William Hickman Smith Aubrey

History of Financial Advice Collection. Aubrey is forgotten now, but was a successful author in late nineteenth-century Britain, whose histories of England went through multiple editions. Pitched at novice rather than experienced investors, this book gives detailed advice in themed chapters. The main purpose of the text only becomes clear by chapter 11, “The Ideal Stock Exchange,” which is an extended advertisement for The Universal Stock Exchange, Limited, established in 1885. Indeed, the guide is consistent with other “bucket shop” literature of the 1880s and 1890s, such as that of Duncans. Readers were encouraged to become market readers and benefit from fluctuations in prices, training themselves to take “short and quick profits” rather than waiting for big wins which might prove elusive. The guide was characterized by a language of manly self-reliance. Risk could be tamed by knowledge and experience, while chance played little part in business success: “What is often attributed to luck, or chance, or to fate, is really the product of prompt judgment and common sense.”… (more)