I know what you are thinking: how can Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer teach us anything about a stock’s (and the market in general) momentum that can carry it way beyond a reasonably logical price target sucking in as many investors as possible? Let’s see.
Do you remember or have you ever read the story of Tom Sawyer and his whitewashing experiment? If you forgot or if you haven’t, Tom has been given strict orders from his Aunt Polly to whitewash a fence. In the end, it is the neighborhood kids who end up begging for the chance to whitewash the fence in his stead. What follows is an excerpt. Words is red emphasize the point I will attempt to make.
Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence and all gladness left him, a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden. Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost plank; repeated the operation; did again; compared the insignificant whitewashed streak with the far-reaching continent of unwhitewashed fence, and sat down on a tree-box discouraged. Jim came skipping out at the gate with a tin pail, and singing “Buffalo Gals.” Bringing water from the town pump had always been hateful work in Tom’s eyes before, but now it did not strike him so. He remembered that there was company at the pump. Boys and girls were always there waiting their turns, resting, trading playthings, quarrelling, fighting, skylarking. And he remembered that although the pump was only a hundred and fifty yards off, Jim never got back with a bucket under an hour – and even then somebody generally had to go after him.
He took up his brush and went tranquilly to work. Ben Rogers hove in sight presently - the very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule he had been dreading. Ben’s gait was the hop-skip-and-jump – proof enough that his heart was light and his anticipations were high. He was eating an apple, and giving a long melodious whoop, at intervals followed by a deep-toned ding-dong, ding-dong, for he was personating a steam-boat. As he drew near, he slackened speed, took the middle of the street, leaned far over to starboard and rounded-to ponderously and with laborious pomp and circumstance - for he was personating the Big Missouri, and considered himself to be drawing nine feet of water. He was boat and captain and engine bells combined, so he had to imagine himself standing on his own hurricane-deck giving the orders and executing them:
“Stop her, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling!” The headway ran almost out, and he drew up slowly toward the sidewalk.
“Ship up to back! Ting-a-ling-ling!” His arms straightened and stiffened down his sides.
“Set her back on the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ch-chow-ow!” His right hand, meantime, describing stately circles – for it was representing a forty-foot wheel.
“Let her go back on the labboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ch-chow-ow!” The left hand began to describe circles.
“Stop the stabborad! Ting-a-ling-ling! Stop the labboard! Come ahead on the stabboard! Stop her! Let your outside turn over slow! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ch-chow-ow! Get out that head line. Lively now! Come – out with the spring-line – what’re you about there? Take a turn around that stump with the bight of it! Stand by that stage, now – let her go! Done with the engines, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling! Sht! Sht! Sht!”
Tom went on whitewashing – paid no attention to the steam-boat. Ben stared a moment and then said:
“Hi-yi! You’re up a stump, ain’t you?”
No answer. Tom surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist; then he gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as before. Ben ranged up alongside him. Tom’s mouth watered for the apple, but he stuck to his work. Ben said:
“Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?”
Tom wheeled suddenly and said:
“Why, it’s you, Ben! I warn’t noticing.”
“Say – I’m going in a -swimming, I am. Don’t you wish you could? But of course you’d druther work – wouldn’t you? Course you would!”
Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said:
“What do you call work?”
“Why, ain’t that work?”
Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly:
“Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain’t. All I know it suits Tom Sawyer.”
“Oh, come now, you don’t mean to let on that you like it?”
The brush continued to move.
“Like it? Well, I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?”
That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth – stepped back to note the effect – added a touch here and there – criticized the effect again – Ben watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said:
“Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little.”
Tom Considered, was about to consent; but he altered his mind:
“No-no-I reckon it wouldn’t hardly do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly’s awful particular about this fence – right here on the street, you know – but if it was the back fence, I wouldn’t mind, and she wouldn’t. Yes, she’s awful particular about this fence; it’s got to be done very careful; I recon there ain’t one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it the way it’s got to be done.”
“No-is that so? Oh, come now – lemme try. Only just a little – I’d let you, if you was me, Tom.”
“Ben, I’d like to, honest injun; but Aunt Polly – well, Jim wanted to do it, but she wouldn’t let him; Sid wanted to do it, and she wouldn’t let Sid. Now, don’t you see how I’ fixed? If you was to tackle this fence and anything was to happen to it –”
“Oh, shucks, I’ll be just as careful. Now lemme try. Say – I’ll give you the core of my apple.”
“Well, here – No, Ben, no you don’t. I’m afeared –”
“I’ll give you all of it!”
Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart. And while the late steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents. There was no lack of material; boys happened along every little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy fisher for a kite in good repair; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in for a dead rat and a string to sing it with – and so on, hour after hour. And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling wealth. He had, besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, part of a jew’s-harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spoon cannon, a key that wouldn’t unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, a kitten with only one eye, a brass door-knob, a dog-collar-but no dog – the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange-peel, and a dilapidated window-sash.
He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while – plenty of company – and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn’t run out of whitewash, he would have bankrupted every boy in the village.
AND MY POINT…
Notice how Tom made an otherwise unappealing chore the envy of the neighborhood. All he did was change a friend’s perception and then all the neighborhood kids had to participate. The fence did not change, the labor still intact, and there is no reward for its completion, yet if Tom “hadn’t run out of whitewash, he would have bankrupted every boy in the village” as each one gave him something of value just to have the privilege of whitewashing! Imagine that! The kids in your neighborhood paying you to do your chores! Sounds ridiculous does it not? It shouldn’t. This same psychological game is played out every single day in the stock market with a few exceptions. The kids are childish adults; the kids are not necessarily in your neighborhood but can be found just down the STREET; the buckets and brushes are replaced by candles that paint; what appears to be difficult and labor intensive is portrayed as easy and richly rewarding; the marbles, a tin soldier, and keys that can open anything have been replaced with money. These childish adults chase after stocks once it appears that not doing so would be taking a chance on being left out. No one wants to be left out! Come on, paint my fence. You won’t get another chance if you MISS IT THIS TIME!
There is nothing wrong with a stock trader acting childish: you have to think like a child in order to trade successfully. But my question is this: are you a Tom Sawyer who sees and understands the market, takes advantage of it, and gets in when others doubt, or are you one of the other kids who pout for fear of missing out? Tom Sawyer has all the booty AND his fence has been whitewashed? Can you say the same?
