《股票作手回忆录·第一章·少年与行情板》第10节
Once, when the big concern I’d been trading with for months shut down on me I made up my mind to take a little more of their money away from them. That bucket shop had branches all over the city, in hotel lobbies, and in near-by towns. I went to one of the hotel branches and asked the manager a few questions and finally got to trading. But as soon as I played an active stock my especial way he began to get messages from the head office asking who it was that was operating. The manager told me what they asked him and I told him my name was Edward Robinson, of Cambridge. He telephoned the glad news to the big chief. But the other end wanted to know what I looked like. When the manager told me that I said to him, “Tell him I am a short fat man with dark hair and a bushy beard!” But he described me instead, and then he listened and his face got red and he hung up and told me to beat it. “What did they say to you?” I asked him politely. “They said, ‘You blankety-blank fool, didn’t we tell you to take no business from Larry Livingston? And you deliberately let him trim us out of $700!’” He didn’t say what else they told him.
注释摘要
在上世纪初的美国，所谓的对赌行，是一种专门吸纳小额资金、让人“赌股票涨跌”的地下铺子。客户并不真正拥有任何股票，只是拿一笔保证金赌行情往哪个方向走几个点。这种行当在当时的纽约、波士顿乃至各个工业小镇遍地开花，常常开在酒店大堂、街角铺面，甚至理发店后面——门槛之低，几乎只要有块黑板、一条行情电报线就能开业。它们之所以能生存，恰是因为正规交易所门槛太高，一股就…