《股票作手回忆录·第九章·1907大恐慌·做空封神》第17节
Things got worse and worse. Finally there came the awful day of reckoning for the bulls and the optimists and the wishful thinkers and those vast hordes that, dreading the pain of a small loss at the beginning, were now about to suffer total amputation--without anaesthetics. A day I shall never forget, October 24, 1907. Reports from the money crowd early indicated that borrowers would have to pay whatever the lenders saw fit to ask. There wouldn’t be enough to go around. That day the money crowd was much larger than usual. When delivery time came that afternoon there must have been a hundred brokers around the Money Post, each hoping to borrow the money that his firm urgently needed. Without money they must sell what stocks they were carrying on margin--sell at any price they could get in a market where buyers were as scarce as money--and just then there was not a dollar in sight. My friend’s partner was as bearish as I was. The firm therefore did not have to borrow, but my friend, the broker I told you about, fresh from seeing the haggard faces around the Money Post, came to me. He knew I was heavily short of the entire market.
注释摘要
1907年10月24日，在华尔街的口述史里几乎是一个被冻住的日子。要理解这段文字里那种令人窒息的氛围，必须先明白那个反复出现的词——Money Post。在今天电子化的交易所里，你已经看不到这个场景了。在当时的纽约证券交易所大厅里，有一个专门划出来的区域，叫“金钱交易站”，它就是盘中拆借资金的实体市场。这跟买卖股票不同，它是各家券商互相借钱的地方，借的是活…