Jacob Little

Jacob Little
"He was a tall slight man, with a stoop, quick in his movements...his mobility of expression was so extreme that the very shape of his features actually changed with his emotions."
Born	(1794-03-17)March 17, 1794 Newburyport, Massachusetts
Died	March 28, 1865(1865-03-28) (aged 71) New York, New York
Occupation	Investor, stock speculator
Years active	1835–1857
Board member of

Jacob Little (March 17, 1794 – March 28, 1865) was an early 19th-century Wall Street investor and the first and one of the greatest speculators in the history of the , known at the time as the "Great Bear of Wall Street". Little was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and moved to New York City in 1817, first clerking for Jacob Barker; he then opened his own establishment in 1822, and finally his own brokerage in 1834. A market pessimist, Little made his wealth "bearing stocks", at turns short selling various companies and at others cornering markets to extract profits from other short sellers. Through his great financial foresight Little amassed an enormous fortune, becoming one of the richest men in America and one of the leading financiers on Wall Street in the 1830s and 1840s, but his speculative activities irritated his peers and earned him few admirers. Little lost and remade his legendary fortune multiple times before losing it for good in 1857; although a great many owed him enormous debts, he was a generous creditor and never collected them, and at his deathbed in 1865 Little was penniless. Although well-known on the stock market in his time, he was quickly forgotten after his death, and today has been relegated to relative obscurity.

Although much is known of Little's investment activities in his adult life, little is known about his early years. Jacob Little was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts on March 17, 1794. The son of a successful local shipbuilder and of Quaker origin, Little exhibited a strong understanding of money and financial markets from an early age. In 1817 he emigrated to New York City and became a clerk in the store of Jacob Barker, a highly successful financier, merchant, and politically well-connected founding member of the Democratic Party political machine Tammany Hall. Little spent five years in apprenticeship under Barker before moving out in 1822 to start his own business with $700 he had accrued over the length of his employment. He bought a small office in the basement of a Wall Street building, which served as his base of operations for the next twelve years, before moving out of his old office to a new one in the basement of the old in 1834, from which he opened a brokerage—the start of his investment career.