Read "The Psychology of Speculation" by Henry Howard Harper online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The individual who trades or invests in stocks will do well to keep / away from the stock ticker; for the victim of "tickeritis" is no more / capable of reasonable and self-composed action than one who is in the / delirium of typhoid fever. The gyroscopic action of the prices recorded / on the ticker-tape produces a sort of mental intoxication, which / foreshortens the vision by involuntary submissiveness to momentary / influences. It also produces on some minds an effect somewhat similar / to that which one feels after standing for a considerable time intently / watching the water as it flows over Niagara Falls. Dozens of people, / without any suicidal intentions, have been drawn into this current and / dashed on the rocks below. And thousands daily are influenced by the / stock ticker to commit the most fatuous blunders.
As a camera fails to record a true picture if placed in too close / juxtaposition to the object, so in studying the ticker-tape one is / restricted to a close-up view of conditions, resulting in a distorted / gauge of values; for the figures recorded often mislead and confuse / the attentive observer; in fact it frequently happens that the / price fluctuations result from a wave of hysteria among a coterie / of traders, and bear but little analogy to the true value of the / stocks. To illustrate this point more explicitly, the stock of almost / any conservatively capitalized and well managed concern paying six / dollars annually in dividends has an investment value of from $85 to / $100 a share; but in the ups and downs of the market the stock gets / buffeted about on the exchange in obedience to the varying sentiments / of traders, sometimes selling as low as $50, and at other times as / high as $150, without any change whatever in the company's earnings, / its prospects, or its management. (These matters will be dealt with a / little farther on, and exemplified by showing their effects upon the / mentalities of various types of speculators.) It does not follow that / one who keeps in touch with the stock market by telephone, or through / the daily papers, will find his path free from thorns and snares; but / he will at least have a more open perspective than one who submits to / the influence of the ticker.