Van Winkle's Portfolio

In Wall Street last week was being circulated, as a joke, a table of figures which made investors wince. It told of a Rip van Winkle who in August 1929 sold ten shares of Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe at $298!, putting the $2,986.25 in a savings bank. Recently he bought back his ten Atchison for $350. With the additional money he bought ten shares in each of 85 well-known companies, such as Baltimore & Ohio, Erie, Wabash, Anaconda Copper, Baldwin Locomotive, United Cigar, Kreuger & Toll, Curtiss-Wright, Republic Steel. He still had left $8.75 to buy a haircut, a shave, a pair of shoes before taking the accumulated savings bank interest of about $450 to buy an automobile. If he had bought the 850 shares when he sold his Atchison in 1929, they would have cost him $73.930.

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