《股票作手回忆录·第一章·少年与行情板》第11节
I tried the other branches one after another, but they all got to know me, and my money wasn’t any good in any of their offices. I couldn’t even go in to look at the quotations without some of the clerks making cracks at me. I tried to get them to let me trade at long intervals by dividing my visits among them all. But that didn’t work. Finally there was only one left to me and that was the biggest and richest of all--the Cosmopolitan Stock Brokerage Company. The Cosmopolitan was rated as A-1 and did an enormous business. It had branches in every manufacturing town in New England. They took my trading all right, and I bought and sold stocks and made and lost money for months, but in the end it happened with them as usual. They didn’t refuse my business point-blank, as the small concerns had. Oh, not because it wasn’t sportsmanship, but because they knew it would give them a black eye to publish the news that they wouldn’t take a fellow’s business just because that fellow happened to make a little money. But they did the next worse thing--that is, they made me put up a three-point margin and compelled me to pay a premium at first of a half point, then a point, and finally, a point and a half. Some handicap, that! How? Easy! Suppose Steel was selling at 90 and you bought it. Your ticket read, normally: “Bot ten Steel at 90⅛.” If you put up a point margin it meant that if it broke 89¼ you were wiped out automatically. In a bucket shop the customer is not importuned for more margin or put to the painful necessity of telling his broker to sell for anything he can get.
注释摘要
这段文字把我们带入了一个极其戏剧化的情境里：一个十几岁的少年，因为持续从对赌行赢钱，居然成了整个行业里不受欢迎的人。利弗莫尔在这里被一个又一个分号拒绝交易，当他走进门，人家连他的钱都不肯收。这听上去匪夷所思，但放在1890年代的美国金融环境里，却有其内在逻辑。 首先得说清楚，对赌行虽然装修得像经纪公司、挂着行情板、连着电报机，本质上却是一种赌场。顾客把钱交…