That bucket shop had my margin and Henry’s, and there may have been a lot of other Sugar shorts in the office; possibly eight or ten thousand shares in all. Suppose they had $20,000 in Sugar margins. That was enough to pay the shop to thimblerig the market on the New York Stock Exchange and wipe us out. In the old days whenever a bucket shop found itself loaded with too many bulls on a certain stock it was a common practice to get some broker to wash down the price of that particular stock far enough to wipe out all the customers that were long of it. This seldom cost the bucket shop more than a couple of points on a few hundred shares, and they made thousands of dollars.

That was what the Cosmopolitan did to get me and Henry Williams and the other Sugar shorts. Their brokers in New York ran up the price to 108. Of course it fell right back, but Henry and a lot of others were wiped out. Whenever there was an unexplained sharp drop which was followed by instant recovery, the newspapers in those days used to call it a bucket-shop drive.

It ran along the whole length of the big room and every imaginable thing was quoted. I mean stocks dealt in on the New York and Boston Stock Exchanges, cotton, wheat, provisions, metals everything that was bought and sold in New York, Chicago, Boston and Liverpool.

You know how they traded in bucket shops. You gave your money to a clerk and told him what you wished to buy or sell. He looked at the tape or the quotation board and took the price from there the last one, of course.

But I didn’t really know why I should get out of the market, so I just stood there, leaning against the counter, my tickets in my hand so that the clerk couldn’t see them. Pretty soon I heard the clicking of a telegraph instrument and I saw Tom Burnham, the clerk, turn his head quickly and listen. Then I felt that something crooked was hatching, and I decided not to wait any longer.

He wrote that price and the time on your ticket, O.K.’d it and gave it back to you, and then you went to the cashier and got whatever cash it called for. Of course, when the market went against you and the price went beyond the limit set by your margin, your trade automatically closed itself and your ticket became one more scrap of paper.

In the humbler bucket shops, where people were allowed to trade in as little as five shares, the tickets were little slips different colors for buying and selling and at times, as for instance in boiling bull markets, the shops would be hard hit because all the customers were bulls and happened to be right. Then the bucket shop would deduct both buying and selling commissions and if you bought a stock at 20 the ticket would read 20-1/4. You thus had only 3/4 of a point’s run for your money.

He played that game several times all over the country, punishing the bigger bucket shops of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cincinnati and St. Louis.

Everybody in the room heard me and began to look toward us and ask what was the trouble, for, you see, while the Cosmopolitan had never laid down, there was no telling, and a run on a bucket shop can start like a run on a bank. If one customer gets suspicious the others follow suit. So Tom looked sulky, but came over and marked my tickets “Closed at 103″ and shoved the seven of them over toward me. He sure had a sour face.

In the smaller shops if you wanted to margin your trade still further they’d make out a new ticket, so they could charge you the buying commission and only give you a run of 3/4 of a point on each point’s decline, for they figured the selling commission also exactly as if it were a new trade.

The simple name for trading spot forex is trading foreign exchange. As you may understand, the idea behind this type of investment is that you buy one currency when it is low and sell another when it is high. The balance is your profit.

Spot forex trading has become more and more popular amongst all types of investment options out there. Many people, even those who are new to investing, find that forex trading is a better choice for them than playing in the stock market or futures market, and there are good reasons for that.

* Lower Capital Requirement

Unlike other forms of investing, where it seems like you already have to have hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest if you want to have any hope of making a profit, trading spot forex is accessible to smaller, individual investors.

In the past, there was a time when forex trading was solely dominated by large multinational banks and major financial institutions. In that climate, it is easy to see why smaller investors did not feel they could even begin to compete.

Over the years, however, things have changed a lot. Now, almost anyone with any amount of capital can enter the forex market. You simply play with whatever amount you feel comfortable.

* East to Learn and Manage

It is hard to find out exactly for how long forex trading has been around. Due to its long history, the practice in the forex market is very much standardized by now. This, together the modern technologies available to investors today, has made the operation of forex trading very easy to learn and use. WIth an automated trading system, you can constantly monitor the market, make quick transactions and get complete stats any time you like. Whether you are eating, sleeping, or running errands, you can still be making money.

* An Ever-changing Market

The forex market only takes short breaks and is live 24 hours a days and 5 days a week. There is always something happening, and new money-making opportunities and systems never cease to turn up. In this exciting market, you can hardly stay inactive. You should keep in mind, though, focusing is just as important to your success as being responsive to new events.

* Affordable Transaction Charge

In additional to the more affordable starting capital requirement, the transaction fee for forex trading also tens to be lower compared to stock trading. This is also the case for charges by forex brokers.

We have discussed many advantages to trading spot forex and, as you can see, they do count for the increasing popularity of this type of investment. Regardless of how much you are willing to invest and regardless of whether you have any prior experience, you have a good chance of success in this huge market.