《股票作手回忆录·第十二章·棉花惨败·被专家说服》第14节
Of course we talked about market matters at great length. I was not bullish on cotton, but he was. I could not see the bull side at all, but he did. He brought up so many facts and figures that I ought to have been overwhelmed, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t disprove them because I could not deny their authenticity, but they did not shake my belief in what I read for myself. But he kept at it until I no longer felt sure of my own information as gathered from the trade papers and the dailies. That meant I couldn’t set the market with my own eyes. A man cannot be convinced against his own convictions, but he can be talked into a state of uncertainty and indecision, which is even worse, for that means that he cannot trade with confidence and comfort. I cannot say that I got all mixed up, exactly, but I lost my poise; or rather, I ceased to do my own thinking. I cannot give you in detail the various steps by which I reached the state of mind that was to prove so costly to me. I think it was his assurances of the accuracy of his figures, which were exclusively his, and the undependability of mine, which were not exclusively mine, but public property. He harped on the utter reliability, as proved time and again, of all his ten thousand correspondents throughout the South. In the end I came to read conditions as he himself read them--because we were both reading from the same page of the same book, held by him before my eyes. He has a logical mind. Once I accepted his facts it was a cinch that my own conclusions, derived from his facts, would agree with his own.
注释摘要
在二十世纪初的美国，棉花是举足轻重的大宗商品，南方种植园的经济命脉与华尔街的投机资金通过电报线路紧密相连。Percy Thomas所说的“一万名遍布南方的通信员”并非夸张，那时候没有卫星云图，没有政府发布的统一种植面积报告，大投机家获取情报的方式就是建立私人信息网——在每一个产棉县找到线人，用电报或信件报告天气、虫害、采摘进度。谁掌握的信息越独家，谁就越能…