S. Duncan

History of Financial Advice Collection. In 1900, Duncans, a prominent firm of outside brokers, produced Profits versus Dividends, which like their earlier guides was published by leading business publishers Effingham Wilson. Almost certainly the work of Henry Lowenfeld, who was by now the main mover behind Duncans, the manual develops Lowenfeld’s earlier ideas on “speculative investments,” aiming to prove to readers that they could make large profits without risk by selling their stocks when high in the market, and repurchasing them when their price had dropped. To this end, the book presented readers with a detailed investment plan, richly illustrated with charts, showing stock fluctuations over the previous four years. Like many bucket shops, Duncans were often in the courts suing or being sued by their customers, and in May 1901, days after one such case went against them in the court of appeal, the company went into liquidation. This did not mark the end of Lowenfeld’s career, however. He was soon to find a new vehicle for the dissemination of his ideas on investment in the Financial Review of Reviews, established in 1904.… (mehr)