It is interesting and amazing to note that not until Charles Dow started compiling the Dow Jones Industrial and Dow Jones Rail Index and started writing about the stock market a little over a hundred years ago, stock speculation was regarded merely as a game for the rich or as gambling for the brave. Sure, there were the tape readers, but the majority of the public regarded Wall Street as a source of excitement - the entertainment provided freely (unless you were on the wrong side) by figures such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, and the infamous Daniel Drew.

In a series of stunning editorials for the Wall Street Journal at the turn of the century, Dow laid out the foundation of his own theory on the stock market. Among them were:

• The market is always to be considered as having three movements, all going on at the same time.
• The first thing to consider is the value of the stock in which the speculator proposes to trade, the second the direction of the main movement, and the third the direction of the secondary movement (i.e. stocks fluctuate together, but prices are controlled by values in the long run).
• There are three phases to both a primary bull market and a primary bear market (not to be confused with the three movements mentioned above).
• The formation of a "line" in the averages indicates accumulation or distribution
• The market represents a serious well-considered effort on the part of far-sighted and well-informed men to adjust prices to such values as exist or which are expected to exist in the not too remote future.

The method of making money in stocks, according to Dow, was to study basic conditions and exercise enough patience to capture the major movements. One of the few speculators who discovered this relatively new concept of making money on Wall Street at the time was Jesse Livermore. He was able to accomplish this only through trial and error and the making and losing of several fortunes.