Page:Hints About Investments (1926).pdf/52

 simply backing one's view concerning the probable course of trade, a matter which requires an amount of study and information that the average citizen can rarely bring to bear on it. The expense of changing from one investment to another is considerable by the time that brokers, jobbers and tax-gatherers have all taken their toll of the process. If you work out the commissions, transfer stamps and fees, contract stamps and jobbers' "turns" on a sale and repurchase of registered stocks or shares, you will find that they may come to something like a half year's income on the securities. In this way a large part of the profit, if any, is gone before it is garnered; and the loss is pro tanto increased, if calculations concerning the course of the trade cycle should happen to be upset by some prank of Nature's in the shape of good or bad harvests, earthquakes or pestilence, or by some human aberration, such as war or revolution or widespread industrial unrest.

This being so it seems much better for the ordinary investor to choose for the foundation of his holding good creditor securities that can be relied on not to fall because of any special deterioration affecting the probability of the interest on them being paid; and, having got them, to keep them as long as they remain