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I don’t have any advice to give you, but if you decide to acquire these shares you risk losing the little you have left. | I don’t have any advice to give you, but if you decide to acquire these shares you risk losing the little you have left. | ||
In this regard allow me to disabuse you of a false impression of which you are unfortunately victim. You imagine, along with many others, that the gains one realizes on the stock market are dependent upon the | In this regard allow me to disabuse you of a false impression of which you are unfortunately victim. You imagine, along with many others, that the gains one realizes on the stock market are dependent upon the shares that one buys. Well, paradoxical as it might seem, I can assure you that that depends in the first place on the person who is managing them. I have known individuals who have enriched themselves on the stock market by managing tenth rate shares and others who have been ruined with premium rate shares. It is very much a question of the individual. There are people who are born to do this job, and others who are born to get their fingers burned by it. I don’t think I am exaggerating when I say that you belong to the latter, but if you are not convinced, you are at liberty to continue the exercise, I ask only to be convinced to the contrary. | ||
Very sincerely yours | Very sincerely yours | ||
Latest revision as of 07:25, 16 January 2022
Lionel Hauser to Marcel Proust 26 October 1915
(Click on the link above to see this letter and its notes in the Corr-Proust digital edition, including all relevant hyperlinks.)
Paris, 26 October 1915
My dear Marcel,
I have received your letter[1] and I have paid close attention to its contents.
There is no need to tell you that we are deeply immersed in studying your accounts and I hope, in two or three days’ time, to send you a report which will allow you to review your situation as precisely as possible.
As regards the tip you have had on the subject of Steel[2], I will confine myself to telling you that its stock, which is known as advantageous by every speculator, is, as it were, the "Rio" of the New York market, only with this difference, that Rio Tinto, being a copper mine, we know pretty well what it contains; what one extracts from it in less than a year remains with the mine, and one is certain of recovering it, whereas Steel is a collection of metallurgical factories that follow the ups and downs of American industry
Those stocks that have already been quoted at 7% have jumped to almost 100, only to fall back to below 60. Ever since the Americans have been manufacturing for the Allies[3] they have again risen reasonably well and today are worth above 80.
Currently they are not distributing dividends.
I don’t have any advice to give you, but if you decide to acquire these shares you risk losing the little you have left.
In this regard allow me to disabuse you of a false impression of which you are unfortunately victim. You imagine, along with many others, that the gains one realizes on the stock market are dependent upon the shares that one buys. Well, paradoxical as it might seem, I can assure you that that depends in the first place on the person who is managing them. I have known individuals who have enriched themselves on the stock market by managing tenth rate shares and others who have been ruined with premium rate shares. It is very much a question of the individual. There are people who are born to do this job, and others who are born to get their fingers burned by it. I don’t think I am exaggerating when I say that you belong to the latter, but if you are not convinced, you are at liberty to continue the exercise, I ask only to be convinced to the contrary.
Very sincerely yours
Notes
- ↑ Proust's letter to Hauser written shortly before 22 October 1915 (see CP 03006; Kolb, XIV, no. 118), detailing his financial holdings with his different banks and containing a cheque for 150 francs for the review of his settlement accounts. [PK, FL]
- ↑ This relates to stocks in the steel manufacturing company United States Steel Corporation, on which Proust wanted to seek Hauser's opinion in his aforementioned letter (see note 1 above). In 1912 Proust and Hauser had already had some discussions concerning a possible purchase of these stocks with high speculative potential, which the banker, without providing any substantive explanation, had advised him against. (See CP 02388, CP 02389, CP 02390; Kolb, XI, no. 124, no. 125, no. 126) [PK, FL]
- ↑ The official entry into the war by the United States on the sides of France, Great Britain and Russia, dates from the vote in Congress of 6 April 1917. But despite an official policy of strict neutrality, American manufacturers supplied munitions from 1914 onwards to the warring parties but, after the Lusitania was torpedoed on 7 May 1915 by a German submarine, the United States moved in favour of engagement against Germany. See for example, in October 1915, the issue in the United States of an Anglo-French loan in order to finance purchases made in the United States. [FL]
- ↑ Translation notes:
- ↑ Contributors: Yorktaylors.