《股票作手回忆录·第十二章·棉花惨败·被专家说服》第1节
Not long after I closed my July cotton deal more successfully than I had expected I received by mail a request for an interview. The letter was signed by Percy Thomas. Of course I immediately answered that I’d be glad to see him at my office at any time he cared to call. The next day he came. I had long admired him. His name was a household word wherever men took an interest in growing or buying or selling cotton. In Europe as well as all over this country people quoted Percy Thomas’ opinions to me. I remember once at a Swiss resort talking to a Cairo banker who was interested in cotton growing in Egypt in association with the late Sir Ernest Cassel. When he heard I was from New York he immediately asked me about Percy Thomas, whose market reports he received and read with unfailing regularity. Thomas, I always thought, went about his business scientifically. He was a true speculator, a thinker with the vision of a dreamer and the courage of a fighting man--an unusually well-informed man, who knew both the theory and the practice of trading in cotton. He loved to hear and to express ideas and theories and abstractions, and at the same time there was mighty little about the practical side of the cotton market or the psychology of cotton traders that he did not know, for he had been trading for years and had made and lost vast sums.
注释摘要
这段文字是第十二章的起笔，时间节点恰好设在利文斯顿刚刚了结七月棉花交易、收获超预期利润之后。这个时机本身就暗藏危险——一个人在顺境里对风险的嗅觉往往会变钝。就在这种胜利的余温里，他收到珀西·托马斯的约见信。叙述者只用一句话交代自己立刻回复愿意见面，随即切入一个关键词："I had long admired him." 这句话为后面整整一章的悲剧埋下伏笔：一…