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The Speculator
Hard-earned walking canes and new
companions
Saying goodbye to a rare small business -- the last cane shop
in Manhattan -- stirs thoughts of what success and friendship really
mean.
By Victor
Niederhoffer and Laurel Kenner
A brochure came in the mail one day. Stan Novak
Walking Canes was closing up shop: 50% off dealer’s prices on
selected canes; prices as low as $3.
Laurel does the
cane buying for the Old Speculators' Association, and for years she
had been buying canes from Stan Novak. She went down to the Garment
District of Manhattan to pay her respects and see what was left.
Today she relates her experience.
The
cane's the thing
Stan Novak was sitting behind his desk as
usual in the fourth-floor office. We shook hands, and I went to the
back room. The canes on the brochure were run-of-the-mill stock, but
Mr. Novak sold fine canes, too. I knew where to look.
Mr.
Novak's white-haired wife was there, sorting through the
inventory.
"Hi," I said. "I'm a regular. I'm sorry to see him
go out of business."
"Yes," she said. "But he's 84 years old.
He can hardly walk."
I found Mr. Novak in February 2000, a
few weeks after Vic and I started writing columns together on the
stock market. We figured our readers knew more about stocks than we
did, and one of our first acts was to offer prizes for the best
insights on trading. We had 200 responses in two hours. Several of
them were downright magnificent.
We thought about sending
1987 vintage bottles of wine as prizes, but we didn't want to
violate any laws. We've always liked a certain passage in an 1887
book by Henry Clews called “Twenty-Eight Years in Wall Street,” and
it inspired the idea of awarding canes:
“But few gain sufficient experience in Wall Street to
command success until they reach that period of life in which they
have one foot in the grave. When this time comes, these old
veterans of the Street usually spend long intervals of repose at
their comfortable homes, and in times of panic, which recur
sometimes oftener than once a year, these old fellows will be seen
in Wall Street, hobbling down on their canes to their brokers'
offices.
“Then they always buy good stocks to the extent of
their bank balances, which they have been permitted to accumulate
for just such an emergency. The panic usually rages until enough
of these cash purchases of stock is made to afford a big 'rake
in.' When the panic has spent its force, these old fellows, who
have been resting judiciously on their oars in expectation of the
inevitable event, which usually returns with the regularity of the
seasons, quickly realize, deposit their profits with their
bankers, or the overplus thereof, after purchasing more real
estate that is on the up grade, for permanent investment, and
retire for another season to the quietude of their splendid homes
and the bosoms of their happy families.
I looked up canes in
the Yellow Pages and found Mr. Novak, the last cane purveyor in
Manhattan. I was enchanted. There in that dusty office with an old
manual typewriter, Mr. Novak had English hardwoods, Biancardi
bamboos, Italian canes with the carved heads of jockeys, hollow
maple canes with compartments for swords and brandy flasks. Best of
all, Mr. Novak was a stock millionaire.
A walking stick is a friend
Over the
next two-and-a-half years, the Speculators and Mr. Novak did a good
business. I sent dozens of canes to clever readers. Now I was in the
back room again on what I knew would be my last visit.
Mrs.
Novak tried to interest me in walking sticks.
"Look at this."
She held out a rose-headed knobbed stick. "I'm going to take this
home. All I have are plain canes."
"You're married to a cane
man and you don't have a fancy cane. Isn't that always the way," I
said.
Mr. Novak's inventory was pretty well picked over, but
I found some beautiful ones. Two with silver eagle heads. Two with
horn handles. Three long chestnut Prince Edwards. A few with duck
heads. A beautiful one made from striped wood. An English cane with
an art deco silver head.
I remembered the time we sent one of
those deco canes to Dr. Brett Steenbarger. His kids painted a banner
for him the day we told him he'd won our contest, and they put it up
on the house: "Welcome home, Cane Winner!" All three of us had tears
in our eyes at that one.
Dr. Brett turned out to be so good
he started writing guest columns for us on his pioneering work in
the new field of behavioral finance. Then he wrote columns on his
own. Then he became a talk-show guest. Then he won a book contract,
and that book will publish early next year. Over the years, the
three of us became great friends. In a way, that cane had started it
all.
One summer, Vic discovered a book called Tales of the
Old Duck Hunters by Gordon MacQuarrie. The main character is the
President of the Old Duck Hunters’ Association Inc., a mythical
personification of all duck hunters, past, present and future. We
liked the book so much we took to calling ourselves the Old
Speculators’ Association. We notified our best reader-contributors
of their acceptance in this august society by sending them an
official Association cane.
I carried 19 canes out to the
front office.
"You're going to bankrupt me," I said. "I'll
give you $20 for each of them."
"You're a shrewd article," he
said approvingly. "That's why you have all that money."
I
shook my head, and started handing him canes. He wrote down each of
them by hand.
He took up an English cane with a horn handle.
"You're getting to the good stuff now," he said.
"That's the
good stuff?" I said, holding my bargaining stance.
"Yes.
That's an ebony shaft."
I walked over to the cane rack under
the sign that read, "A Walking Stick Makes A Good
Companion."
I took out the $200 lady's
cloisonné.
"You're getting that cane?" he said. "That's no
ordinary cane. That cane is in the Smithsonian."
I gave him
the cloisonné cane to ring up and sat down in the old rocker. I
rocked and looked around the room. The old newspaper clipping about
J.P. Morgan was still on the wall. An old-fashioned round clock on
the wall said 2:00. I thought about all the hours that Mr. Novak had
spent in that room selling canes. I felt like crying.
"You
rocking in that chair now? You know how old that chair is? Older
than you are."
He was writing down the descriptions of the
canes. He looked at me. His eyes were bright, too.
I walked
over to the cane rack again and pulled out a $200 lion-headed cane.
The lion had red jewel eyes, and it was snarling. I looked in the
mouth and saw little teeth.
I handed the lion cane to Mr.
Novak and sat down and rocked.
"Who you going to give that
cloisonné cane to?" he asked.
"I don't know. A lady," I
said.
"You tell them that is a special cane. At the
Smithsonian they have that cane."
"I've enjoyed doing
business with you, Mr. Novak," I said. "I'll sure miss you. How long
you been in business?"
"A long time, baby. Forty years. Maybe
forty-five."
Mr. Novak hadn't said a word about my bid. He
turned to the adding machine and began totaling up the
sale.
I began to worry a little. Mr. Novak always gave me a
20% discount, but not before offering me 10% and pointing out that
shipping was included in the price.
"$342," he said.
I
had a lump in my throat. Most of the canes I had chosen were
expensive ones that hadn’t been on the price list he’d sent
me.
"Aw, Mr. Novak," I said.
I reached for my
checkbook so I wouldn't start crying.
"Here's what you make
the check out to," he said. He handed me a white
card:
Stan Novak
Walking Canes
"You're going
to make a lot of people very happy," I told him. He
smiled.
"You've been the most successful with these canes,"
he said.
"Yes," I said. "We send your canes to people, and
they become our friends."
I shook his hand. At 84, he had a
firm handshake. I kissed him on the cheek. He and Mrs. Novak said
goodbye. When I went to shake Mrs. Novak's hands, she shook her
head. "My hands are too dusty," she said.
I walked out of the
office and on to the Manhattan sidewalk.
Better than a bargain
I got home and
called Vic to tell him about Mr. Novak.
"Did he have a lot of
canes left?" Vic asked.
"Yes. He said he would be selling
them from home."
"Probably not many people buying canes
anymore," Vic said. "All those hip replacements and
wheelchairs."
"You can buy them on the Internet now," I
added.
"There's a lot of tragedy in the world," said
Vic.
I told him that Mr. Novak had given me a better price
than I asked for.
"Did you give him a check for the
difference?" he asked.
Vic's the one who taught me how to
bargain. According to the experts, bargaining is a deeply satisfying
activity. When a person stops bargaining, it is as though life
itself is sighing.
"No," I said. "But I will."
Next Week: Panics
Canes go in and out of
fashion, and so do investment strategies. With the Nasdaq ($COMPX)
having fallen from 5,000 to 1,200 in 2 1/2 years, buying on the dips
doesn’t have the cachet it enjoyed in the 1990s. We just finished a
comprehensive study of whether it’s still possible to profit in
panics by “taking out the canes,” and will report the results in
next week’s column.
At the time of publication, neither Victor Niederhoffer
nor Laurel Kenner owned shares of any equities mentioned in this
column. They trade in derivatives instruments. They may be net long
or net short depending on the market conditions of the moment.
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