《股票作手回忆录·第一章·少年与行情板》第15节
Well, this day I remember I had up over $10,000 in margins. I was only twenty when I first accumulated ten thousand dollars in cash. And you ought to have heard my mother. You’d have thought that ten thousand dollars in cash was more than anybody carried around except old John D., and she used to tell me to be satisfied and go into some regular business. I had a hard time convincing her that I was not gambling, but making money by figuring. But all she could see was that ten thousand dollars was a lot of money and all I could see was more margin. I had put out my 3500 shares of Sugar at 105¼. There was another fellow in the room, Henry Williams, who was short 2500 shares. I used to sit by the ticker and call out the quotations for the board boy. The price behaved as I thought it would. It promptly went down a couple of points and paused a little to get its breath before taking another dip. The general market was pretty soft and everything looked promising. Then all of a sudden I didn’t like the way Sugar was doing its hesitating. I began to feel uncomfortable. I thought I ought to get out of the market. Then it sold at 103--that was low for the day--but instead of feeling more confident I felt more uncertain. I knew something was wrong somewhere, but I couldn’t spot it exactly. But if something was coming and I didn’t know where from, I couldn’t be on my guard against it. That being the case I’d better be out of the market.
注释摘要
这段文字回溯到主人公二十岁时的状态，他手里已经攒下了超过一万美元的保证金。这里需要先还原一下币值概念：1900年代初的一万美元，购买力大致相当于今天的三四十万美元，对一个刚成年的穷孩子来说是笔巨款，这也是他母亲反应如此强烈的现实基础。她念叨的“老约翰·D.”指的是当时全美首富约翰·D·洛克菲勒，这位石油大亨的名字在普通百姓家里就等于“钱多到不真实”的代名词…