ABSTRACT

Few human activities have been so exhaustively studied during the past century, from so many angles and by so many different sorts of people, as has the buying and selling of corporate securities. The rewards which the stock market holds out to those who read it right are enormous; the penalties it exacts from careless, dozing, or “unlucky” investors are calamitous. No wonder it has attracted some of the world’s most astute accountants, analysts, and researchers, along with a motley crew of eccentrics, mystics, and “hunch players,” and a multitude of just ordinary hopeful citizens.