《股票作手回忆录·第五章·赚大钱靠坐得住·老火鸡》第1节
The average ticker hound--or, as they used to call him, tape-worm--goes wrong, I suspect, as much from over-specialization as from anything else. It means a highly expensive inelasticity. After all, the game of speculation isn’t all mathematics or set rules, however rigid the main laws may be. Even in my tape reading something enters that is more than mere arithmetic. There is what I call the behavior of a stock, actions that enable you to judge whether or not it is going to proceed in accordance with the precedents that your observation has noted. If a stock doesn’t act right don’t touch it; because, being unable to tell precisely what is wrong, you cannot tell which way it is going. No diagnosis, no prognosis. No prognosis, no profit. It is a very old thing, this of noting the behavior of a stock and studying its past performances. When I first came to New York there was a broker’s office where a Frenchman used to talk about his chart. At first I thought he was a sort of pet freak kept by the firm because they were good-natured. Then I learned that he was a persuasive and most impressive talker. He said that the only thing that didn’t lie because it simply couldn’t was mathematics. By means of his curves he could forecast market movements. Also he could analyse them, and tell, for instance, why Keene did the right thing in his famous Atchison preferred bull manipulation, and later why he went wrong in his Southern Pacific pool. At various times one or another of the professional traders tried the Frenchman’s system--and then went back to their old unscientific methods of making a living. Their hit-or-miss system was cheaper, they said. I heard that the Frenchman said Keene admitted that the chart was 100 per cent right but claimed that the method was too slow for practical use in an active market.
注释摘要
这段开场白，其实是一个在华尔街交了无数学费的人，对自己早年所犯错误的病理学解剖。他首先瞄准了两种人：一种是“报价机猎犬”，另一种更刻薄，叫“纸带虫”。在1900年代，股票报价是通过电报线路实时打印在一条细长的纸带上，股价以数字和缩写符号的形式源源不断地流出。那些整天趴在报价机前，眼睛死盯着每一格跳动的人，就得了这么个外号。他们像虫子一样寄生在纸带上，以为市…