for publication—supply themselves
without the slightest aid from me.
Activity is all that the floor traders ask. They will buy or sell any
stock at any level if only there is a free market for it. They will deal
in thousands of shares wherever they see activity, and their
aggregate capacity is considerable. It necessarily happens that they
constitute the manipulator’s first crop of buyers. They will follow you
all the way up and they thus are a great help at all the stages of the
operation. I understand that James R. Keene used habitually to
employ the most active of the room traders, both to conceal the
source of the manipulation and also because he knew that they were
by far the best business-spreaders and tip-distributors. He often
gave calls to them—verbal calls—above the market, so that they
might do some helpful work before they could cash in. He made
them earn their profit. To get a professional following I myself have
never had to do more than to make a stock active. Traders don’t ask
for more. It is well, of course, to remember that these professionals
on the floor of the Exchange buy stocks with the intention of selling
them at a profit. They do not insist on its being a big profit; but it
must be a quick profit.
I make the stock active in order to draw the attention of
speculators to it, for the reasons I have given. I buy it and I sell it
and the traders follow suit. The selling pressure is not apt to be
strong where a man has as much speculatively held stock sewed up
—in calls—as I insist on having. The buying, therefore, prevails over
the selling, and the public follows the lead not so much of the
manipulator as of the room traders. It comes in as a buyer. This
highly desirable demand I fill—that is, I sell stock on balance. If the
demand is what it ought to be it will absorb more than the amount
of stock I was compelled to accumulate in the earlier stages of the
manipulation; and when this happens I sell the stock short—that is,
technically. In other words, I sell more stock than I actually hold. It
is perfectly safe for me to do so since I am really selling against my
calls. Of course, when the demand from the public slackens, the
stock ceases to advance. Then I wait.
Say, then, that the stock has ceased to advance. There comes a
weak day. The entire market may develop a reactionary tendency or
some sharp-eyed trader may perceive that there are no buying
orders to speak of in my stock, and he sells it, and his fellows follow.
Whatever the reason may be, my stock starts to go down. Well, I
begin to buy it. I give it the support that a stock ought to have if it is
in good odour with its own sponsors. And more: I am able to
support it without accumulating it—that is, without increasing the
amount I shall have to sell later on. Observe that I do this without
decreasing my financial resources. Of course what I am really doing
is covering stock I sold short at higher prices when the demand from
the public or from the traders or from both enabled me to do it. It is
always well to make it plain to the traders—and to the public, also—
that there is a demand for the stock on the way down. That tends to
check both reckless short selling by the professionals and liquidation
by frightened holders—which is the selling you usually see when a
stock gets weaker and weaker, which in turn is what a stock does
when it is not supported. These covering purchases of mine
constitute what I call the stabilising process.
As the market broadens I of course sell stock on the way up, but
never enough to check the rise. This is in strict accordance with my
stabilising plans. It is obvious that the more stock I sell on a
reasonable and orderly advance the more I encourage the
conservative speculators, who are more numerous than the reckless
room traders; and in addition the more support I shall be able to
give to the stock on the inevitable weak days. By always being short
I always am in a position to support the stock without danger to
myself. As a rule I begin my selling at a price that will show me a
profit. But I often sell without having a profit, simply to create or to
increase what I may call my riskless buying power. My business is
not alone to put up the price or to sell a big block of stock for a
client but to make money for myself. That is why I do not ask my
clients to finance my operations. My fee is contingent upon my
success.
Of course what I have described is not my invariable practice. I
neither have nor adhere to an inflexible system. I modify my terms
and conditions according to circumstances.
A stock which it is desired to distribute should be manipulated to
the highest possible point and then sold. I repeat this both because
it is fundamental and because the public apparently believes that the
selling is all done at the top. Sometimes a stock gets waterlogged,
as it were; it doesn’t go up. That is the time to sell. The price
naturally will go down on your selling rather further than you wish,
but you can generally nurse it back. As long as a stock that I am
manipulating goes up on my buying I know I am hunky, and if need
be I buy it with confidence and use my own money without fear—
precisely as I would any other stock that acts the same way. It is the
line of least resistance. You remember my trading theories about
that line, don’t you? Well, when the price line of least resistance is
established I follow it, not because I am manipulating that particular
stock at that particular moment but because I am a stock operator
at all times.
When my buying does not put the stock up I stop buying and
then proceed to sell it down; and that also is exactly what I would
do with that same stock if I did not happen to be manipulating it.
The principal marketing of the stock, as you know, is done on the
way down. It is perfectly astonishing how much stock a man can get
rid of on a decline.
I repeat that at no time during the manipulation do I forget to
be a stock trader. My problems as a manipulator, after all, are the
same that confront me as an operator. All manipulation comes to an
end when the manipulator cannot make a stock do what he wants it
to do. When the stock you are manipulating doesn’t act as it should,
quit. Don’t argue with the tape. Do not seek to lure the profit back.
Quit while the quitting is good—and cheap.
 XXI
I am well aware that all these generalities do not sound especially
impressive. Generalities seldom do. Possibly I may succeed better if I
give a concrete example. I’ll tell you how I marked up the price of a
stock 30 points, and in so doing accumulated only seven thousand
shares and developed a market that would absorb almost any
amount of stock.
It was Imperial Steel. The stock had been brought out by
reputable people and it had been fairly well tipped as a property of
value. About 30 per cent of the capital stock was placed with the
general public through various Wall Street houses, but there had
been no significant activity in the shares after they were listed. From
time to time somebody would ask about it and one or another
insider—members of the original underwriting syndicate—would say
that the company’s earnings were better than expected and the
prospects more than encouraging. This was true enough and very
good as far as it went, but not exactly thrilling. The speculative
appeal was absent, and from the investor’s point of view the price
stability and dividend permanency of the stock were not yet
demonstrated. It was a stock that never behaved sensationally. It
was so gentlemanly that no corroborative rise ever followed the
insiders’ eminently truthful reports. On the other hand, neither did
the price decline.
Imperial Steel remained unhonoured and unsung and untipped,
content to be one of those stocks that don’t go down because
nobody sells and that nobody sells because nobody likes to go short
of a stock that is not well distributed; the seller is too much at the
mercy of the loaded-up inside clique. Similarly, there is no
inducement to buy such a stock. To the investor Imperial Steel
therefore remained a speculation. To the speculator it was a dead
one—the kind that makes an investor of you against your will by the
simple expedient of falling into a trance the moment you go long of
it. The chap who is compelled to lug a corpse a year or two always
loses more than the original cost of the deceased; he is sure to find
himself tied up with it when some really good things come his way.
One day the foremost member of the Imperial Steel syndicate,
acting for himself and associates, came to see me. They wished to
create a market for the stock, of which they controlled the
undistributed 70 per cent. They wanted me to dispose of their
holdings at better prices than they thought they would obtain if they
tried to sell in the open market. They wanted to know on what terms
I would undertake the job.
I told him that I would let him know in a few days. Then I
looked into the property. I had experts go over the various
departments of the company—industrial, commercial and financial.
They made reports to me which were unbiased. I wasn’t looking for
the good or the bad points, but for the facts, such as they were.
The reports showed that it was a valuable property. The
prospects justified purchases of the stock at the prevailing market
price—if the investor were willing to wait a little. Under the
circumstances an advance in the price would in reality be the
commonest and most legitimate of all market movements—to wit,
the process of discounting the future. There was therefore no reason
that I could see why I should not conscientiously and confidently
undertake the bull manipulation of Imperial Steel.
I let my man know my mind and he called at my office to talk
the deal over in detail. I told him what my terms were. For my
services I asked no cash, but calls on one hundred thousand shares
of the Imperial Steel stock. The price of the calls ran up from 70 to
100. That may seem like a big fee to some. But they should consider
that the insiders were certain they themselves could not sell one
hundred thousand shares, or even fifty thousand shares, at 70.
There was no market for the stock. All the talk about wonderful
earnings and excellent prospects had not brought in buyers, not to
any great extent. In addition, I could not get my fee in cash without
my clients first making some millions of dollars. What I stood to
make was not an exorbitant selling commission. It was a fair
contingent fee.
Knowing that the stock had real value and that general market
conditions were bullish and therefore favourable for an advance in all
good stocks, I figured that I ought to do pretty well. My clients were
encouraged by the opinions I expressed, agreed to my terms at
once, and the deal began with pleasant feelings all around.
I proceeded to protect myself as thoroughly as I could. The
syndicate owned or controlled about 70 per cent of the outstanding
stock. I had them deposit their 70 per cent under a trust agreement.
I didn’t propose to be used as a dumping ground for the big holders.
With the majority holdings thus securely tied up, I still had 30 per
cent of scattered holdings to consider, but that was a risk I had to
take. Experienced speculators do not expect ever to engage in
utterly riskless ventures. As a matter of fact, it was not much more
likely that all the untrusteed stock would be thrown on the market at
one fell swoop than that all the policyholders of a life-insurance
company would die at the same hour, the same day. There are
unprinted actuarial tables of stock-market risks as well as of human
mortality.
Having protected myself from some of the avoidable dangers of
a stock-market deal of that sort, I was ready to begin my campaign.
Its objective was to make my calls valuable. To do this I must put up
the price and develop a market in which I could sell one hundred
thousand shares—the stock in which I held options.
The first thing I did was to find out how much stock was likely to
come on the market on an advance. This was easily done through
my brokers, who had no trouble in ascertaining what stock was for
sale at or a little above the market. I don’t know whether the
specialists told them what orders they had on their books or not.
The price was nominally 70, but I could not have sold one thousand
shares at that price. I had no evidence of even a moderate demand
at that figure or even a few points lower. I had to go by what my
brokers found out. But it was enough to show me how much stock
there was for sale and how little was wanted.
As soon as I had a line on these points I quietly took all the
stock that was for sale at 70 and higher. When I say “I” you will
understand that I mean my brokers. The sales were for account of
some of the minority holders because my clients naturally had
cancelled whatever selling orders they might have given out before
they tied up their stock.
I didn’t have to buy very much stock. Moreover, I knew that the
right kind of advance would bring in other buying orders—and, of
course, selling orders also.
I didn’t give bull tips on Imperial Steel to anybody. I didn’t have
to. My job was to seek directly to influence sentiment by the best
possible kind of publicity. I do not say that there should never be
bull propaganda. It is as legitimate and indeed as desirable to
advertise the value of a new stock as to advertise the value of
woolens or shoes or automobiles. Accurate and reliable information
should be given by the public. But what I meant was that the tape
did all that was needed for my purpose. As I said before, the
reputable newspapers always try to print explanations for market
movements. It is news. Their readers demand to know not only
what happens in the stock market but why it happens. Therefore
without the manipulator lifting a finger the financial writers will print
all the available information and gossip, and also analyse the reports
of earnings, trade condition and outlook; in short, whatever may
throw light on the advance. Whenever a newspaperman or an
acquaintance asks my opinion of a stock and I have one I do not
hesitate to express it. I do not volunteer advice and I never give
tips, but I have nothing to gain in my operations from secrecy. At the
same time I realise that the best of all tipsters, the most persuasive
of all salesmen, is the tape.