Investment and Speculation First Edition - Lawrence Chamberlain - Bauman Rare Books

Investment and Speculation

Lawrence CHAMBERLAIN | William Wren HAY

Item#: 84383 We're sorry, this item has been sold

Investment and Speculation

“THE TENOR OF THE TIMES WAS CAPTURED IN 1931 BY… INVESTMENT AND SPECULATION”: SCARCE FIRST EDITION OF CHAMBERLAIN AND HAY’S CRUCIAL EARLY ANALYSIS OF THE STOCK MARKET AND THE 1929 CRASH

CHAMBERLAIN, Lawrence and HAY, William Wren. Investment and Speculation. Studies of Modern Movements and Basic Principles. New York: Henry Holt, 1931. Octavo, original black cloth.

First edition of Chamberlain and Hay’s authoritative work on investment strategies following the 1929 Crash, a seminal work whose critical view of investment in common stocks was forcefully countered in 1934 by Graham and Dodd’s Security Analysis.

After the devastating 1929 Wall Street Crash, “the tenor of the times was captured in 1931 by a book written by Lawrence Chamberlain and William Hay entitled Investment and Speculation. Implicitly attacking Edgar Smith’s 1924 work Common Stocks as Long Term Investments, which had provided an intellectual basis for the 1920s boom,” here Chamberlain and Hay emphatically argued that “in fact common stocks are not investments; that they are speculations” (57). Written by Chamberlain, a highly regarded Wall Street broker who authored several books on bond investments, and industry analyst William Wren Hay, this major early assessment of investment strategies was primarily countered by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd’s 1934 Security Analysis. Graham and Dodd “did not subscribe to the Chamberlain-Hay view that stock investing was inherently speculative. Instead he and his coauthor Dodd, believed that the systematic application of sound analytical techniques to stock selection would enable investors to achieve solid returns with reasonable risk, even in bad market environments”(Smith, Toward Rational Exuberance). Contemporary owner inscription dated April 30, 1932.

Interior fine; slight rubbing, minimal edge-wear to cloth. A near-fine copy.

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Aquatint Copperplate process by which the plate is “bitten” by exposure to acid. By changing the areas of the plate that are exposed and the length of time the plate is submerged in the acid bath, the engraver can obtain fine and varying shades of gray that closely resemble watercolor washes. Although the name contains the word “tint”, this is a black-and-white printing process; aquatint plates can often be hand colored, however.
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