Bucket shops 101 "In the first place, you didn't buy or sell stock. You didn't buy 100 shares of Erie to hold or to sell at a profit... You made a wager on the price, just as you might have done on the outcome of a football game." "You could buy on a margin of one per cent. That meant that if you had twenty dollars you could buy one hundred shares of a stock selling at twenty... If the price dropped to nineteen and seven-eighths you were wiped out automatically." "The margin was so small that the slightest wiggle against you wiped you out. The shop just took your money. It was a mathematical certainty that you'd lose." "The bucket shops... would see that there was a large (long ) interest in some stock. They would combine and (sell) a few thousand shares of that stock on the Real Exchange... and run the price (down) a point or two. That was enough to wipe out all the margins of the customers who were (long)" These quotes are from 1923. Perps are not innovative.