Word: odd
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...sell when prices fall. But in recent years, market experts who have taken pains to study the actions of the little investor think that the old saw is wrong. One such expert is Boston's Garfield A. Drew, proprietor of an investment advisory service, who has traced odd-lot transactions back...
...characteristic odd-lotter, says Drew, does not buy when the market soars and stories on it begin to land on the front pages. This whets his interest, but he waits to buy until prices slip. Although during a two-or three-day break he may well be scared into selling, if prices take a real drop, he buys heavily...
...fact that minor dips scare the odd-lotter easily, even when the market is basically sound, makes him a poor short-term trader. For example, during the Fulbright investigation last March when the market broke sharply (TIME, March 21), the number of odd-lot sales rose sharply. But, in general, the small investor is not an in-and-out-of-the-market speculator. Chief reason: it is slightly more expensive to buy or sell odd lots at a given price since an extra broker's commission of one-eighth of a point is charged...
Last Dec. 8 and 15, the New York Stock Exchange ordered its member firms to ask customers why they were buying stocks. Of the odd-lotters, 72.9% were buying for long-term investment v. only 53.5% of the round-lot buyers. Only 7.5% of the odd-lotters planned to hold the stocks less than 30 days, compared to 17.5% of the round-lotters. Apparently because they were buying for investment, the majority of the odd-lotters (70.6%) bought their stock outright rather than on margin, compared to only 43.0% of round-lot purchasers...
More evidence of the fact that the small investor buys for investment is the fact that he is not frightened out of stocks when a bull market turns into a bear. In 1929, odd-lot transactions were 13.2% of all transactions on the New York Stock Exchange. But after the crash, the odd-lot percentage rose to as high as 15.2% in 1931, was about the same in 1932. Since stocks were close to their bottoms in both years, they were good "buying years." And in both years the odd-lotters bought more stocks than they sold. In recent years...