The young man pointed toward the stock exchange behind him: "Let the British see our resolve!"
"Since they want to destroy the East India Company, then they can forget about getting any investment from the Netherlands. Everyone, come with me and sell the shares of the Birmingham Kovak Steel Company!"
With this Security Bureau agent rushing into the trading hall first, hundreds of citizens of Amsterdam poured in after him.
They didn't go looking for stockbrokers, but instead withdrew funds from investment companies—most people couldn't produce even a single trading unit's worth of capital, so investment firms specialized in pooling small investments together to buy stocks.
Of course, once the investment companies received a flood of withdrawal requests, they had no choice but to sell shares for cash.
The next day's newspapers featured headlines like "Angry Citizens of Amsterdam Dump Birmingham Kovak Steel Company Shares."
