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Quote of the Day
“No general keeps his troops fighting all the time; nor does he go into battle without some part of his forces held back in reserve. After my first youthful reverses were behind me, I tried never to go into any speculation over my depth — beyond my financial capacity to pay for any error of judgment. By maintaining a large cash reserve, I have also been in a position to take advantage of unforeseen opportunities as they developed.”
-Bernard Baruch, in his autobiography, Baruch: My Own Story
A fitting quote for a day that marks the end of the American Civil War. Read more below:
April 9th – This Day in Stock Market History
April 9th, 1865 – Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrenders to Union general Ulysses Grant, ending the civil war.
Reliable data on the stock market movements in the 1860s is tough to find. The New York Times writes in their April 10th 1865 edition that U.S. stocks were up 2%, railroads were up 10%, and gold was down 6% on “the rise of public feeling” after an end to the war.
April 9th, 1915 – Bethlehem Steel vaults from $88 to $117 per share, part of a 10 day rise that would see its share price rise 70 points. The World War 1 boom is underway.
Bethlehem Steel was the nation’s largest ship builder at the time, and also a large supplier for the materials for guns and ammunition.
The U.S. would not enter the war until April 6th, 1917, but American companies would benefit greatly from a great demand of products in Europe.
Besides Bethlehem Steel, American auto companies, locomotive companies, and even companies that made pots and pans saw their share prices bid up on the prospects of large overseas orders.
Between March and April of 1915 the Dow Jones Industrial Average would rise 19%!
Source: It Was A Very Good Year
April 9th, 1968 – U.S. stock markets close for Martin Luther King Jr’s funeral.
The New York Stock Exchange also held a moment of silence in honor of Martin Luther King on April 5th, 1968, the day after he was assassinated.
Best April 9th in Dow Jones Industrial Average History
1938 – Up 5.25%, +5.75 points
Worst April 9th in Dow Jones Industrial Average History
1943 – Down 3.17%, -4.30 points
Read of the Day
Our quote of the day comes from Bernard Baruch, who was one of Wall Street’s most famous investors by the time World War 1 came about. He had made the bulk of his money speculating in the sugar markets in the early 1900s, and would eventually own his own brokerage firm.
“Bernard M. Baruch – one of the most remarkable men of our time – was an office boy at nineteen, a Wall Street partner at twenty-five, and a millionaire before he was thirty-five. For some men this success would mark the climax of a career; for Baruch it was only the beginning of a still greater one. In the fifty years since he made his first fortune, Bernard Baruch has been a trusted counselor of Presidents, an adviser on social and economic reforms, a statesman who has worked with two political parties and won the respect of both. In this, the first volume of his memoirs, Mr. Baruch analyzes his personal philosophy and shows how it helped him solve the many problems that confronted him in his public life as chairman of the War Industries Board during World War I and as United States representative on the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission. Informal yet penetrating, intimate yet never losing sight of major events and issues, BARUCH: My Own Story is infused with the remarkable personality of a truly distinguished American.”
<– Go To Previous Day: April 8th: 1940 – The Dow reaches its pre-WW2 peak. It would be 5 years before the Dow recovers
Go To Next Day: April 10th: 1816 – The Second U.S. Bank gains its charter –>
