About the Author - Adolph Suehsdorf has written and edited newspapers, magazines and books for the past twenty years and has been a student of investment for the past ten years. Son of an investment banker, he was raised in an atmosphere of money management and good market operation, and he intensified his interest when he himself became an investor in the boom market after World War II.

01. American Business - Nearly 12,500,000 people in the United States today own common stock. This fact, so briefly stated, is of first-rank importance. For it summarizes one of the profound and far-reaching shifts in American social and economic life in the twentieth century. Never before in our history have so many of us owned so much of the nation's industrial wealth, so much of its pro­ductive capacity, so much of its profit potential.

02. Afford Investing - America always has been a land of promise. Whatever the course of our economy in the years immediately ahead, it is likely that opportunities for investment will be both nu­merous and attractive. Energetic new companies will emerge, looking for venture capital. Solid old companies will come forth with exciting new products. One industry or another will enjoy a boom period relative to the rest. And, of course, there will be casualties, too. There inevitably are.

03. Objective? - The thoughtful investor is always clear in his own mind about what he seeks from investment. Although he has only three choices, the distinctions between them are important and he observes them carefully. Switching objectives in mid-stream can be confusing and costly .

04. Your Broker - In every investor's life the "broker" is a figure of prime im­portance. It is through him that all securities transactions are handled; there is no way you can buy or sell stocks listed on any national exchange except through his services.

05. Market Place - In magnitude and importance, there is no securities market in the world that approaches the New York Stock Exchange. Its 1959 volume of over a billion shares traded represented some 12.6 million individual transactions—about 65 per cent of all business done on all United States exchanges. Its 1,507 common and preferred stock issues include most of the corporate elite of American industry.

06. Buying + Selling - After due deliberation—and possibly many changes of mind —you've decided that your first investment will be in a public utility, say, Consolidated Edison. It supplies gas and electricity to the five boroughs of New York City and to most of wealthy, suburban Westchester County. Its divi­dend has been increased 75 per cent as a result of six jumps in the past ten years. At its present price in the low 60's, the dividend of $3 means a yield of just about 4.8 per cent. All in all, it looks good.

07. What Shall I Buy? - Buying securities is somewhat like buying an automobile. The decision to buy something is relatively easy. What, specifically, to buy is an altogether different problem. Before you drive your new car home, you have to choose a certain make, a certain model, certain upholstery, a certain color scheme. You decide between six cylinders and eight, between regular shift and automatic transmission, and say yes or no to white walls, radio, heater, and a dozen other optional extras.

08. Select a Stock - You are now at the most exciting point of investment: select­ing a stock to buy. Behind you is a careful determination of your fitness as an investor. You have set your objectives. You have made contact with the man who win be your agent and confidante in all transactions. You know the market place in which you and he will be operating, and you have fundamental knowledge of the types of securities available to you.

09. When to Buy + Sell - Ideally, you buy stock at its lowest price and sell at its highest. Practically speaking, you do the best you can between these unpredictable extremes. For, as you will see, the low does not become apparent until your stock begins to rise above it, the high is not established until your stock begins to drop away. Although all of us could wish it otherwise, no bells, no flashing lights, no 21-gun salutes ever mark the bottom or the top.

10. Experts Only - In the vocabulary of investment, "speculation" is a nasty word. It suggests gambling, insecurity, long shots, luck, and similar improprieties. For old campaigners it stirs up mem­ories of the 1929 unpleasantness, as damp weather tweaks the rheumatic joint. And, worst of all, it seems synonymous with money lost. For every speculator who pulls a coup, we hear, there are 99 who live to rue their recklessness, to be­moan the hard-earned dollars foolishly and irretrievably cast down the drain.

11. Monthly Investment Plan - One of the simplest, most effective, and currently most popu­lar methods of buying stock is the Monthly Investment Plan. Started in 1954, the Plan now has more than 93,000 accounts in force, and new ones are being written at the rate of about 180 a day. Another 111,734 Plans begun in the same period have been completed or terminated. Altogether, MIP investors have bought some 3,674,000 shares of various stocks, with a market value at time of purchase of over $154 million.

12. Investment Clubs - One of the astonishing developments in stock ownership in the past 10 years has been the wildfire spread of invest­ment clubs throughout the nation. A New York Stock Ex­change survey indicates that there are at least 20,000 clubs in existence, with a total membership of more than 277,000 people—and that more are forming, at a phenomenal rate, every day. The market value of the clubs' holdings tops $160 million and they are pouring $2 million of new invest­ment into the market each month

13. Lose Your Shirt - Stock swindlers fleece investors out of millions of dollars every year. Exactly how many millions is not known. The swindlers, operating illegally, or, at best, on the barest edge of legality, are not inclined to report their profits. The victims, beating their foreheads in humiliation, are hesitant to confess their stupidity. But one classic swindle alone, engineered in the past year or so, mulcted the suckers for $16 million, and its promoter was by no means the only operator in the field.

14. Information - Fundamentally, all market activity is a response to the inter­action of personal opinion. Somebody wants to buy, some­body wants to sell, and thereby a market is made. Either way, the impulse represents a human judgment of how business is going, how the market is reacting to the business trend, and how, under these circumstances, this stock or that one will fare. The fascinating thing is that regardless of the situation, two essentially contradictory points of view—to buy and to sell—can always be reached.

15. Financial Pages - With the possible exception of the classified ads, no section of your daily newspaper contains more information per inch than the financial pages. At first look, they may seem cryptic and unintelligible, and it is certainly true that finance, like any other specialty, has its own language, understood clearly only by those who speak it regularly.

16. Financial Reports - When a professional securities analyst wants the cold dope about a corporation, he studies its financial reports. He may take field trips to its factories. He may interview management extensively. But to find out exactly where the company stands, he dissects its balance sheet and income statement, plus what­ever supporting schedules and explanatory data he can lay his hands on. Probably 90 per cent of his conclusions and recommendations about a stock derive from his work with these statistics and the relationships he develops from them.

17. Language - Wall Street speaks a language all its own. At first hearing, it may be confusing, even meaningless, to the innocent in­vestor whose only wish is to buy or sell some stock. Yet, like the shorthand speech of sports, jazz, the carnival, and the teen-ager, the words of Wall Street are simply a dis­tillation of complicated activities and procedures into brief and convenient terms.

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