《股票作手回忆录·第九章·1907大恐慌·做空封神》第8节
“I’ve heard of those birds,” he said, “who look at the tape and instead of seeing prices they see a railroad time-table of the arrival and departure of stocks. But they were in padded cells where they couldn’t hurt themselves.” I didn’t answer him anything because about that time the boy brought me a memorandum. They had sold five thousand shares at 299¾. I knew our quotations were a little behind the market. The price on the board at Palm Beach when I gave the operator the order to sell was 301. I felt so certain that at that very moment the price at which the stock was actually selling on the Stock Exchange in New York was less, that if anybody had offered to take the stock off my hands at 296 I’d have been tickled to death to accept. What happened shows you that I am right in never trading at limits. Suppose I had limited my selling price to 300? I’d never have got it off. No, sir! When you want to get out, get out. Now, my stock cost me about 300. They got off five hundred shares--full shares, of course--at 299¾. The next thousand they sold at 299⅝. Then a hundred at ½; two hundred at ⅜ and two hundred at ¼. The last of my stock went at 298¾. It took Harding’s cleverest floor man fifteen minutes to get rid of that last one hundred shares. They didn’t want to crack it wide open.
注释摘要
Ollie Black 的话里藏着一个很深的挖苦，也藏着一个当时的文化常识。他说的那种人，指的是盯着行情纸带，看的不是数字涨跌，而是像读火车时刻表一样，仿佛能读出股票的到达与出发时间。在1900年代的华尔街，确实流传着一些关于所谓读带天才的传说，同时也流传着这些天才后来精神崩溃、被送进精神病院的都市怪谈。Ollie 用“ padded cells”这个说法…