《股票作手回忆录·第一章·少年与行情板》第1节
I went to work when I was just out of grammar school. I got a job as quotation-board boy in a stock-brokerage office. I was quick at figures. At school I did three years of arithmetic in one. I was particularly good at mental arithmetic. As quotation-board boy I posted the numbers on the big board in the customers’ room. One of the customers usually sat by the ticker and called out the prices. They couldn’t come too fast for me. I have always remembered figures. No trouble at all. There were plenty of other employes in that office. Of course I made friends with the other fellows, but the work I did, if the market was active, kept me too busy from ten A.M. to three P.M. to let me do much talking. I don’t care for it, anyhow, during business hours. But a busy market did not keep me from thinking about the work. Those quotations did not represent prices of stocks to me, so many dollars per share. They were numbers. Of course, they meant something. They were always changing. It was all I had to be interested in--the changes. Why did they change? I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I didn’t think about that. I simply saw that they changed. That was all I had to think about five hours every day and two on Saturdays: that they were always changing.
注释摘要
这个故事的开头本身就带着一种不经意的戏剧性。一个才从文法学校出来的少年，走进了一家股票经纪行，他找到的那份工作，在今天看来几乎像是某种金融考古。故事发生在十九世纪末的美国，彼时计算机还远未诞生，股票价格的每一次跳动，都依赖着遍布全国的专用电报线路来传输。经纪行里会有一台叫做“行情纸带机”的装置，它不停地吐出细长的纸条，上面印着密密麻麻的股票代码和最新成交价…