|
Wally shook his head with a sad, condescending smile. “That’s one stock that I assure you is going up. Way up. Better bet than Ford, I assure you—” “That’s very nice of you to offer me your professional wisdom, Mister Barnes,” Wally replied as he leaned back in his chair, “but I have my mind set on these stocks. Either you can go down the list and buy a hundred shares of each as the funds in my account become available,” Wally slid a check made out in the amount of one thousand dollars across the desk to the broker, “or I’ll find another broker.” Barnes coughed on another drag of his filterless smoke. “Well, Mister Bayer, if you feel that strongly about it, I’ll take your business and do your bidding. ‘Customer is King.’” “Good to hear.” Barnes reached into the drawer of his desk to retrieve a form. “And you don’t even have to wait till you have the funds in your account to purchase all of these,” he began as he reached to an inkwell for his pen. “You can buy on margin, only ten percent down necessary. We’ll loan you the other ninety percent to buy the stock, and you get to keep the stock and pocket a hundred percent of the earnings regardless, and a hundred percent of the profits if it goes up.” Barnes glanced at the questionnaire as his pen scratched against the new form. “Of those you picked, I might go with Gillette. I saw a lot of my men Over There rave about those new ‘safety razors.’ I think that’s one company that’s on to somethin’.” Wally looked out the window at the sunny day on Wall Street, at the dawn of a Decade of Decadence. “Let’s buy them all, Mister Barnes. Buy as many round lots of the seven as you can with the full ten thousand. I’ve got a very good feeling about the market.” Barnes scratched even more furiously than before, his head down and his voice subdued as he remarked, “Customer is King.” |