《股票作手回忆录·第十二章·棉花惨败·被专家说服》第2节
After the failure of his old Stock Exchange firm of Sheldon & Thomas he went it alone. Inside of two years he came back, almost spectacularly. I remember reading in the Sun that the first thing he did when he got back on his feet financially was to pay off his old creditors in full, and the next was to hire an expert to study and determine for him how he had best invest a million dollars. This expert examined the properties and analysed the reports of several companies and then recommended the purchase of Delaware & Hudson stock. Well, after having failed for millions and having come back with more millions, Thomas was cleaned out as the result of his deal in March Cotton. There wasn’t much time wasted after he came to see me. He proposed that we form a working alliance. Whatever information he got he would immediately turn over to me before passing it on to the public. My part would be to do the actual trading, for which he said I had a special genius and he hadn’t. That did not appeal to me for a number of reasons. I told him frankly that I did not think I could run in double harness and wasn’t keen about trying to learn. But he insisted that it would be an ideal combination until I said flatly that I did not want to have anything to do with influencing other people to trade.
注释摘要
这段文字出现时，珀西·托马斯刚刚经历了职业生涯里一次极具戏剧性的转折。要理解这段话的背景，我们先得回到二十世纪初华尔街会员制交易所的生态。托马斯与谢尔登合伙开的Sheldon & Thomas，是一间纽约证券交易所的会员商行，这在当时不仅是经纪牌照，更是一种极其稀缺的社会信用徽章。1900年左右的纽交所会员席位数量固定，价格昂贵，能拥有一间以自己名字命名的…