Notes
1 Ingulstad, Perchard and Storli (2015, 1).
2 Building on previous work (Marcuzzo and Sanfilippo, 2016; Cavalli and Cristiano, 2012), we offer here a more comprehensive and detailed analysis of Keynes's speculation in tin derivatives and tin-related shares, based on Keynes's own records as shown in his ledgers and in statements of accounts from his brokers and correspondence.
Reference to the unpublished material follows the classification number given in the Catalogue of Keynes Papers, King's College, Modern Archives, Cambridge (catalogue available at https://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/ db/node.xsp?id=EAD/GBR/0272/PP/JMK).3 Chairman's speech to the Annual General Meeting of the British Tin Investment Corporation, reported by The Times, January 24, 1934.
4 The relevant pages for tin are 267-506 and 512-647.
5 Bauer, Cosemans and Eichholtz (2009), using a database that comprises more than 68,000 accounts and more than eight million trades in stocks and options at a large online broker in the Netherlands, show that option trading has a detrimental impact on the performance of individual investors. Their results suggest that most option traders lose money due to excessive trading and lack of knowledge. High trading costs also contribute to the losses suffered by option investors.
6 Trading pools, i.e., temporary associations of individuals to act jointly in derivative or security operations of manipulative characters, were common in the 1920s (see Poitras, 2013, 42). Keynes's share was one-eleventh of the pool.
7 Parallel to his personal investment activities, there was an intense career as institutional investor. Keynes became director of the National Mutual Life Insurance Company in 1919, and then chairman in 1921, a post he retained until October 1938. He joined the board of the Provincial Insurance Company in 1923, limiting his involvement in the board only when he joined the Treasury in 1940.
Keynes also entered the boards of a group of investment trusts founded by O. T Falk, a former colleague of Keynes at the Treasury. He was a director of the Independent Investment Company (1923-46), the A. D. Investment Trust (1921-27) and the P. R. Finance Company (1924-36, chairman 1932-36). In 1921, Keynes became Second Bursar of King's College, Cambridge, and then First Bursar in 1924, a post he retained until the end of his life (Cristiano and Marcuzzo, 2018).8 Data for the years 1924 and 1925 are missing. We calculated the evaluations by multiplying the number of shares by the first market price available for the year under examination.
9 The London Tin Corporation was another creature of Howeson, who had promoted the merging of two companies, the London Tin Syndicate and the Tin Selection Trust, in 1930. Anglo-Oriental owned 30 percent of their shares.
10 The only tin company whose shares were still in Keynes's portfolio at the time of his death was Ampat.
11 See the letter from F. C. Scott to Keynes, January 11, 1938: “I expect you would be as pleased to see the dividend of the British Tin as I was, and I felt grateful to you for the advice to buy” (Keynes Papers, PC/1/5/102).
12 Keynes Papers MSS, UA/6/3, Notebook, 8 Lectures on “Company Finance and Stock Exchange,” Lent Term, 1910.