《股票作手回忆录·第一章·少年与行情板》第14节
In the humbler bucket shops, where people were allowed to trade in as little as five shares, the tickets were little slips--different colors for buying and selling--and at times, as for instance in boiling bull markets, the shops would be hard hit because all the customers were bulls and happened to be right. Then the bucket shop would deduct both buying and selling commissions and if you bought a stock at 20 the ticket would read 20¼. You thus had only ¾, of a point’s run for your money. But the Cosmopolitan was the finest in New England. It had thousands of patrons and I really think I was the only man they were afraid of. Neither the killing premium nor the three-point margin they made me put up reduced my trading much. I kept on buying and selling as much as they’d let me. I sometimes had a line of 5000 shares. Well, on the day the thing happened that I am going to tell you, I was short thirty-five hundred shares of Sugar. I had seven big pink tickets for five hundred shares each. The Cosmopolitan used big slips with a blank space on them where they could write down additional margin. Of course, the bucket shops never ask for more margin. The thinner the shoestring the better for them, for their profit lies in your being wiped. In the smaller shops if you wanted to margin your trade still further they’d make out a new ticket, so they could charge you the buying commission and only give you a run of ¾ of a point on each point’s decline, for they figured the selling commission also exactly as if it were a new trade.
注释摘要
这段文字把我们带进了一个极其重要的历史细节里：对赌行的内部等级与规则设计，本身就是一种精密的收割机器。拉里在这里比较了两类对赌行的运作方式，而这两种方式背后，是同一个冷酷的逻辑。 先说那些低档的对赌行。在1900年前后，对赌行在美国遍地开花，它们是寄生在股票行情纸带上的赌博场所，客户并不真正买卖股票，只是赌价格的涨跌。低档对赌行允许极小额交易，五股就可以进…