Fifty Years in Wall Street

Name: Fifty Years in Wall Street
SKU: 40997
Price: 21.67 USD
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Rating: 3.40 (5 reviews)

Rated 3.4 out of 5 based on 5 customer ratings

(5 customer reviews)

$21.67

Categories: Investing & Wealth Strategies, Market Cycles & Timing

Fifty Years in Wall Street is Henry Clews’s firsthand account of nineteenth-century American finance, speculation, market panics, booms, political events, and the careers of prominent Wall Street operators. Clews writes as an active participant in the financial world of his era, combining personal experience with historical records to document how Wall Street developed and how speculation interacted with broader economic and political forces. He explicitly describes the work as both a narrative of financial events he personally experienced and a retrospective history of Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange.

The book moves between practical observations on speculation and detailed historical case studies. Early chapters address how experienced operators approached periods of panic, why inexperienced speculators lost money, and why self-reliance and informed judgment were preferable to blindly following market “tips.” Clews describes veteran speculators preserving cash during ordinary periods and deploying it when panic drove sound securities to depressed prices, while warning younger participants against dependence on supposed inside information.

A substantial portion of the work examines recurring market phenomena: corners and squeezes, liquidity disruptions, speculative booms, credit expansion, financial panics, overcapitalization, and the eventual contraction that follows excessive enthusiasm. Clews treats panics not simply as isolated accidents but as outcomes connected with credit, economic development, leverage, uncertain valuations, and the financial risks associated with rapid expansion. His historical examples provide a long-term perspective on how market structure and human behavior interact across cycles.

The book also functions as a collection of case studies in speculation and capital preservation. Through figures such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, Daniel Drew, Jay Gould, James R. Keene, and other major operators, Clews documents both extraordinary financial successes and severe reversals. The recurring lesson is that the ability to make money does not necessarily imply the ability to retain it: excessive commitment, inflexible market views, overextension, and failure to adapt repeatedly destroyed fortunes.

This Wiley Investment Classics edition is an edited version of Clews’s much larger 1908 work. The publisher specifically retained material covering winning and losing speculators, market corners, Wall Street panics, political influence, war finance, and the methods by which major nineteenth-century financiers accumulated their fortunes.

✅ What You’ll Learn

How experienced nineteenth-century speculators approached financial panics and depressed security prices.
Why Clews considered patience, independent judgment, and self-reliance essential to successful speculation.
How speculative “tips” and dependence on supposed insiders could undermine a trader’s decision-making.
How credit expansion, leverage, uncertain asset values, and economic development contributed to historic financial panics.
How market corners and squeezes affected security prices and the behavior of competing operators.
How speculative booms evolved and how periods of excessive optimism could give way to contraction and distrust.
How major Wall Street operators accumulated, lost, and sometimes rebuilt substantial fortunes.
How external conditions—including banking, trade, industry, politics, currency movements, and foreign markets—could influence securities prices.
Why preserving capital and avoiding overextension remained critical even for highly successful speculators.
How recurring patterns of fear, speculation, leverage, panic, and recovery appeared across different periods of Wall Street history.

💡 Key Benefits

Provides a primary-source perspective on the development of American speculation and capital markets.
Places market panics and booms within a broader historical and economic framework rather than treating them as isolated events.
Shows how behavioral errors such as blind following, overconfidence, excessive leverage, and inflexible market bias repeatedly affected speculators.
Uses real historical operators and financial crises as case studies in both wealth creation and capital destruction.
Helps readers recognize recurring characteristics of speculative cycles despite changes in market technology and structure.
Combines investment history, market psychology, financial biography, and practical observations from an experienced Wall Street participant.

👤 Who This Book Is For

Beginner to intermediate investors seeking historical perspective on speculation, market panics, booms, and financial cycles.
Traders interested in how recurring behavioral patterns and speculative excess developed long before modern electronic markets.
Investors studying market history as a means of understanding risk, valuation, crowd behavior, and cyclical opportunity.
Readers interested in the careers and methods of major nineteenth-century financiers and Wall Street operators.

📚 Table of Contents

My Debut in Wall Street
How to Make Money in Wall Street
Causes of Loss in Speculation
Wall Street During the War
My Part in Marketing the United States Civil War Loans
Secretary Chase and the Treasury
“Corners” and Their Effect on Values
The Commodore’s “Corners”
Drew and the Erie “Corners”
Panics—Their Causes—How Far Preventable
Old Time Panics
The True Story of Black Friday Told for the First Time
Our Great American Panics from First to Last
Booms in Wall Street
Wall Street’s Wild Speculation, 1900–1904
The Ups and Downs of Wall Street
Grant’s Second Term
The Tweed Ring, and the Committee of Seventy
Daniel Drew
Interesting Episodes in Drew’s Life
William H. Vanderbilt
“Young Corneel”
Drew and Vanderbilt
Jay Gould
Keene’s Career
Villard and his Speculations
Ferdinand Ward
Henry N. Smith
Charles F. Woerishoffer
Why I Am an American

Fifty Years in Wall Street By Henry Clews

Author(s)	Henry Clews
Product Type	Ebook
Format	PDF
Skill Level	Beginner to Intermediate
Pages	383
Publication Year	2006
Delivery	Instant Download

5 reviews for Fifty Years in Wall Street

Rated 2 out of 5

Siena Duran (verified owner) – September 4, 2023

This book provides some interesting anecdotes about the various players in the 1857 – 1907 period. These include Jay Gould, Cornelius Van Der Bilt, Dan’l Drew, Jim Fisk, Henry Villard, James R. Keene, Ferdinand Ward, etc. On the positive side, it is written by an individual who was part of the action at the time, which gives it some color. It also describes the financial mechanisms of the time — forinstance, how “corners” were done, and how politicians were manipulated. However, the stories are disconnected and poorly organized. To put together the full story of any one character, you need to hop from chapter to chapter. Part of this may be because this version of the book consists of excepts from the 1000 page origonal. Overall, a lively, anecdotal addition to the financial history of this period
Rated 4 out of 5

Kamden Peterson (verified owner) – January 3, 2024

I enjoyed this recollection by Henry Clews, of his 50 years in Wall Street from 1856-1906. It is a personal recounting of the things he saw and his views on success and failure in markets. Clews was the Bob Rubin of his time and was known as the “sage of Wall Street”. He details the operations of heavyweights like Jay Gould, WH Vanderbilt, John Rockefeller, Daniel Drew and others. He goes into some detail on the causes of booms and panics of 1817, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1884, 1893, 1905 and 1907. He discusses corners in the market by renowned operators and talks about his role in the Civil War.

Some of the gems throughout this book more than make up for the shortfalls (these being the writing style & the lack of coherency between chapters). The stories illustrate that human nature does not change. Some personal highlights:

“While it is often easy to make money, it is still easier to lose it. Therefore, boldness should always be tempered with caution in the pursuit of the almighty dollar in Wall Street” – Clews

From the Jay Gould chapter:
Gould: “All my life I have been dealing in railroads.. And I have always considered their future and not their past. That is the way I have made my money.. The very first railroad I ever bought had a deplorable past, but it’s future was fair. I paid 10c on the dollar for its bonds and finally sold the stock at par $1.25. It was the future of the Union Pacific that drew me into it. I went into it to make money.”… “you pay more for rubies than for diamonds and more for diamonds than for glass”.

On Henry Smith (a stock market operator, & a bull turned bear):
“It is almost impossible for a man who has had no experience in Wall Street matters to estimate the extremes of fanaticism in speculation to which a man is prepared to go when he is seized with a monomania either on the bull or the bear side – but especially the latter. This inveterate combination of egotism and fanaticism has ruined many hundreds to my knowledge” – Henry Clews

Overall, an excellent historical perspective on Wall Street in that period 1856 – 1906.
Rated 2 out of 5

Jericho Wilkinson (verified owner) – January 22, 2024

Maybe someone who is a hard-core investor would like it but it is opaque and simply boring. A great historical document but nothing more.
Rated 4 out of 5

Ismael Woodward (verified owner) – February 29, 2024

This version of the book is good if you just want the gist of it, but is garbage if you want all the fine details. I give it 4-stars because I believe this is an important book for anyone seeking a better understanding of the inner workings of Wall Street, or for anyone interested in the history in general.

The main problem with this version is that the original was 1062 pages and Wiley butchered it down to 358. A lot is missing, and this version often feels fragmented with no coherent consistency. The original version sells for $400 to $2,500, but there is a 2-volume version of the original from Kessinger Publishing that can be had for $90 or less, though the print quality is not the best; at least it has the content.

When it was first released, the book was hailed for its insight on the history, politics, and financial events that unfolded in the last half of the 19th century. The book is loaded with tales of the former Masters of the Universe, their money-making schemes, and methods of forecasting markets.

Clews was born the son of a potter in 1836 and married a descendant of President Madison. He came from Europe to America in 1853 and broke into Wall Street’s inner circle in 1857. He made a fortune selling War Bonds during the Civil War and earned a spot in high NY society. He was a campaign adviser to General Grant, and declined the position of Secretary of the Treasury when it was offered.

In 1873 the Credit Mobilier bankrupted him and most of his clients including The City of San Diego. He rebuilt his business in 1877 and was eventually regarded as “The Sage of Wall Street”. He died in 1923 at the age of 87. Too bad he missed the Crash of ’29.

Some of his Sagely advice:

“I conclude, then, that for a man to be a thoroughly equipped speculator, it is necessary that he be possessed of extraordinary parts and attainments. He must be an unceasing and intelligent observer of events at large, and a sagacious interpreter of symptoms on the exchange; his judgment must be sound, not only as to existing conditions, but as to coming tendencies, and he must possess the calmness and nerve to face unflinchingly whatever emergencies may arise. Whoever enjoys these qualities in the highest degree must be the King of Speculators. As to others, their rank must correspond to the degree of their conformity to this ideal standard.”

Sound advice. Very interesting stuff.
Rated 5 out of 5

Drew Miranda (verified owner) – March 29, 2024

I had read several reviews of this book on more than one occasion and started not to buy it. I am glad I did. The material in this book I find very relevant to today’s market. One of the comparisons I made was between today’s political environment and the one faced by President Lincoln.

The author also reviewed the market operators of the time which sheds light on the reason for the markets and how they developed. You are given a view of how these early operators manipulated the markets. As a comparison, their methods are similar to the methods used by the Federal Reserve Banks to manipulate their respective currencies and financial markets.

A very insightful look into financial and political history.