Trader Jack -The Story of Jack Miner (The Story of Jack Miner Series)

by Neil Behrmann

  'No, I'm not Jewish.'

  'Lots of ham.'

  As we waited the lady introduced herself as Martha. She asked me about my parents and where I came from. Where I was staying in London. I told her how I had lost my money and that the Heath was my temporary home. The large and flat pizzas, covered with ham, arrived. Martha picked off her ham and held up some pieces. The dogs, in sitting position, waited obediently and caught the meat when she threw it.

  'Pattie! Stop! Give Jazz a chance. Be good now!'

  I piled into my delicious pizza, while she snatched some ham from it and gave it to the dogs.

  Martha was strange. She spoke loudly, maybe because she was a bit deaf. The waitresses and owner of the café seemed to like her and didn't mind the dogs. She joked and patted the dogs and I began to feel a lot better. The bill arrived and I searched my pockets for money.

  Martha pulled out some coins and put them on the table: 'I'll pay. They give me a discount. Now you and Jazz come home with me to have a nice bath.'

  'Are you quite sure? I can go to the men's pond and have a shower there.'

  'No! I can tell that you're a respectable lad. You saved your dog. That's good enough for me.'

  We walked up the road past some restaurants until we came to her place. It was a cottage. The white paint on the walls had turned grey and was peeling. Inside, the room was cluttered with dusty furniture. The curtains hadn't been cleaned for years. Books were piled on shelves around the room.

  She took me to the bathroom, which was decorated with faded floral wallpaper.

  'Just relax and have a bath,' she said, as she passed me a towel, a shirt and trousers.

  'You're about the same size as Tony,' she said.

  'Who's Tony?'

  'My husband. He died twelve years ago.'

  I looked out the bathroom window. Pattie and Jazz were in the small back garden, overrun by weeds. He was following Pattie happily, making his mark on bushes. I scrubbed the bath before I got in, reckoning that Pattie must have been in it, many times. The water was hot and I lay there. It felt good.

  I had almost fallen asleep when Martha called: 'You ready? I've got some tea for you.'

  I came out wearing her husband's suit trousers and blue striped shirt.

  'How long have you lived here?' I asked.

  'About forty years . . . Estate agents pester me . . . Offered me nearly a million. But I don't want their money.'

  'Million for this place? Wow! Live here alone?'

  'No, with Pattie. We meet friends in the park. We're never lonely. What about you?'

  I don't know why, but I started telling her things about myself. How I came to London, looking for Sandy. How I had lost my money and my things.

  'What's this?' she asked as she went to the table and brought me my coins and the battered James Manson book, "How I made $5 million on The Stock Market".

  'Dad left me some shares. I want to find out what to do,' I said.

  'Have you read it?'

  'Not yet . . . Bought it at the Hampstead Community Centre. Just saw it there.'

  She opened it and looked at the inside page. 'Published in 1960! Don't you think things have changed since then?'

  'Maybe. Maybe not.'

  'Maybe that book was there for a reason,' she said. 'Just lying there waiting for you. Why don't you finish your tea and read it.'

  * * *

  The first part of Manson's book was about his life story. His father was English and his mother, Russian. She was an actress and she taught him 'method acting'. Becoming the character he was going to play. Thinking and feeling like the character. It was something like a personality change for the part. Manson was short, stocky with average looks. He didn't become a star, but managed to get good character parts.

  One day some guy offered him a job in a small theatre. It was a strange deal. Instead of cash, the theatre owner paid Manson shares in oil companies. The oil shares soared and from that time onwards, Manson was hooked on the stock market. Manson acted in all sorts of places. He travelled from London to Paris, Frankfurt, Vienna, New York, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Johannesburg and other cities. He never got the big roles. He remained a character actor, managing to earn enough to enjoy travelling and experiencing different countries. Even when he was thousands of miles away from the New York and London stock markets, he continued to buy and sell shares. Communications were bad in those days. Since there were neither mobiles nor the Internet, he had to go to the post office to telex orders. Long distance phone calls were very expensive. Sometimes he did well and other times badly. Brokers and friends gave him tips on what stocks to buy. He made money on some, but he mostly lost.

  To try to stop losing money, Manson decided to find out everything about shares. He gave some examples. An oil company like OilFinder has its shares quoted on the stock market. Manson would read the news reports about OilFinder and ask his stockbroker to send him all the information about the company. Whether it was doing well or badly. Then he would study the oil industry to see whether the oil price was going up or down. If the oil price rose, OilFinder's profits would increase and vice versa. But despite all this research, Manson still found that he rarely made money. Even if a company's profits soared, its shares could go down.

  It was all about fashion. If the big pension funds and other investors liked the shares they would buy them. On the other hand, a share could go unnoticed for a year or more because it was unfashionable. There were other complications. Regardless whether an individual company's profits rose or fell, a change in economic, business, geopolitical and other events, would influence its share price. Shares were small boats in the market sea, sailing happily in good weather and struggling or capsizing in a storm.

  Manson concluded that it was all about the market mood. Whether investors were confident or worried. Bullish or bearish in market speak. Share prices would either lurch upwards or slide, if participants in the market became optimistic or pessimistic. It didn't matter if the reasons were logical or illogical.

  In the end Manson decided that shares behaved like live beings. They did their own thing. If they wanted to rise they would rise. If they wished to fall they would fall. There had to be an easier and more profitable way to play the stock market than studying company and brokers' reports. That was the start of Manson's first million.

  * * *

  After studying Manson's book for more than two hours, I felt like a break.

  'Want some scrambled eggs, Jack?' asked Martha, who sounded like my Mum.

  I stretched and smiled: 'Later, thanks. OK if Pattie joins us for a run?'

  Martha went to her bedroom and came back with some running shorts and a white T-shirt that had belonged to Tony.

  It was just after six and we ran up the hill towards the west into the evening sun. It was tiring up and down the heath hills, but I felt great. Jazz led the way with Pattie behind him and raced towards some trees near the centre of a hill. They sniffed a couple who were snogging under a blanket, then scampered further up the hill. I followed puffing and panting, onwards and upwards, hamstring and calf muscles straining. The soles of my trainers were digging into the uneven sandy path when I finally reached the top. The dogs were waiting for me and led me towards a clump of trees. From then onwards we followed a much easier downhill route and the path wound towards a pond where people were swimming.

  Both dogs were panting and needed a swim badly, but they were barred from entry. I wanted to cool down. So I put on their leads, tied them to the fence, threw off my shirt and sprinted for the water in my shorts.

  The pond, with dark brown water, looked dirty.

  'Is the water OK?' I shouted.

  'Quite safe,' replied a lady who was swimming near me. 'It's running water. Feel the current?'

  We chatted as we swam and she told me that the pond was near the source of the River Fleet. From there it flowed underground to the City of London.

  'Hundreds of years ago, the Fleet flowed through the
City into the Thames,' she said. 'The City grew and roads and buildings were built above the river. It is now below a road known as Fleet Street. London's newspaper offices and printing plants used to be on that street, but they moved to other parts of London. The Corporation of London is in charge of the City and looks after Hampstead Heath. It's because the source of the River Fleet is here.'

  I wasn't really superstitious. But wasn't this another sign that I should play the stock market? First Manson's book, second my Hampstead brokers and third the City controlled the Heath.

  I couldn't wait to finish Manson's book. I put on my trainers, picked up my shirt, untied the dogs and still dripping ran towards the eastern part of the Heath and Martha's house.

  * * *

  Martha gave me a lovely surprise. She had tidied up the house and made up a bed in the spare room.

  'I don't want any rent. Just make yourself at home,' she insisted. 'Pattie enjoyed the run. We want you to stay with us.'

  'Wow, thanks Martha. As soon as I get some cash, I'll pay my way.'

  'Shut up and finish reading your book,' Martha said. 'I'm not sure that money will make you happy. But if that's what you want . . .'

  I ate some bread and cheese while Martha fed the dogs. Afterwards, I sat down on a rickety chair alongside a round antique rosewood table. It had two books on it. The first was by Manson and the second, The Crowd by Gustave Le Bon, belonged to Martha's husband.

  'Tony was a psychoanalyst,' she said. 'Markets are all about people. Clever individuals invariably become fools in a crowd.'

  Martha was a bit strange, but certainly not stupid. She gave me some paper and a pen and I made notes and drawings to adapt Manson's methods so that I could understand how they worked and to picture them in my mind.

  Manson believed that investors should ignore brokers' tips, news, profits, interest rates and all that stuff. They should just concentrate on the share prices. Watch and see if the shares keep rising or fall back again. The shares themselves would signal when you should buy or sell them.

  It was as if the shares were alive. I remembered the fish in the pet shop earlier in the day. How the fish swam up and down in their tanks, just like shares. I imagined a large aquarium. My aquarium was divided into several compartments. Thin membranes separated the divisions in the tank. Fish swam happily up and down and sideways in their own space. Small blue fish swam at the bottom. Gold fish swam in the second compartment and black fish were in the top part. I imagined that I was throwing fish food on the water. The black fish ate the food, leaving hardly anything for the gold and blue fish in the lower parts of the aquarium. So I threw more food on the water. Hungry gold fish burst through the membrane towards the top where the black fish were swimming. The blue fish followed into the second part of the aquarium swallowing the remaining morsels. After the food was eaten, some of the gold and blue fish returned to the lower parts. Others remained at the top.

  Manson explained that the behaviour of shares was similar. For some time a share would fluctuate up and down at the bottom between 100 and 200 pence. All of a sudden there would be a sudden increase in trading. The share would burst into a new range of 200 to 250 pence. That's when Manson would buy. On the other hand, similarly to the fish, the share could force its way to a new 251 to 300 pence trading band and rise even further. This would be a signal that it was going to soar to even greater heights. Manson would keep holding the share for as long as it kept rising. He 'allowed his profits to run'. On the other hand if the share fell to a lower level, he would sell quickly.

  I read and re-read the book that was less than 200 pages long. Went to bed at about 2am in the morning and fell into a deep sleep, dreaming about fish in a mammoth aquarium.

  The dogs woke me early in the morning, but I was so excited that I wasn't tired. Martha was still sleeping so I took them out for a short walk and then came back again and paged through The Crowd. I knew that dictators like Hitler could influence crowds and encourage them to do terrible things. But as Martha said, the crowd also pushed the stock market up and down. Anything could influence the broking and investor crowd. A cure for cancer, an oil discovery, bank crashes or war. If the crowd of investors noticed that certain shares were going up, they would follow and buy. During a panic the crowd would dump shares. The book helped me understand that if I played the stock market, I had to move fast. I had to buy and sell before the crowd. Manson warned that mistakes would be made, but I would be OK if I sold my shares quickly and cut losses before they became worse. The first loss was the smallest loss, he wrote.

  I was ready to act, but how?

  'The market opens tomorrow and I want to catch some fish,' I told Martha.

  'It's a waste of time fishing in Hampstead ponds. Hardly any fish. There's a good fishmonger in Kentish Town,' she said.

  'No, I mean shares . . . I want to study the stock market. See which shares to buy.'

  'Try Swiss Cottage Library,' grinned Martha. 'It's about two miles from here.'

  * * *

  There were several computers inside Swiss Cottage library. I browsed the Internet to find out what was happening on the London Stock Exchange. Some sites displayed shares on charts. Most shares had peaked recently and were now falling.

  I had a pencil and paper and drew an aquarium with units from bottom to top. I didn't bother with the numerous shares that were slipping towards the bottom of the tank. But the charts showed that gold shares were behaving differently. I followed Manson's instructions and examined the charts of gold share prices over a period of three to five years. During most of this time they had done virtually nothing. The gold fish had swum calmly up and down at the bottom of the tank. They were virtually asleep. But suddenly in the past week, gold shares had risen. This was a sign that something was happening. I found that there were lots of gold mines in the United States, Canada, South Africa and Australia. Sure enough, their shares were beginning to rise. A friendly little girl came up to me with her mother and gave me some crayons. She watched me take an orange crayon and draw a gold fish pushing though the membrane. She took the crayon and drew a few more rising from the bottom to the top of the lowest compartment. Some went halfway through the membrane. I looked at the drawing with a child's imagination. My drawing became the aquarium in the pet shop. Gold fish were desperate for food. They were bumping their heads against the membrane of their compartment. I thought about it. The food of the gold mines was gold. If the gold price rose, profits of gold mines would increase and their shares would rise. I searched for a chart on the gold price. The price was hardly moving. That puzzled me until I discovered from the charts that gold shares tended to rise before the gold price began to increase. They also rose much faster and much more than gold. I knew that there must have been some sort of explanation, but I didn't care. From what I saw, if the gold price rose by say ten per cent, gold shares would soar by thirty per cent. If gold bullion jumped by a third, the price of gold shares would double. If gold fell, the shares would come down with a bigger bump. Huge amounts of money could thus be made and lost in gold shares. The charts also showed that a gold share boom could happen within weeks, let alone months!

  It seemed that the crowd playing the stock market had become bored with gold and gold shares in the past year. They had decided to leave them alone. Gold fish had swum aimlessly for many long months near the bottom of the tank.

  Something had aroused gold fish in the past week. I was so excited that I went to the water tank at the edge of the room and downed two cups. I peered at the tank and imagined my gold fish swimming to the top.

  Back at the front desk, I asked the librarian whether there were any chart books on the stock exchange. I wanted to feel the charts in my hands and write down the prices. It would give me an even better understanding on what was happening to gold shares. Manson had done that before the Internet, PCs and laptops were invented. If it worked for him, it would work for me.

  The librarian took me to the reference library and luckily
there were several chart books with the price history of all sorts of shares. I looked up gold shares with charts going back twenty years.

  Five shares interested me. In past gold booms and busts, they had gone up the most and fallen the most. Back in the library I saw a pile of Financial Times newspapers. I found the pages of share prices and wrote down the prices of the gold shares, going back a month. I drew another aquarium. Using an orange crayon, I plotted the path of my five gold fish. All had broken through the membrane. I had never traded in the stock market before, but I was sure that the shares were giving a signal. The price of gold was about to rise. If gold dust fell on the water, my gold fish would quickly swim for the food at the top of the tank.

  I searched for articles about gold and gold shares in the Financial Times and other newspapers. There were hardly any reports. Gold wasn't news. The crowd was ignoring it. The charts and prices indicated that only a few investors were expecting something to happen. I had to move fast. It was too late to buy the shares today, but I would make sure that I was at the brokers at the opening of the stock market tomorrow.

  I found out why bank shares had fallen to the bottom of the tank. On the front page of the FT was a report about the collapse of Moscow Narodsky bank. Several British banks and companies that had dealings with Moscow Narodsky were caught. They had combined losses totalling billions. According to Nostrum Krebs, an FT columnist, the Russian banking collapse had turned into an international financial crisis. He predicted that the stock market would slump. Investors were going to lose fortunes. I hoped that Wardle had sold my shares on Friday.

  I glanced at another newspaper and saw: 'The Russian Banker Mystery'. I paged through the paper and found the article in the features section. It was about Boris Yapolovitch, the poor guy who I had found hanging from Charing Cross Bridge. The article wondered if the Russian mafia was involved. It said that there were several other murders during the past year. The men and women who had died were involved with Russian gangsters.