Page:Hints About Investments (1926).pdf/113



the ordinary investor this chapter might be put into one word, "Don't." We have seen in Chapter V that investments in "real or heritable securities," by which I understand that real property and mortgages thereon are meant, are permitted under the Trustee Act; but such investments have been in the past a fruitful source of loss to beneficiaries under trust deeds, when trustees, on their own responsibility or under the advice of solicitors, have put funds into mortgages on house property that has declined in value, as house property is liable to do without the process being evident to anybody but the keenest observer.

This is the essential difference between real property and Stock Exchange securities, that the latter have a quotation—sometimes more or less nominal it is true, but at least a quotation and a record indicating business done in them,