《股票作手回忆录·第一章·少年与行情板》第8节
I was fifteen when I had my first thousand and laid the cash in front of my mother--all made in the bucket shops in a few months, besides what I had taken home. My mother carried on something awful. She wanted me to put it away in the savings bank out of reach of temptation. She said it was more money than she ever heard any boy of fifteen had made, starting with nothing. She didn’t quite believe it was real money. She used to worry and fret about it. But I didn’t think of anything except that I could keep on proving my figuring was right. That’s all the fun there is--being right by using your head. If I was right when I tested my convictions with ten shares I would be ten times more right if I traded in a hundred shares. That is all that having more margin meant to me--I was right more emphatically. More courage? No! No difference! If all I have is ten dollars and I risk it, I am much braver than when I risk a million, if I have another million salted away. Anyhow, at fifteen I was making a good living out of the stock market. I began in the smaller bucket shops, where the man who traded in twenty shares at a clip was suspected of being John W. Gates in disguise or J. P. Morgan traveling incognito. Bucket shops in those days seldom lay down on their customers. They didn’t have to. There were other ways of parting customers from their money, even when they guessed right. The business was tremendously profitable. When it was conducted legitimately--I mean straight, as far as the bucket shop went--the fluctuations took care of the shoestrings. It doesn’t take much of a reaction to wipe out a margin of only three quarters of a point. Also, no welsher could ever get back in the game. Wouldn’t have any trade.
注释摘要
这是一段极富戏剧张力，也极其危险的青春宣言。在你看到的这个场景里，一个十五岁的少年，刚刚从那种被称为"对赌行"的灰色投机场所里，赚到了他人生中的第一个一千美元。这在当时是一笔巨款，尤其对于一个出身普通、刚刚离开学校的孩子而言。他选择把钱摊在母亲面前，这个动作本身就充满了少年心性——他并不是要炫耀，而是想用一种最直观的方式，向母亲证明自己脑中的世界是真实的。…