Page:Hints About Investments (1926).pdf/21

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

be mentioned later, but this is the kind of investment which will be chiefly considered in this inquiry; and when we speak of "capital appreciation" as part of the investor's ideal, all that is meant is that he wants, if he has to sell the securities that he has bought, to be able to sell them at a higher price than he paid, or if he does not need or want to sell, to have the satisfaction of seeing them stand at higher prices and so feeling richer.

This desire for expansion in income and a rise in value of his securities brings the investor to the borderline which divides him from the speculator and, according to the most austere investment doctrine, takes him over it. The Straitest sect maintains that all that the real investor as such should desire is a safe income, and that as soon as he begins to hanker for either an increasing income or a rise in the price of his holding he becomes a speculator. A safe and sufficient income is better, according to this doctrine, than one which may grow but may also dwindle, and it is not possible to aim at growth without running the risk of dwindling; and there is no need, as long as income is secure, for the investor to bother himself about the price at which he could sell out; in fact, a fall in the prices of his securities may cheer his dying moments with the thought that the Inland