Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street. Chapter 1. The Fluctuation
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这一章节深入探讨了1962年5月的股市波动，将其与臭名昭著的1929年股市崩盘进行了比较和对比。开篇强调了股市固有的波动性，正如J.P.摩根简洁的评论所捕捉到的那样：“它会波动的。” 随后，叙述探索了自1611年阿姆斯特丹建立第一个证券交易所以来出现的社会和行为模式，并注意到尽管技术进步，这些模式却出人意料地持续存在。
本章重点关注了1962年5月28日至31日发生的引人注目的事件，当时道琼斯工业平均指数经历了大幅下跌，随后又出现了显著的反弹。5月28日，股市遭遇了历史上第二大的单日点数跌幅，引发了一阵焦虑。第二天，它以令人印象深刻的涨幅反弹，同时伴随着创纪录的交易量。这场危机于5月31日结束，市场恢复到危机前的水平。
本章分析了这些事件发生后的解释和比较。人们不可避免地将之与1929年的崩盘进行比较，这是由于相似的价格走势和交易量造成的。然而，作者强调了这两个时期之间的关键差异，特别是法规和信贷限制的实施，这些限制减轻了发生灾难性损失的可能性。
本章还回顾了市场动荡期间的情绪和反应。《道琼斯新闻服务》反映了日益增长的担忧，而经纪公司则面临着蜂拥而至的卖单。作者生动地描述了经纪公司办公室里的场景，人们纷纷涌入，亲眼目睹这场正在上演的戏剧。广播和电视的报道加剧了公众的担忧，由于磁带延迟和通讯故障，进一步复杂化了交易的执行。
随着市场暴跌，经纪人努力维持秩序并为客户提供建议。追加保证金通知蜂拥而至，要求借款人提供额外的抵押品。作者强调了自1929年以来大幅增长的共同基金可能构成的潜在危险。人们担心大量赎回基金份额可能会引发连锁反应，导致灾难性的市场崩溃。
本章详细描述了5月29日星期二市场出现转机的过程。关键时刻发生在作为领头羊股票的美国电话电报公司扭转了下跌趋势，引发了一场广泛的上涨。电话业务的场内专家小乔治·M·L·勒布兰奇以及下达大量电话股票订单的约翰·J·克兰利在这一戏剧性的转变中发挥了关键作用。
本章将这一事件与理查德·惠特尼试图阻止1929年股市崩盘的努力进行了对比，强调1962年的复苏更为真实，人为操纵的成分更少。普拉姆利在国家新闻俱乐部发表的讲话也成为了叙事的一部分，这是由于其巧合的时机，以及当时该讲话是对肯尼迪总统处理经济的方式的抨击。本章还涉及了经纪公司清理这段时期内客户订单混乱的问题。
作者在结尾考察了危机过后出现的解释和分析。纽约证券交易所进行了一次彻底的调查，结果表明个人投资者，尤其是那些收入较高的人，是最积极的卖家，而共同基金通过在市场下跌期间购买股票并在市场复苏期间出售股票，起到了稳定作用。最终，本章表明1962年的危机是一个复杂事件，没有单一的原因。它提醒人们股市固有的波动性以及未来可能发生的类似事件，尽管存在保障措施。它还强调了这样一种观点，即人们本质上是贪婪的，并且在某个时候，另一次崩盘是不可避免的。
The chapter delves into the stock market fluctuations of May 1962, drawing parallels and contrasts to the infamous 1929 crash. It begins by highlighting the inherent volatility of the stock market, a characteristic famously captured by J.P. Morgan's dry remark that "it will fluctuate." The narrative then explores the sociological and behavioral patterns that have emerged since the establishment of the first stock exchange in Amsterdam in 1611, noting their surprising persistence despite technological advancements.
The chapter focuses on the dramatic events of May 28-31, 1962, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average experienced a significant drop followed by a remarkable recovery. On May 28th, the market suffered its second-largest single-day point decline, triggering a wave of anxiety. The next day, it rebounded with an impressive gain, accompanied by record-breaking trading volume. The crisis concluded on May 31st, with the market regaining its pre-crisis level.
The chapter analyzes the explanations and comparisons that followed these events. It was inevitable to draw parallels with the 1929 crash, fueled by similar price movements and trading volumes. However, the author emphasizes the crucial differences between the two periods, particularly the implementation of regulations and credit limitations that mitigated the potential for catastrophic losses.
The chapter also recounts the mood and reactions during the market turmoil. The Dow Jones News Service reflected the growing apprehension, while brokerage firms faced an overwhelming surge in sell orders. The author vividly describes the scenes in brokerage offices, where "walk-ins" flooded in to witness the unfolding drama. Radio and television broadcasts heightened public concern, further complicating the execution of trades due to tape delays and communication breakdowns.
As the market plummeted, brokers struggled to maintain order and advise their customers. Margin calls flooded in, demanding additional collateral from borrowers. The author highlights the potential danger posed by mutual funds, which had grown significantly since 1929. The fear was that mass redemptions of fund shares could trigger a cascading effect, leading to a devastating market collapse.
The chapter provides a detailed account of the market's turnaround on Tuesday, May 29th. The key moment occurred when American Telephone and Telegraph, a bellwether stock, reversed its downward trend, sparking a widespread rally. The actions of George M. L. Le Branch, Jr., the floor specialist in telephone, and John J. Cranley, who placed a large order for telephone shares, played crucial roles in this dramatic shift.
The chapter contrasts this event with Richard Whitney's attempt to halt the 1929 crash, emphasizing that the 1962 recovery was more genuine and less orchestrated. Plumlee's speech at the National Press Club became part of the narrative, due to its fortuitous timing and the fact that it was an attack on President Kennedy's handling of the economy at the time. The chapter also touches upon the problems that brokerages had untangling the mess of customer orders that occurred during the period.
The author concludes by examining the explanations and analyses that emerged after the crisis. The New York Stock Exchange conducted a thorough investigation, revealing that individual investors, particularly those with higher incomes, were the most active sellers, while mutual funds acted as a stabilizing force by purchasing shares during the downturn and selling them during the recovery. Ultimately, the chapter suggests that the 1962 crisis was a complex event with no single cause. It serves as a reminder of the inherent volatility of the stock market and the potential for similar events to occur in the future, despite safeguards. It also highlighted the idea that people are, by their very nature, greedy, and that at some point another crash is inevitable.
中英文字稿 
第1章 波动
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Chapter 1 The Fluctuation
股票市场。对于那些富人而言，如果没有涨涨跌跌，股票市场就不会成为他们白天的冒险游戏。任何熟悉华尔街传说的董事会成员都听过J.P.摩根长者对一位天真的熟人所做的回应。据说，那位熟人曾冒昧地问这位伟大的人物，市场将会如何变化。摩根干脆地回答说：“它会波动。” 除了股票交易所的经济优缺点之外，股票市场还有许多其他独特的特征。比如，它为工业扩展提供了资本的自由流动，这是个好处；同时，它也为那些不走运、轻率和容易上当的人提供了一个太过便捷的方式来失去他们的钱，这就是个坏处。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The stock market. The daytime adventure cereal of the well to do would not be the stock market if it did not have its ups and downs. Any boardroom sitter with a taste for Wall Street lore has heard of the retort that J. P. Morgan the Elder is supposed to have made to naive acquaintance who had ventured to ask the great man what the market was going to do. "It will fluctuate," replied Morgan dryly. And it has many other distinctive characteristics. Apart from the economic advantages and disadvantages of stock exchanges, the advantage that they provide a free flow of capital to finance industrial expansion, for instance, and the disadvantage that they provide an all-too-convenient way for the unlucky, the imprudent, and the gullible to lose their money.
他们的发展创造了一整套社会行为模式，包括习俗、语言和对特定事件的可预测反应。真正非同寻常的是，这种模式在1611年阿姆斯特丹建立世界上第一个重要股票交易所——一个残酷的交易市场——后迅速地全面出现，并且在1960年代的纽约证券交易所中尽管有所变化，但其影响依然持续。如今的美国股票交易是一个规模巨大、令人眼花缭乱的企业，涉及数百万英里的私人电报线路、能在三分钟内读取和复制曼哈顿电话簿的电脑，以及超过两千万的股东参与者。这和十七世纪在雨中讨价还价的一小群荷兰人相比，似乎有着天壤之别。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Their development has created a whole pattern of social behavior, complete with customs, language, and predictable responses to given events. What is truly extraordinary is the speed with which this pattern emerged full-blown following the establishment in 1611 of the world's first important stock exchange, a ruthless courtyard in Amsterdam, and the degree to which it persists with variations it is true on the New York Stock Exchange in the 1960s. Present-day stock trading in the United States, a bewilderingly vast enterprise, involving millions of miles of private telegraph wires, computers that can read and copy the Manhattan telephone directory in three minutes, and over twenty million stockholder participants would seem to be a far cry from a handful of seventeenth-century Dutchmen haggling in the rain.
这段文字翻译成中文如下：
“不过，这些基本特点大致相同。最早的证券交易所无意间成为了一个实验室，在这里揭示了人类新的反应。同样地，纽约证券交易所也可以被视为一个社会学的试验场，不断帮助人类更好地理解自己。荷兰早期股票交易者的行为在一本名为《混乱的混乱》的书中得到了详尽记录，这本书的作者是阿姆斯特丹市场上的一位投机者，名叫约瑟夫·德·拉维加。该书最初出版于1688年，几年前由哈佛商学院翻译成英文重新出版。”
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But the field marks are much the same. The first stock exchange was, inadvertently, a laboratory in which new human reactions were revealed. By the same token, the New York Stock Exchange is also a sociological test tube, forever contributing to the human species self-understanding. The behavior of the pioneering Dutch stock traders is ably documented in a book entitled, Confusion of Confusions, written by a plunger on the Amsterdam market named Joseph de Lavega. Originally published in 1688, it was reprinted in English translation a few years ago by the Harvard Business School.
对于当代美国投资者和经纪人的行为，他们的特点像所有股市交易者一样，在危机时期被放大。可以通过他们在1962年5月最后一周的活动来清楚地看到。这段时间股市波动得很厉害。1962年5月28日星期一，道琼斯工业平均指数（自1897年以来每天交易日计算）暴跌34.95点，这是除1929年10月28日损失38.33点外，跌幅最大的一天。5月28日的交易量达到935万股，是股票交易所历史上单日成交量第七大的纪录。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
As for the behavior of present-day American investors and brokers whose traits, like those of all stock traders, are exaggerated in times of crisis, it may be clearly revealed through a consideration of their activities during the last week of May 1962, a time when the stock market fluctuated in a startling way. On Monday, May 28, the Dow Jones average of thirty leading industrial stocks, which has been computed every trading day since 1897, dropped 34.95 points, or more than it had dropped on any other day except October 28, 1929, when the loss was 38.33 points. The volume of trading on May 28 was 9,350,000 shares. The seventh largest one-day turnover in stock exchange history.
在5月29日星期二，经过一个令人担忧的上午，大多数股票价格远低于周一下午的收盘价后，市场突然改变方向，以惊人的活力向上跃升，并以道琼斯指数上涨27.03点的优异表现结束当天的交易，尽管这一涨幅并未达到纪录水平。这一天交易量创下了记录或接近纪录。当天有14,750,000股股票易手，这是一日交易量的最高记录，仅次于1929年10月29日，当时的交易量略超过1600万股。在60年代后期，日交易量达到1000万、1200万甚至1400万股变得司空见惯。1929年的交易量记录最终在1968年4月1日被打破，而在接下来的几个月中，又一次次刷新纪录。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
On Tuesday, May 29, after an alarming morning when most stocks sank far below their Monday afternoon closing prices, the markets suddenly changed direction, charged upward with astonishing vigor, and finished the day with the large though not record-breaking Dow Jones gain of 27.03 points. Tuesday's record, or near record, was in trading volume. The 14,750,000 shares that changed hands added up to the greatest one-day total ever, except for October 29, 1929, when trading ran just over 16 million shares. Later in the 60s, 10, 12, and even 14 million share days became commonplace. The 1929 volume record was finally broken on April 1, 1968, and fresh records were set again and again in the next few months.
然后，在5月31日星期四，也就是在周三的假期和纪念日之后，这轮循环结束了。在成交量达到10,710,000股的情况下，这是历史上第五大成交量，道琼斯平均指数上涨了9.40点，使其稍微高于所有骚动开始前的水平。危机在三天内就结束了，但不必说，事后的分析花了更长时间。德拉维加对阿姆斯特丹交易者的观察之一是，他们非常聪明，总能为股票价格的突然涨跌找出理由。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Then on Thursday, May 31, after a Wednesday holiday and observance of Memorial Day, the cycle was completed. On a volume of 10,710,000 shares, the fifth greatest in history, the Dow Jones average gained 9.40 points, leaving it slightly above the level where it had been before all the excitement began. The crisis ran its course in three days, but needless to say, the post mortems took longer. One of De La Vega's observations about the Amsterdam traders was that they were very clever in inventing reasons for a sudden rise or fall in stock prices.
华尔街的专家们确实需要集思广益来解释，为什么在一个非常出色的商业年度中，市场会突然经历了迄今为止第二大幅的暴跌。在这些解释中，肯尼迪总统在四月份打击钢铁行业计划的涨价是一个重要原因。不可避免的是，人们在事后常常将1962年5月与1929年10月进行比较。仅从价格波动和交易量的数据来看，这种比较就很明显，即便两个时期最严重的恐慌日——28日与29日——不可思议地巧合，甚至在某些人看来是个不祥的征兆。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And the Wall Street pundits certainly needed all the cleverness they could muster to explain why, in the middle of an excellent business year, the market had suddenly taken its second worst-nosedive ever up to that moment. Beyond these explanations, among which President Kennedy's April crackdown on the steel industry's planned price increase ranked high, it was inevitable that the post mortems should often compare May 1962 with October 1929. The figures for price movement and trading volume alone would have forced the parallel, even if the worst panic days of the two months, the 28th and the 29th, had not mysteriously and to some people ominously coincided.
普遍认为，反差比相似之处更有说服力。在1929年至1962年期间，对交易行为的监管以及对客户用于购买股票的信贷额度的限制，使得一个人在交易所损失所有钱财变得困难，甚至是不可能。简而言之，德·拉·维加在1680年代称阿姆斯特丹证券交易所为“赌博地狱”，虽然他显然对其情有独钟，但在纽约证券交易所，在这两次金融危机之间的33年中，这个说法已经不太适用了。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But it was generally conceded that the contrasts were more persuasive than the similarities. Between 1929 and 1962, regulation of trading practices and limitations on the amount of credit extended to customers for the purchase of stock had made it difficult, if not actually impossible, for a man to lose all his money on the exchange. In short, De La Vega's epithet for the Amsterdam Stock Exchange in the 1680s, he called it, this gambling hell, although he obviously loved it, had become considerably less applicable to the New York Exchange in the 33 years between the two crashes.
1962年的股市崩盘并非毫无预兆，尽管很少有人正确解读这些警告。年初不久，股票已开始以相当一致的速度下跌，其速度加快到前一个工作周，即5月21日至5月25日，成为自1950年6月以来股市表现最差的一周。因此，5月28日星期一早晨，证券经纪人和交易商有理由陷入沉思：股市是否已经触底，还是还会继续下跌？回头来看，当时的意见似乎存在分歧。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The 1962 crash did not come without warning, even though few observers read the warnings correctly. Shortly after the beginning of the year, stocks had begun falling at a pretty consistent rate, and the pace had accelerated to the point where the previous business week, instead of May 21st through May 25th, had been the worst on the stock exchange since June 1950. On the morning of Monday, May 28th then, brokers and dealers had reason to be in a thoughtful mood. Had the bottom been reached, or was it still ahead? Opinion appears in retrospect to have been divided.
道琼斯新闻服务通过电传机向其订户发送即时金融消息。在早上九点开始传输与股市在十点开盘之间的一段时间内，充满了一定的紧张气氛。在这一小时内，广泛被称为 "大字条" 的道琼斯服务打印在六又四分之一英寸宽的竖向纸张上，与股市价格条的水平方向且仅四分之三英寸高的打印方式区分开来。服务评论指出，许多证券经纪人在周末期间忙于向信贷客户发送追加抵押品的要求，因为这些客户的股票资产价值正在缩水。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The Dow Jones News Service, which sends its subscribers spot financial news by teleprinter, elected a certain apprehensiveness between the time it started its transmissions at nine o'clock and the opening of the stock exchange at ten. During this hour, the broad tape, as the Dow Jones Service, which is printed on vertically running paper, six and a quarter inches wide is often called, to distinguish it from the stock exchange price tape, which is printed horizontally and is only three-quarters of an inch high. Commented that many securities dealers had been busy over the weekend, sending out demands for additional collateral to credit customers, whose stock assets were shrinking in value.
评论提到，上周出现的这种快速清算多年来在华尔街是罕见的，同时还提供了一些令人鼓舞的商业消息，比如西屋公司刚刚获得了一份新的海军合同。然而，正如德拉·维加（De La Vega）指出的那样，在股票市场中，新闻本身的价值往往并不大。从短期来看，投资者的情绪才是关键。这种情绪在股市开盘后几分钟内就显现出来了。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Remarked that the type of precipitate liquidation seen during the previous week has been a stranger to Wall Street for years, and went on to give several items of encouraging business news, such as the fact that Westinghouse had just received a new Navy contract. In the stock market, however, as De La Vega points out, the news, as such, is often of little value. In the short run, the mood of the investors is what counts. This mood became manifest within a matter of minutes after the stock exchange opened.
在十点十一分时，广播带声称开盘时股市表现不一，交易活动温和。这消息令人感到安慰，因为"表现不一"意味着有些股票上涨，而有些股票下跌。此外，当市场下跌时，如果交易活动温和而不是过于活跃，人们普遍认为情况不那么可怕。然而，这种安慰并没有持续多久。因为到了十点三十分，记录每笔交易价格和交易量的证券交易所行情带不仅持续显示价格下跌，而且以每分钟五百个字符的最高速度运行，还已经延迟了六分钟。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
At ten eleven, the broad tape purported that stocks at the opening were mixed and only moderately active. This was reassuring information, because mixed meant that some were up and some were down, and also because a falling market is universally regarded as far less threatening when the amount of activity in it is moderate rather than great. But the comfort was short-lived. For by ten thirty, the stock exchange tape, which records the price and the share volume of every transaction made on the floor, not only was consistently recording lower prices, but running at its maximum speed of five hundred characters per minute, was six minutes late.
由于交易记录传送迟缓，机器无法跟上快速进行的交易。通常情况下，当在华尔街十一号的交易所完成一笔交易时，一名工作人员会将交易详情写在纸条上，通过气动管道送到大楼五楼的一个房间。在那里，一位工作人员会把信息输入股票报价机进行传输。因此，从交易完成到信息出现在显示器上的两到三分钟的延迟是正常的，股票交易所并不认为这是延迟。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The lateness of the tape meant that the machine was simply unable to keep abreast of what was going on, so fast were trades being made. Normally, when a transaction is completed on the floor of the exchange at eleven Wall Street, an exchange employee writes the details on a slip of paper and sends it, by pneumatic tube, to a room on the fifth floor of the building, where one of a staff of girls types it into the ticker machine for transmission. A lapse of two or three minutes between a floor transaction and its appearance on the tape is normal, therefore, and is not considered by the stock exchange to be lateness.
在交易所的语言中，这个词专门用来描述销售单在到达五楼和忙碌的自动报价机能够处理之间的额外延迟。交易所使用的术语没有经过仔细挑选，这是人们常常抱怨的地方。在繁忙的交易日，行情显示延迟几分钟是相当常见的，但自从1930年安装了1962年使用的类型自动报价机以来，大的延迟极为罕见。在1929年10月24日，当行情显示延迟了246分钟时，报价机以每分钟285个字符的速度打印信息。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
That word, in the language of the exchange, is used only to describe any additional lapse between the time a sales slip arrives on the fifth floor and the time the hard-pressed ticker is able to accommodate it. The terms used on the exchange are not carefully chosen, complaint de la vega. Tape delays of a few minutes occur fairly often on busy trading days, but since 1930, when the type of ticker in use in 1962 was installed, big delays had been extremely rare. On October 24, 1929, when the tape fell 246 minutes behind, it was being printed at the rate of 285 characters a minute.
在1962年5月之前，这台新机器出现过的最大延迟是34分钟。毫无疑问，价格在下降，交易活动在增加，但情况还不算太糟糕。到11点为止，只能确定上周的下跌在继续，而且速度略有加快。但随着交易速度的增加，数据传输的延迟也在加大。10点55分时，已延迟13分钟；11点14分，延迟20分钟；11点35分，延迟28分钟；11点58分，延迟38分钟；12点14分，延迟了43分钟。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Before May 1962, the greatest delay that had ever occurred on the new machine was 34 minutes. Unmistakably, prices were going down and activity was going up, but the situation was still not desperate. All that had been established by 11 o'clock was that the previous week's decline was continuing at a moderately accelerated rate, but as the pace of trading increased, so did the tape delay. At 10.55, it was 13 minutes late, at 11.14, 20 minutes, at 11.35, 28 minutes, at 11.58, 38 minutes, and at 12.14, 43 minutes.
为了在报价延迟五分钟或更长时向行情注入一些最新信息，交易所会定期中断正常播报，插入一些主要股票的最新价格。当然，这样做也增加了延迟。道琼斯工业平均指数的中午计算结果显示，当天截至中午已下跌9.86点。在午餐时间，公众恐慌情绪开始显现。其中一个迹象是在交易量通常较低的12点到2点之间，不仅股价持续下跌，交易量还在增加，对报价记录产生了影响。就在下午2点前，报价延迟达到了52分钟。人们在该吃午饭的时间卖股票，一直被认为是一个严重的问题。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
To inject at least a seasoning of up-to-date information into the tape when it is five minutes or more in arrears, the exchange periodically interrupted its normal progress to insert flashes or current prices of a few leading stocks. The time required to do this, of course, added to the lateness. The noon computation of the Dow Jones Industrial Average showed a loss for the day so far of 9.86 points. Signs of public hysteria began to appear during the lunch hour. One sign was the fact that between 12 and 2, when the market is traditionally in the doldrums, not only did prices continue to decline, but volume continued to rise, with a corresponding effect on the tape. Just before 2 o'clock, the tape delay stood at 52 minutes. Evidence that people are selling stocks at a time when they ought to be eating lunch is always regarded as a serious matter.
在百老汇1451号的泰晤士广场，证券业巨头美林证券公司（Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fennar, and Smith）办公室里的情况或许同样预示着即将到来的动荡。这个办公室遇到了一个奇特的问题。由于其地处中心位置，每天午餐时间都会有异常多的"走进来"顾客。这些人在证券界被称为"walk-ins"，只是极少涉足证券交易，甚至可能完全不是证券客户，但在股市动荡时期，他们觉得证券办公室的氛围和行情报价板上的价格变动很有意思。那些只为娱乐而非出于贪婪参与游戏的人很容易辨认出来。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Perhaps just as convincing a portent of approaching agitation was to be found in the Times Square office at 1451 Broadway of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fennar, and Smith, the undisputed gargantua of the brokerage trade. This office was plagued by a peculiar problem. Because of its excessively central location, it was visited every day at lunchtime by an unusual number of what are known in brokerage circles as walk-ins. People who are securities customers only in a minuscule way, if at all, but who find the atmosphere of a brokerage office and the changing prices on its quotation board entertaining, especially in times of stock market crisis. Those playing the game merely for the sake of entertainment and not because of greediness are easily to be distinguished. Delevigae.
从长期的经验来看，办公室经理萨缪尔·莫特纳，这位冷静的乔治亚人，学会了识别市场当前公众关注度与他办公室里上门人数之间的密切关联。而在5月28日中午，上门的人群之多，对他的敏锐直觉来说，简直预示着一场即将到来的灾难，就如同海鸥一般不祥。莫特纳的问题，就如同从圣迭戈到班戈的经纪人一样，并不仅仅局限于这些令人不安的迹象和预兆。股票的无节制清仓已经大规模展开。在莫特纳的办公室里，顾客的订单量是平时的五到六倍，而且几乎全是卖单。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
From long experience, the office manager, a calm Georgian named Samuel Mortner, had learned to recognize a close correlation between the current degree of public concern about the market and the number of walk-ins in his office. And at midday on May 28th, the mob of them was so dense as to have, for his trained sensibilities, positively albatross-like connotations of disaster ahead. Mortner's troubles, like those of brokers from San Diego to Bangor, were by no means confined to disturbing signs and portents. In unrestrained liquidation of stocks was already well underway. In Mortner's office, orders from customers were running five or six times above average, and nearly all of them were orders to sell.
总的来说，经纪人纷纷劝说顾客保持冷静，暂时持有股票。然而，许多顾客无法被说服。在位于西48街61号的另一家梅里尔证券（Merrill Lynch）办公室，一位住在里约热内卢的重要客户发来电报，简单地要求卖掉他账户里的所有股票。由于没有时间通过长途电话进行劝说，梅里尔证券只能执行这项订单。到了下午早些时候，广播和电视频道捕捉到了这一新闻，开始插播有关这一情况的报道。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
By and large brokers were urging their customers to keep cool and hold on to their stocks, at least for the present, but many of the customers could not be persuaded. In another Midtown Merrill Lynch office, at 61 West 48th Street, a cable was received from a substantial client living in Rio de Janeiro that said simply, please sell out everything in my account. Lacking the time to conduct a long-distance argument in favor of forbearance, Merrill Lynch had no choice but to carry out the order. Radio and television stations, which by early afternoon had caught the scent of news, were now interrupting their regular programs with spot broadcasts on the situation.
一份证券交易所的刊物曾尖锐地评论说，新闻广播中对股市的高度关注可能导致了一些投资者的不安。而此时，券商在执行大量卖单时面临的问题，因技术因素变得极为复杂。到下午2:26时，行情显示的延迟时间已达55分钟，这意味着行情显示的价格大多是一个小时前的价格，而这些价格通常比当前价格高出一到十美元。对于接受卖单的券商来说，几乎不可能向客户说明他可能获得的预期价格。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
As a stock exchange publication has since commented with some asperity, the degree of attention devoted to the stock market in these news broadcasts may have contributed to the uneasiness among some investors. And the problem that brokers faced in executing the flood of selling orders was by this time vastly complicated by technical factors. The tape delay, which by 2:26 amounted to 55 minutes, meant that for the most part, the ticker was reporting the prices of an hour before, which in many cases were anywhere from one to ten dollars a share higher than the current prices. It was almost impossible for a broker accepting a selling order to tell his customer what price he might expect to get.
一些经纪公司试图通过自制的报告系统绕过股票行情的延迟。其中之一是美林证券，他们的场内经纪人在完成交易后，如果记得并且有时间，会直接把结果大声喊到一个与公司总部在七十街松树大街连接的电话里。这种零散的方法显然容易出错。在股票交易所的交易大厅内，股市并没有反弹的迹象，所有股票仅仅是快速且持续地大幅下跌，交易量巨大。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Some brokerage firms were trying to circumvent the tape delay by using makeshift reporting systems of their own. Among these was Merrill Lynch, whose floor brokers, after completing a trade would, if they remembered and had the time, simply shout the result into a floorside telephone connected to a squawk box in the firm's head office at Seventy Pine Street. Obviously, haphazard methods like this were subject to error. On the stock exchange floor itself, there was no question of any sort of rally. It was simply a case of all stocks declining rapidly and steadily, an enormous volume.
正如德拉维加可能描述的场景，实际上他确实以相当华丽的方式描述过类似场景一样，这些卖家, 即“熊市”的一方，完全被恐惧、忧虑和紧张所支配。兔子变成了大象，酒馆里的争吵变成了叛乱，微弱的影子在他们看来都是混乱的预兆。情况中最令人担忧的方面之一是，那些代表国家最大公司的知名蓝筹股正处于下跌的中心。事实上，美国电话电报公司，这家规模最大的公司，也是拥有最多股东的公司，正在引领整个市场走向下滑。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
As De La Vega might have described the scene, as in fact he did rather flamboyantly describe a similar scene, the bears, that is the sellers, are completely ruled by fear, trepidation, and nervousness. Rabbits become elephants, brawls in a tavern become rebellions, faint shadows appear to them as signs of chaos. Not the least worrisome aspect of the situation was the fact that the leading blue chip stocks, representing shares in the country's largest companies, were right in the middle of the decline. Indeed, American telephone and telegraph, the largest company of the mole, and the one with the largest number of stockholders, was leading the entire market downward.
在比交易所上其他1500多只股票的成交量都高的情况下，很多股票的价格都只是电话公司的零头，但电话公司的股票却经历了一波又一波的紧急抛售。全天交易中，股价被打压，直到下午两点时股价跌到104又3/4美元，当天大跌了6又7/8美元，而且仍在继续下跌。电话公司股票一直被视为市场的风向标，现在比以往任何时候都受到密切关注。其价格每下降一点，都成为整个市场进一步下跌的信号。在下午三点之前，IBM的股价下跌了17又1/2美元，新泽西标准石油（通常在市场普跌时表现出较强的抗跌能力）也下跌了3又1/4美元，而电话公司的股价再次下挫至101又1/8美元，底部似乎还看不到。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
On a share volume greater than that of any of the more than 1,500 other stocks traded on the exchange, most of them at a tiny fraction of telephone's price, telephone had been battered by wave after wave of urgent selling all day, until at two o'clock it stood at 104 and three-quarters, down six and seven-eighths for the day, and was still in full retreat. Always something of a bellwether, telephone was now being watched more closely than ever, and each loss of a fraction of a point in its price was the signal for further declines all across the board. Before three o'clock, IBM was down seventeen and a half points, standard oil of New Jersey, often exceptionally resistant to general declines, was off three and a quarter, and telephone itself had tumbled again to 101 and an eighth, nor did the bottom appear to be inside.
然而，据当时在场的人描述，交易大厅的气氛并没有显得歇斯底里，或者说即便有些许紧张情绪，也得到很好地控制。虽然很多经纪人尽量遵守不能在大厅内奔跑的交易所规定，而有些人的表情被一位保守的交易所官员形容为“全神贯注”，但那儿依旧充满了寻常的玩笑、嬉闹和一些轻微的口角。笑话是这项工作的主要吸引力之一。然而，事情并不完全相同。正如一位现场经纪人特别记忆犹新地说：“我感到筋疲力尽，在危机的日子里，你可能要在大厅里走十或十一英里。这用计步器量过。然而，累人的不仅仅是距离，还有身体的接触。”
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Yet the atmosphere on the floor, as it has since been described by men who were there, was not hysterical, or at least any hysteria was well controlled. While many brokers were straining to the utmost the exchange's rule against running on the floor, and some faces were expressions that have been characterized by a conservative exchange official as, studious, there was the usual amount of joshing, horseplay, and exchanging of mild insults. Jokes form a main attraction to the business, de la vega. But things were not entirely the same. What I particularly remember is feeling physically exhausted, one floorbroker has said, on a crisis day you're likely to walk ten or eleven miles on the floor. That's been measured with pedometers. But it isn't just the distance that wears you down, it's the physical contact.
你必须推动别人，也被别人推动。人们在你身上爬来爬去。然后是那些声音，在衰退时期总会有紧张的嗡嗡声。随着衰退的速度加快，那种嗡嗡声的音调也会随之升高。在市场上升的时候，声音完全不同。当你习惯了这种差异后，即使闭着眼睛也能大致判断出市场的动态。当然，平常总会有那些惯常的玩笑，只是现在这些玩笑似乎变得比平时更勉强些。当下午3:30收盘铃响起时，大家都注意到地板上传来一阵欢呼。我们欢呼并不是因为市场下跌，而是因为交易终于结束了。但是，真的结束了吗？
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
You have to push and get pushed. People climb all over you. Then there were the sounds, the tense hum of voices that you always get in times of decline. As the rate of decline increases, so does the pitch of the hum. In a rising market there's an entirely different sound. After you get used to the difference, you can tell just about what the market is doing with your eyes shut. Of course, the usual heavy joking went on. Maybe the jokes got a little more forced than usual. Everybody is commented on the fact that when the closing bell rang at 330, a cheer went up from the floor. Well, we weren't cheering because the market was down. We were cheering because it was over. But was it over?
这个问题让华尔街和全国投资界整个下午和晚上都感到困惑。下午时段，滞后的交易所行情自动收报机缓慢地记录着那些早已过时的价格。到收盘时间，它已经晚了一个小时零九分钟，直到558分才完成当天的交易记录。许多经纪人留在交易所的地板上直到下午五点以后，整理交易细节，然后回到他们的办公室处理账户。当价格自动收报机终于完成工作时，它讲述的是一个普遍悲伤的故事。美国电话公司的股价收于105又1/8，比前一天跌了11点。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
This question occupied Wall Street and the national investing community all the afternoon and evening. During the afternoon, the lagred exchange ticker slogged along, solemnly recording prices that had long since become obsolete. It was an hour and nine minutes late at closing time and did not finish printing the day's transactions until 558. Many brokers stayed on the exchange floor until after five o'clock, straightening out the details of trades, and then went to their offices to work on their accounts. What the price tape had to tell when it finally got around to telling it was a uniformly sad tale. American telephone had closed at 105-8, down 11 for the day.
菲利普·莫里斯的收盘价为71又1分之2，下跌了8又1分之1。金宝汤的收盘价为81，下跌了10又3/4。IBM的收盘价为361，下跌了37又1分之2。股市就是这么走的。在经纪公司里，员工们非常忙碌。很多人整个晚上都有各种特殊任务，其中最紧急的就是发出追加保证金通知。追加保证金通知是要求客户提供额外的抵押品，因为这些客户曾从经纪人那里借钱买股票，而现在这些股票的价值勉强够还贷款。如果客户不愿意或无法提供更多的抵押品以满足追加保证金要求，经纪人会尽快卖掉这些股票。这样的抛售可能进一步压低其他股票的价格，导致更多的追加保证金要求，进而导致更多的股票被卖出，如此恶性循环。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Philip Morris had closed at 71-1-2, down 8-1-1, Campbell-Soup had closed at 81, down 10-3 quarters. IBM had closed at 361, down 37-1-2. And so it went. In brokerage offices, employees were kept busy. Many of them from most of the night had various special chores, of which by far the most urgent was sending out margin calls. A margin call is a demand for additional collateral from a customer who has borrowed money from his broker to buy stocks and whose stocks are now worth barely enough to cover the loan. If a customer is unwilling or unable to meet a margin call with more collateral, his broker will sell the margin stock as soon as possible. Such sales may depress other stocks further, leading to more margin calls, leading to more stock sales, and so on down into the pit.
在1929年，由于没有联邦对股票市场信用的限制，这个坑曾经被证明是没有底的。自那时起，这个坑已经被填了一部分。但事实上，1962年5月的信用要求是这样的：当顾客用杠杆购买的股票价值下降到购买时的50%到60%之间时，他们可以预期会接到追加保证金的通知。而在5月28日的交易结束时，差不多每4只股票中就有1只从其1961年的高点下跌到这个水平。交易所后来估计，在5月25日到5月31日之间，发出了91,700份追加保证金通知，主要是通过电报发送的。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
This pit had proved bottomless in 1929 when there were no federal restrictions on stock market credit. Since then, a floor had been put in it. But the fact remains that credit requirements in May of 1962 were such that a customer could expect a call when stocks he had bought on margin had dropped to between 50 and 60 percent of their value at the time he bought them. And, at the close of trading on May 28, nearly one stock in four had dropped as far as that from its 1961 high. The exchange has since estimated the 91,700 margin calls were sent out, mainly by Telegram, between May 25th and May 31st.
可以安全地假设，这些事件的大部分发生在5月28日下午、晚上或夜间，而不仅仅是夜晚的初期。多名顾客第一次了解到危机，或者第一次意识到其几乎令人毛骨悚然的严重性，是在周二凌晨被追加保证金通知唤醒的时候。如果说1962年由于保证金出售所带来的市场风险比1929年小得多，那么来自另一个方面的风险——共同基金的抛售——就大得无法估量。事实上，许多华尔街的专业人士现在表示，在5月的兴奋高峰期，仅仅想到共同基金的情况就足以让他们不寒而栗。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
It seems a safe assumption that the lion's share of these went out in the afternoon, in the evening, or during the night of May 28th, and not just the early part of the night either. More than one customer first learned of the crisis, or first became aware of its almost spooky intensity, on being awakened by the arrival of a margin call in the pre-dawn hours of Tuesday. If the danger to the market from the consequences of margin selling was much less in 1962 than it had been in 1929, the danger from another quarter, selling by mutual funds, was immeasurably greater. Indeed, many Wall Street professionals now say that at the height of the May excitement, the mere thought of the mutual fund situation was enough to make them shudder.
众所周知，在过去二十多年里，数百万美国人购买了共同基金的股份，共同基金为小投资者提供了一种在专业管理下汇集资源的方法。小投资者购买基金的股份，基金用这些钱购买股票，并且随时准备按照当前的资产价值赎回投资者的股份。在股市严重下跌时，据分析，小投资者们可能会希望将资金从股市撤出，从而要求赎回他们的股份。为满足赎回请求，基金不得不出售部分股票。这些抛售行为会进一步导致股市下跌，引发更多的基金持有人要求赎回，继而形成一种不断陷入困境的恶性循环。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
As is well known to the millions of Americans who have bought shares in mutual funds over the past two decades or so, they provide a way for small investors to pool their resources under expert management. The small investor buys shares in a fund, and the fund uses the money to buy stocks, and stands ready to redeem the investor's shares at their current asset value whenever he chooses. In a serious stock market decline, the reasoning went, small investors would want to get their money out of the stock market and would therefore ask for redemption of their shares. In order to raise the cash necessary to meet the redemption demands, the mutual funds would have to sell some of their stocks. These sales would lead to a further stock market decline, causing more holders of fund shares to demand redemption, and so on down into a more up-to-date version of the bottomless pit.
投资界对此可能性的担忧加剧，因为共同基金放大市场下跌的能力从未真正得到考验。在1929年，共同基金几乎不存在，但到1962年春天，其资产总额已增长到惊人的230亿美元。在此期间，市场从未像现在这样大幅下跌。显然，如果这230亿美元的资产或其中相当大的一部分现在被抛售到市场上，可能会引发一场比1929年大崩盘还严重的危机。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The Investment Communities Collective Shutter at this possibility was intensified by the fact that the mutual funds' power to magnify a market decline had never been seriously tested. Practically non-existent in 1929, the funds had built up the staggering total of $23 billion in assets by the spring of 1962, and never in the interim had the market declined with anything like its present force. Clearly, if $23 billion in assets, or any substantial fraction of that figure, were to be tossed onto the market now, it could generate a crash that would make 1929 seem like a stumble.
曾担任《大西洋月刊》书评人的查尔斯·J·拉洛，是一位深思熟虑的经纪人，直到1960年他加入了华尔街的文学社团。他回忆说，当时基金引发的下行螺旋以及人们对于这种情况是否已经开始的普遍无知，使得人们感到如此恐惧，以至于都不敢提起这个话题。作为一个在经济生活的众所周知的粗鄙中坚持保留文学敏感性的人，拉洛或许是描述5月28日黄昏市区情绪变化的合适见证者。他后来表示，那时的气氛充满了不真实感。据我所知，没有人对市场的底线在哪里有丝毫的想法。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
A thoughtful broker named Charles J. Rallow, who was a book reviewer for the Atlantic, until he joined Wall Street's Literary Cottery in 1960, has recalled that the threat of a fund-induced downward spiral, combined with general ignorance as to whether or not one was already in progress, was so terrifying that you didn't even mention the subject. As a man whose literary sensibilities had up to then survived the well-known crassness of economic life, Rallow was perhaps a good witness on other aspects of the downtown mood at dusk on May 28. There was an air of unreality, he said later. No one, as far as I knew, had the slightest idea where the bottom would be.
那天道琼斯指数收盘下跌了近35点，降到了大约577点。现在在华尔街，否认这点似乎成了一种风尚，但很多知名人士当时一直在谈论指数会跌到400点，这当然将是场灾难。当时到处都能听到“400点”这个数字被一再提及，尽管如果你现在去问，大家会告诉你他们说的是500点。除此之外，经纪人之间还存在着一种深刻的个人抑郁情绪，因为我们知道，我们的客户——并不都是富人——由于我们的操作而遭受了巨大的损失。无论怎样，亏掉别人的钱是件非常令人不快的事。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The closing Dow Jones average that day was down almost 35 points, to about 577. It's now considered elegant in Wall Street to deny it, but many leading people were talking about a bottom of 400, which would, of course, have been a disaster. One heard the words, 400 uttered again and again, although if you ask people now, they tend to tell you they said 500, and along with the apprehensions there was a profound feeling of depression of a very personal sort among brokers. We knew that our customers, by no means all of them rich, had suffered large losses as a result of our actions. Say what you will, it's extremely disagreeable to lose other people's money.
请记住，这一切发生在大约12年股票价格普遍上涨的末期。在十多年里，你和你的客户几乎持续盈利，这让你觉得自己很优秀。你觉得自己掌握了一切，能赚钱，这就够了。然而，这次崩盘暴露了弱点，使人失去一定的自信，而这种自信不是容易迅速恢复的。显然，这一切足以让一个经纪人希望他能够遵循德拉维加的黄金法则：永远不要建议别人买进或卖出股票，因为当洞察力变弱时，即使是最善意的建议也可能变得糟糕。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Remember that this happened at the end of about 12 years of generally rising stock prices. After more than a decade of more or less constant profits to yourself and your customers, you get to think you're pretty good. You're on top of it. You can make money, and that's that. This break exposed the weakness. It subjected one to a certain loss of self-confidence, from which one was not likely to recover quickly. The whole thing was enough, apparently, to make a broker wish that he were in a position to adhere to De La Vega's cardinal rule. Never give anyone the advice to buy or sell shares, because where perspicacity is weakened, the most benevolent piece of advice can turn out badly.
星期二早上，人们才意识到周一灾难的严重程度。根据一项计算，股市上所有上市股票的账面损失总额为208亿美元。这一数字创下了历史新高。即使在1929年10月28日，那时的损失也仅为96亿美元。表面上看似不一致的关键在于，1929年股票总市值远小于1962年的总市值。这一新记录也占到了我们国民收入的相当一部分，具体来说，几乎是4%。实际上，美国在一天之内损失的产品和薪酬价值相当于两周的量，当然，这在国际上也引发了连锁反应。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
It was on Tuesday morning that the dimensions of Monday's debacle became evident. It had by an album calculated that the paper loss in value of all stocks listed on the exchange amounted to $20,800 million. This figure was an all-time record. Even on October 28, 1929, the loss had been a mere $9,600 million. The key to the apparent inconsistency being the fact that the total value of the stocks listed on the exchange was far smaller in 1929 than in 1962. The new record also represented a significant slice of our national income, specifically almost 4%. In effect, the United States had lost something like two weeks' worth of products and pay in one day, and of course, there were repercussions abroad.
在欧洲，由于时差的原因，对华尔街反应要延迟一天，因此星期二成了危机日。当天早上9点，在纽约，这个时间接近欧洲交易日的尾声，几乎所有主要的欧洲交易所都经历了疯狂的抛售，而这似乎只因为华尔街的崩盘。米兰的损失是18个月来最严重的。在布鲁塞尔，这次损失是自1946年那里战后重新开放以来最严重的一次。伦敦的损失则是至少27年来最严重的。在苏黎世，早些时候市场出现了令人震惊的30%的抛售，但随着一些捡便宜的投资者入市，部分损失有所缓解。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In Europe, where reactions to Wall Street are delayed a day by the time difference, Tuesday was the day of crisis. By 9 o'clock that morning in New York, which was toward the end of the trading day in Europe, almost all the leading European exchanges were experiencing wild selling, with no apparent cause other than Wall Street's crash. The loss in Milan was the worst in 18 months. That in Brussels was the worst since 1946, when the force there reopened after the war. That in London was the worst in at least 27 years. In Zurich, there had been a sickening 30% sell-off earlier in the day, but some of the losses were now being cut as bargain hunters came into the market.
另一种回击虽然不那么直接，但对于人类来说无疑更加严重，这种影响已经开始在一些贫穷国家显现。例如，纽约商品市场上7月交割的铜价每磅下降了0.441美分。虽然这样的损失听起来微不足道，但对于一个高度依赖铜出口的小国家来说却是至关重要的。在他的新书《大跃进》中，罗伯特·L·海尔布伦纳引用了一项估算：每当纽约市场上的铜价下降一美分，智利的国库就会损失400万美元。按这个标准，仅就铜的问题而言，智利可能面临176万美元的损失。但比已经发生的事情更令人担忧的，或许是对即将发生情况的恐惧。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And another sort of backlash, less direct, but undoubtedly more serious in human terms, was being felt in some of the poorer countries of the world. For example, the price of copper for July delivery dropped on the New York commodity market by 44-100 of a cent per pound. In significant as such a loss may sound, it was a vital matter to a small country heavily dependent on its copper exports. In his recent book, The Great Ascent, Robert L. Heilbrenner, had cited an estimate that for every cent by which copper prices dropped on the New York market, the Chilean treasury lost $4 million. By that standard, Chile's potential loss on copper alone was $1,760,000. Yet perhaps worse than the knowledge of what had happened was a fear of what might happen now.
《泰晤士报》在社论中不安地开篇道，昨天股市发生了类似地震的动荡。经过几乎半个专栏的阐述，它最终坚定地指出，无论股市的涨跌如何，我们始终是、也将继续是自己经济命运的掌控者。道琼斯新闻广播在九点开始营业时，像往常一样愉快地打招呼说“早上好”，但几乎立刻转为播报来自海外的市场不安消息。到9点45分时，离交易开始还有15分钟，它已在自问何时能停止抛售股票？结论是：目前还不行。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The Times began a queasy lead editorial with the statement that something resembling an earthquake hit the stock market yesterday. And then took almost half a column to marshal its forces for the reasonably ringing affirmation, irrespective of the ups and downs of the stock market, we are, and will remain, the masters of our economic fate. The Dow Jones news ticker, after opening up shop at nine o'clock with its customary cheery good morning, lapsed almost immediately into disturbing reports of the market news from abroad, and by 945, with the exchange's opening still a quarter of an hour away, was asking itself the cheery question, when was a dumping of stocks let up? Not just yet, it concluded.
所有迹象似乎都表明，卖压远未得到满足。在整个金融界，关于多家证券公司即将倒闭的丑闻四处流传，这加重了市场的阴霾。正如德拉·维加所说，对事件的预期往往比事件本身造成更深的印象。尽管这些传闻后来大多被证明是假的，但当时并无助于情况的改善。危机的消息一夜之间便传遍全国，股票市场成了全国关注的焦点。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
All the signs seemed to indicate that the selling pressure was far from satisfied. Throughout the financial world, ugly rumors were circulating about the imminent failure of various securities firms, increasing the aura of gloom. The expectation of an event creates a much deeper impression than the event itself, de la Vega. The fact that most of these rumors later proved false was no help at the time. Word of the crisis had spread overnight to every town in the land, and the stock market had become the national preoccupation.
在券商办公室，电话交换台被打入的电话挤爆了，顾客接待区挤满了步行进来的客户，还有很多情况下，电视摄制组也在场。至于证券交易所本身，所有在交易大厅工作的人都早早到了，为应对预期中的风暴做好准备，并且从11号华尔街上层办公室调来了更多人员来帮助处理大量订单。到开市时，游客观景台已经挤满了人，以至于当天的常规导游讲解被迫暂停。那天早上，设法挤进观景台的一群人中有位于西121街的Corpus Christi教会学校的八年级学生。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In brokerage offices, the switchboards were jammed with incoming calls, and the customers' areas with walk-ins, and in many cases, television crews. As for the stock exchange itself, everyone who worked on the floor had got there early, to batten down against the expected storm, and additional hands had been recruited from desk jobs on the upper floors of 11 Wall to help sort out the mountains of orders. The visitor's gallery was so crowded by opening time that the usual guided tours had to be suspended for the day. One group that squeezed its way onto the gallery that morning was the eighth-grade class of Corpus Christi Parochial School, of West 121st Street.
班级的老师Aquin修女向记者解释说，孩子们在前两周为他们的参观做准备，进行了一次假想股市投资，每人有一个虚拟的一万美元。Aquin修女说，他们输了全部的钱。交易所的开盘时段接下来是创下众多资深交易员记忆中最黑暗的90分钟，其中包括一些1929年股灾的幸存者。在最初的几分钟里，交易的股票相对较少，但这种不活跃并不代表着冷静的考虑。相反，它反映出巨大的卖压一度让市场行动瘫痪。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The class's teacher, Sister Aquin, explained to a reporter that the children had prepared for their visit over the previous two weeks by making hypothetical stock market investments with an imaginary $10,000 each. They lost all their money, said Sister Aquin. The exchange's opening was followed by the blackest 90 minutes in the memory of many veteran dealers, including some survivors of 1929. In the first few minutes, comparatively few stocks were traded, but this inactivity did not reflect calm deliberation. On the contrary, it reflected selling pressure so great that it momentarily paralyzed action.
为了尽量减少股票价格的剧烈波动，交易所规定，任何股票的交易价格如果相较于前一次交易价格变动过大，必须得到一位现场官员的个人许可才能进行。如果股票价格低于20美元，那么价格变动达到一个点或以上时需要许可；如果股票价格高于20美元，那么价格变动达到两个点或以上时需要许可。现在市场上卖家非常多，而买家稀少，有上百只股票的开盘价格变动达到或超过了这个幅度。因此，直到在嘈杂的人群中找到一位现场官员之前，这些股票无法进行交易。对于一些关键股票，例如IBM，卖家和买家之间的差距非常大，即使有官员的许可也无法进行交易，唯一能做的就是等待，直到有足够多的买家因为期待低价而进入市场。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In the interests of minimizing sudden jumps in stock prices, the exchange requires that one of its floor officials must personally grant his permission, before any stock can change hands at a price differing from that of the previous sale by one point or more for stock priced under $20, or by two points or more for a stock priced above $20. Now sellers were so plentiful and buyers so scarce that hundreds of stocks would have to open at price changes as great as that or greater, and therefore no trading in them was possible until a floor official could be found in the shouting mob. In the case of some of the key issues, like IBM, the disparity between sellers and buyers was so wide that trading in them was impossible even with the permission of an official, and there was nothing to do but wait until the prospect of getting a bargain price lured enough buyers into the market.
道琼斯广泛报价系统像是受到惊吓一样断断续续地播报出随机的价格和片段信息。在11点30分，它报告至少有七只主要股票仍未开盘。实际上，当情况硝烟散去后，发现这一实际数字要大得多。与此同时，道琼斯指数在第一个小时内又下跌了11.09点。周一的股值损失增加了数十亿美元，市场恐慌达到顶点。随之而来的几乎是混乱。无论如何描述5月29日这个星期二，它都将被人们铭记，因为这一天几乎见证了支撑全国范围内股票交易的复杂技术设施的全面崩溃—在这个庞大的国家，几乎每六个成年人中就有一个是股东。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The Dow Jones broad tape, stuttering out random prices and fragments of information as if it were in a state of shock, reported at 11.30 that at least seven big board stocks had still not opened. Actually, when the dust had cleared, it appeared that the true figure had been much larger than that. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones average lost 11.09 more points in the first hour. Monday's loss in stock values had been increased by several billion dollars, and the panic was in full cry. And along with panic came near chaos. Whatever else may be said about Tuesday, May 29, it will be long remembered as the day when there was something very close to a complete breakdown of the reticulated, automated, mind-boggling complex of technical facilities that made nationwide stock trading possible in a huge country where nearly one out of six adults was a stockholder.
许多订单的成交价格与客户下单时商定的价格有很大差别。还有许多订单在传输过程中丢失或者被掩埋在交易所地板上堆积如雪的废纸中，根本没有执行。有时，经纪公司因为无法联系到交易所的工作人员而无法执行订单。随着一天的进展，周一的繁忙交易记录不仅被打破，而且显得相形见绌。作为一个指标，周二收盘时交易所的行情传输延迟了两小时23分钟，而周一则是延迟了一小时九分钟。幸运的是，美林证券这个负责超过13%公共交易的公司刚刚安装了一台新型70-74计算机，这台设备能在三分钟内复制电话簿，借助它的帮助，美林证券设法保持了账户的相对准确。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Many orders were executed at prices far different from the ones agreed to by the customers placing the orders. Many others were lost in transmission, or in the snow of scrap paper that covered the exchange floor and were never executed at all. Sometimes brokerage firms were prevented from executing orders by simple inability to get in touch with their floormen. As the day progressed, Monday's heavy traffic records were not only broken but made to seem paltry. As one index, Tuesday's closing time delay in the exchange tape was two hours and 23 minutes compared to Monday's hour and nine minutes. By heaven-sent stroke of precious, Merrill Lynch, which handled over 13% of all public trading on the exchange, had just installed a new 70-74 computer, the device that can copy the telephone directory in three minutes, and with its help, managed to keep its accounts fairly straight.
美林证券（Merrill Lynch）新安装的自动电传打字切换系统，占据了半个城市街区的空间，目的是为了加快公司各分支之间的沟通。这套系统表现不错，但由于过热，导致人们无法触碰。而其他公司就没有那么幸运了，一些公司内部的混乱极其严重，以至于有些经纪人因为无法及时获取最新的股票报价或者联络到交易大厅的同事，干脆放弃努力，出门喝酒去了。这种不专业的行为可能反而帮他们的客户省下了不少钱。然而，当天午餐时间，行情记录系统的状况可谓是最大的讽刺。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Another new Merrill Lynch installation in automatic teletype switching system that occupied almost half a city block and was intended to expedite communication between the firm's various offices also rose to the occasion, though it got so hot that it could not be touched. Other firms were less fortunate, and in a number of them, confusion gained the upper hand so thoroughly that some brokers, tired of trying in vain to get the latest quotations on stocks or to reach their partners on the exchange floor, are said to have simply thrown up their hands and gone out for a drink. Such unprofessional behavior may have saved their customers a great deal of money. But the crowning irony of the day was surely supplied by the situation of the tape during the lunch hour.
接近中午时，道琼斯指数下跌23点，达到最低水平。在最低点时，平均指数达到553.75，远高于专家预测的最低点500。因此，仍有一定的安全距离。接着，股市突然开始强劲反弹。到12:45时，市场已经陷入疯狂的抢购潮，当时的行情显示已经迟延了56分钟。因此，除了少数快速价格传递出的短暂信息外，股票市场依然在收到关于抛售恐慌的消息，而事实上，市场上正在发生的是抢购恐慌。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Just before noon, stocks reached their lowest levels, down 23 points on the Dow Jones average. At its nader, the average reached 553.75, a safe distance above the 500 that the experts now claim was their estimate of the absolute bottom. Then they abruptly began an extraordinarily vigorous recovery. At 1245, by which time the recovery had become a mad scramble to buy, the tape was 56 minutes late. Therefore, apart from fleeting intimations supplied by a few flash prices, the ticker was engaged in informing the stock market community of a selling panic, at a moment when what was actually in progress was a buying panic.
这次上午晚些时候的大逆转，以一种会吸引德拉·维加浪漫天性的方式发生，又突然又有些夸张。关键的股票是美国电话电报公司，它与前一天一样备受瞩目，毫无疑问地影响着整个市场。而关键人物则是乔治·M·L·勒布朗克 Jr.，他是Le Branch and Wood & Company公司的高级合伙人，这家公司负责作为电话公司的交易场内专家。场内专家是负责维持其负责股票市场秩序的经纪交易商。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The great turnaround late in the morning took place in a manner that would have appealed to De La Vega's romantic nature, suddenly and rather melodramatically. The key stock involved was American telephone and telegraph, which, just as on the previous day, was being universally watched and was unmistakably influencing the whole market. The key man, by the nature of his job, was George M. L. Le Branch, Jr., senior partner in Le Branch and Wood & Company, the firm that was acting as floor specialist in telephone. Floor specialists are broker dealers who are responsible for maintaining orderly markets in the particular stocks with which they are charged.
在履行职责的过程中，他们常常面临一种奇怪的任务：用自己的钱去冒自己认为不值得的风险。为了减少市场中人为失误的可能性，一些机构最近一直在研究用机器取代这些专家的方法，但到目前为止还没有成功。一大难题似乎是，如果机器专家亏了钱，谁来承担这些损失？
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In the course of meeting their responsibilities, they often have the curious duty of taking risks with their own money against their own better judgment. Various authorities, seeking to reduce the element of human fallibility in the market, have lately been trying to figure out a way to replace the specialists with machines, but so far without success. One big stumbling block seems to be the question, if the mechanical specialists should lose their shirts, who would pay their losses?
Le Branch在64岁时，是个矮小、五官尖锐、衣着考究、性格火爆的人。他喜欢在交易所的场地上炫耀自己少数的几个Phi Beta Kappa钥匙之一。自1924年起，他就成为了一名专家，公司自1929年底以来一直是电话交易的专家。他的主要活动区域，实际上也是他几乎每天工作五个半小时的地方，是在交易所的一处不容易被游客看到的地方，人们通常称之为“车库”，就在第15号柜台的正前方。在那里，他双脚稳稳地分开站立，以抵御任何潜在的买家或卖家的突然涌入。他通常手持铅笔，以一种若有所思的姿态悬在一本不起眼的活页账本上面，这本账本中记录着所有待执行的电话股票买卖订单，按不同的价格等级分类。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Le Branch at 64 was a short, sharp-featured, dapper, peppery man who was fond of sporting one of the exchange floors comparatively few Phi Beta Kappa Keys. He had been a specialist since 1924, and his firm had been the specialist in telephone since late in 1929. His characteristic habitat, indeed the spot where he spent some five and a half hours almost every weekday of his life, was immediately in front of post-15 in the part of the exchange that is not readily visible from the visitor's gallery and is commonly called the garage. There, feet planted firmly apart to fend off any sudden surges of would-be buyers or sellers, he customarily stood with pencil poised in a thoughtful way over an un-pre-possessing, loose-leaf ledger, in which he kept a record of all outstanding orders to buy and sell telephone stock at various price levels.
不出所料，那本分类账被称为电话簿。在周一的整天中，当市场因为电话公司股价下跌而变得动荡时，勒·布兰奇一直处于事件的中心。作为专业人士，他就像是拳击手面对攻击一样随形应对，或者用他自己更生动的比喻来说，就像海浪中的木塞一样上下浮动。勒·布兰奇后来表示，电话公司的股票就像大海。通常情况下是平静温和的，但忽然之间一阵大风就会掀起巨浪。这股巨浪卷过来，把所有人都淹没，然后又退回去。你必须随波逐流，没办法对抗，就像国王克努特也无能为力一样。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Not surprisingly, the ledger was known as the Telephone Book. Le Branch had, of course, been at the center of the excitement all day Monday, when telephone was leading the market downward. As specialist, he had been rolling with a punch like a fighter, or to adopt his own more picturesque metaphor, bobbing like a cork on oceancomers. Telephone is kind of like the sea, Le Branch said later. Generally it is calm and kindly, then all of a sudden a great wind comes and whips up a giant wave. The wave sweeps over and deluges everybody. Then it sucks back again. You have to give with it. You can't fight it any more than King Knut could.
周二早上，在经历了周一的大幅下跌11点后，股市的巨大波动仍在继续。整理和匹配隔夜订单的繁杂工作，再加上找到证券交易所官员并获得其批准，花费了很长时间，导致第一笔电话公司的交易一直到交易所开市将近一个小时后才得以完成。电话公司的股票在上午11点前一分钟进入交易时，其价格为98.5美元，比周一收盘时下降了2又1/8美元。在接下来的大约45分钟内，金融界像船长在飓风中观察气压计一样密切关注着它的波动。电话公司的股价在98到99美元之间波动；99美元是因短暂的小幅反弹而达到的价格，而98又1/8美元则被证明是其最低点。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
On Tuesday morning, after Monday's drenching 11-point drop, the great wave was still rolling. The sheer clerical task of sorting and matching the orders that had come in overnight, not to mention finding a stock exchange official and obtaining his permission, took so long that the first trade in telephone could not be made until almost an hour after the exchange is opening. When telephone did enter the lists, at one minute before eleven, its price was 98 and a half, down two and an eighth, from Monday's closing. Over the next three-quarters of an hour or so, while the financial world watched it the way a sea captain might watch the barometer in a hurricane, telephone fluctuated between 99, which it reached on momentary minor rallies, and 98 and an eighth, which proved to be its bottom.
在三个不同的时刻，股价触及了下限，并在这期间经历了反弹，这一现象被Lebranche描述得仿佛有一种神秘或魔法般的意义，也许真的是这样。不管怎样，在股价第三次下跌之后，购买电话公司股票的人开始在15号交易窗口出现，起初只是零星和胆怯，而后变得越来越多且主动。11点45分时，股票卖到了98又3/4，不久后到了99，11点50分时达到99又3/8，最后在11点55分时，达到了100。许多评论者都认为，电话公司股票首次卖到100时，正是整个市场走势改变的确切时刻。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
It touched the lower figure on three separate occasions, with rallies between, a fact that Lebranche has spoken of as if it had a magical or mystical significance. And perhaps it had. At any rate, after the third dip, buyers of telephone began to turn up at post-15, sparse and timid at first, then more numerous and aggressive. At 11.45, the stock sold at 98 and three-quarters, a few minutes later at 99, at 11.50, at 99 and three-eighths, and finally at 11.55, it sold at 100. Many commentators have expressed the opinion that that first sale of telephone at 100 marked the exact point at which the whole market changed direction.
由于电话公司股票在行情延迟期间也是显示动态消息的股票之一，金融界几乎是立刻就获悉了这笔交易，而这正是在他们听到其他消息都是坏消息的时候。理论上，电话公司股票上涨近两个点这个确凿的信息，与100这个纯粹偶然的好整数的心理影响相结合，起到了决定性的作用。虽然Lebranche同意电话公司股票的上涨在很大程度上带动了整体的回升，但他对于到底是哪笔交易起到了关键作用仍持不同看法。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Since telephone is among the stocks on which the ticker gives flashes during periods of tape delay, the financial community learned of the transaction almost immediately, and at a time when everything else it was hearing was very bad news indeed. The theory goes that the hard fact of telephone's recovery of almost two points worked together with a purely fortuitous circumstance, the psychological impact of the good round number 100 to tip the scales. Lebranche, while agreeing that the rise of telephone did a lot to bring about the general upturn, differs as to precisely which transaction was the crucial one.
对他来说，第一次以100出售股票并不足以证明市场正在持续回暖，因为这次交易只涉及到一个他记得是100股的小量。他知道自己手中有在100价位出售近20,000股电话公司股票的指令。如果这种对股票的需求在售完这价值两百万美元的股票之前耗尽，那么电话公司的股价将再次下跌，可能会第四次跌到98又1/8。像勒布朗什这样的人，习惯用航海术语思考问题，可能会把“第四次下跌”与结束的概念联系在一起。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
To him, the first sale at 100 was insufficient proof of lasting recovery, because it involved only a small number of shares, 100 as far as he remembers. He knew that in his book he had orders to sell almost 20,000 shares of telephone at 100. If the demand for shares at that price were to run out before this $2 million supply was exhausted, then the price of telephone would drop again, possibly going as low as 98 in an eighth for a fourth time. And a man like Lebranche, given to thinking in nautical terms, may have associated a certain finality with the notion of going down for a fourth time.
事情并没有发生。最初有几笔小额交易以100的价格迅速进行，随后又有几笔涉及更大交易量的交易。整体来看，当时约有一半这价格的股票供应被买走。就在这时，Dreyfus公司的地板合伙人约翰·J·克兰利悄然走入15号交易站的人群中，以100的价格出价购买1万股电话公司股票，这正好能清空所有供应，从而为进一步涨价铺平道路。克兰利并没有说明他是否在代表他的公司、其客户，或者是由Dreyfus公司通过其子公司管理的共同基金——Dreyfus基金进行竞价。订单的规模暗示这可能是Dreyfus基金的操作。不论如何，Lebranche需要做的就是接受报价，并在两人纪录交易后，交易即告完成，之后电话公司股票再也买不到100这个价格了。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
It did not happen. Several small transactions at 100 were made in rapid succession, followed by several more, involving larger volume. All together, about half the supply of the stock at that price was gone when John J. Cranley, floor partner of Dreyfus in company, moved unobtrusively into the crowd at post-15 and bid 100 for 10,000 shares of telephone, just enough to clear out the supply, and thus pave the way for a further rise. Cranley did not say whether he was bidding on behalf of his firm, one of its customers, or the Dreyfus fund, a mutual fund that Dreyfus in company managed through one of its subsidiaries. The size of the order suggests that the principal was the Dreyfus fund. In any case, Lebranche needed only to say sold, and as soon as the two men had made notations of it, the transaction was completed, whereupon telephone could no longer be bought for 100.
尽管不是发生在德拉维加时代，但历史上确实有这样一个先例：通过一笔大规模的股票交易来影响或试图影响市场。1929年10月24日下午一点半，被金融史称为“黑色星期四”的可怕一天，时任证券交易所代理主席，也是交易平台上最知名的人物理查德·惠特尼，显眼地（有些人说他是神气活现地）走到美国钢铁公司的交易柜台，以205美元的价格，买入了10,000股，这一价格与前一次成交价相同。然而，1929年的这笔交易与1962年的交易有两个至关重要的区别。首先，惠特尼的出价是精心策划的，目的是制造一个影响，而克兰利则是在没有任何特殊标识的情况下，似乎只是为了替德雷福斯基金寻找一个廉价买卖机会。其次，1929年的交易之后，仅出现了短暂的市场回升，接下来一周的损失使得“黑色星期四”看起来不那么严重，而1962年的交易则迎来了真正稳固的市场恢复。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
There is historical precedent, though not from de la Vegas day, for the single large stock exchange transaction that turns the market, or is intended to turn it. At half past one, on October 24, 1929, the dreadful day that has gone down in financial history as Black Thursday, Richard Whitney, then acting president of the exchange, and probably the best-known figure on its floor, strode conspicuously, some say jauntily, up to the post where U.S. Steel was traded, and bid 205, the price of the last sale, for 10,000 shares. But there are two crucial differences between the 1929 trade and the 1962 one. In the first place, Whitney's stagey bid was a calculated effort to create an effect, while Cranley's, delivered without fanfare, was apparently just a move to get a bargain for the Dreyfus Fund. Secondly, only an evanescent rally followed the 1929 deal. The next week's losses made Black Thursday look no worse than gray, while a genuinely solid recovery followed the one in 1962.
这段话的中心思想可能是，在交易所中，心理姿态最有效的时候往往是它们既不是刻意为之，也不是迫切需要的时候。无论如何，总体上涨几乎立刻开始了。在突破100点大关之后，电话公司的股价疯狂上涨。在12:18的时候，它的股价是101又四分之一，到12:41时，是103又二分之一，之后是105，最后达到了106又四分之一。通用汽车的股价从11:46的45又二分之一涨到13:38的50。新泽西标准石油的股价从11:46的46又四分之三升至12:28的51。美国钢铁的股价从11:40的49又二分之一上涨到12:28的52又三分之三。IBM的情况则更为戏剧性。整个上午，由于卖单太多，该公司股票没有进行交易，人们对其最终开盘价的猜测从下跌10点到下跌20或30点不等。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The moral may be that psychological gestures on the exchange are most effective when they are neither intended nor really needed. At all events, a general rally began almost immediately. Having broken through the 100 barrier, telephone leaked wildly upward. At 1218, it was traded at 101 and a quarter, at 1241, at 103 and a half, and at 105, at 106 and a quarter. General Motors went from 45 and a half at 1146, to 50, at 138. Standard Oil of New Jersey went from 46 and three quarters at 1146 to 51 at 128. U.S. Steel went from 49 and a half at 1140 to 52 and 3 eights at 128. IBM was, in its way, the most dramatic case of the lot. All morning its stock had been kept out of trading by an overwhelming preponderance of selling orders, and the guesses as to its ultimate opening price varied from a loss of 10 points to a loss of 20 or 30.
现在，出现了大量的买单，以至于当股票终于在技术上可以交易时，接近下午两点，它在一个3万股的大交易中开盘上涨了四个点。在大约半小时后，也就是在重大的电话交易发生后不久，道琼斯新闻社确信市场正在走强并直言不讳地表示，市场已经转强。确实如此，但市场迅速的转变产生了更多戏剧性。当大盘需要传输一个较长的新闻项目时，比如报道一位知名人士的演讲，它通常会把项目分成一系列短小的部分，然后间隔地传送，这样就可以在其间插入最新的交易所价格等即时新闻。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Now such an avalanche of buying orders appeared that when it was at last technically possible for the stock to be traded, just before two o'clock, it opened up four points on a huge block of 30,000 shares. At 1228, less than half an hour after the big telephone trade, the Dow Jones News Service was sure enough of what was happening to state flatly the market has turned strong. And so it had, but the speed of the turn around produced more irony. When the broad tape has occasion to transmit an extended news item, such as a report on a prominent man's speech, it customarily breaks the item up into a series of short sections, which can then be transmitted at intervals, leaving time in the interstices for such spot news as the latest prices from the exchange floor.
以下是这段文字的中文翻译，力求表达意思并易于理解：
这是5月29日下午早些时候发生的事情，美国商会主席H. 拉德·普卢姆利在国家新闻俱乐部发表演讲，大约在1225时，道琼斯新闻资讯开始报道此事，几乎与报道称市场走势强劲的时间完全一致。随着演讲内容分段出现在广泛传播的资讯上，确实产生了一种奇怪的效果。资讯一开始是报道普卢姆利呼吁对当前企业信心不足进行深思，接下来有几分钟的股价插播，所有的股价都大幅上涨。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
This was what it did during the early afternoon of May 29, with the speech delivered to the National Press Club by H. Lad Plumlee, President of the United States Chamber of Commerce, which began to be reported on the Dow Jones tape at 1225, or at almost exactly the same time that the same news source declared the market to have turned strong. As the speech came out in sections on the broad tape, it created an odd effect indeed. The tape started off by saying that Plumlee had called for a thoughtful appreciation of the present lack of business confidence. At this point, there was an interruption for a few minutes' worth of stock prices, all of them sharply higher.
然后磁带回到普卢姆利，他当时正在热衷于将股市暴跌归咎于两个巧合的不利因素：盈利预期的下降和肯尼迪总统阻止钢铁涨价。接着是一段更长的插曲，充满了令人安心的事实和数据。插曲结束后，普卢姆利又回到了磁带上，继续强调他的主题，现在他的语气中甚至带有了“我早就说过”的意味。他在磁带上说道：“我们刚刚见证了，一个良好的商业环境并不是麦迪逊大道的陈词滥调，而是真正渴望拥有的现实。”如此这般，整个下午都在这样进行着。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Then the tape returned to Plumlee, who was now warming to his task in blaming the stock market plunge on the coincidental impact of two confidence-upsetting factors, a dimming of profit expectations and President Kennedy's quashing of the steel price increase. Then came a longer interruption, chock full of reassuring facts and figures. At its conclusion, Plumlee was back on the tape, hammering away at his theme which had now taken on overtones of, I told you so. We have had an awesome demonstration that the right business climate cannot be brushed off as a Madison Avenue cliché, but is a reality much to be desired, the broad tape quoted him in saying. So it went through the early afternoon.
这对于道琼斯的订阅者来说，肯定是一个令人兴奋的时刻。他们可以一边享受股价上涨的“鱼子酱”，一边品味普卢姆利对肯尼迪政府的“香槟”式评论。在周二的最后一个半小时，交易所的交易节奏达到了最紧张的时刻。据统计，在下午三点之后的最后半小时内，交易量超过了七百万股。在 1962 年被认为是正常时期，这个数字即使对于一整天的交易来说，也是闻所未闻的。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
It must have been a heady time for the Dow Jones subscribers, who could alternately nibble at the caviar of higher stock prices and sip the champagne of Plumlee's jabs at the Kennedy administration. It was during the last hour and a half on Tuesday that the pace of trading on the exchange reached its most frantic. The official count of trades recorded after three o’clock, that is, in the last half hour, came to just over seven million shares. In normal times, as they were reckoned in 1962, an unheard of figure, even for a whole day’s trading.
当收盘钟声响起时，交易大厅再次响起了欢呼声。这次的欢呼比周一响亮得多，因为当天道琼斯指数平均上涨了27.03点，意味几乎追回了周一近四分之三的损失。周一凭空消失的208亿美元中，现在已有135亿美元重新出现。这些令人振奋的数字在收盘几个小时后才公布，但有经验的证券业内人士通过直觉能够准确地预测变化。其中一些人声称，周二收盘时他们心里就感觉到道琼斯指数涨了超过25点，这种说法并非毫无根据。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
When the closing bell sounded, a cheer again rose from the floor. This one a good deal more full-throated than Mondays, because the days gained of 27.03 points in the Dow Jones average meant that almost three-quarters of Monday's losses had been recouped. Of the $20,800 million that had summarily vanished on Monday, $13,500 million had now reappeared. These heartwarming figures weren't available until hours after the close, but experienced securitiesmen are vouchsafed visceral intuitions of surprising statistical accuracy. Some of them claim that at Tuesday's closing they could feel in their guts a Dow Jones gain of over 25 points, and there is no reason to dispute their claim.
当时的气氛很愉快，但工作时间很长。由于交易量增多，股票市场的行情价格自动记录机滴滴作响，灯光比星期一晚得更久。当天最后一笔交易的打印时间为晚上8点15分，比实际发生晚了四个三刻钟。第二天是阵亡将士纪念日，本应是证券行业的休息日，但事实并非如此。经验丰富的华尔街老手认为，假日恰好落在危机中期，使得过于激动的情绪有冷静的机会，这可能是阻止危机变成灾难的最大因素。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The mood was cheerful then, but the hours were long. Because of the greater trading volume, tickers ticked and lights burned even farther into the night than they had on Monday. The exchange tape did not print the day's last transaction until 815, four and three-quarters hours after it had actually occurred. Nor did the next day, Memorial Day, turn out to be a day off for the securities business. Wise old Wall Streeters had expressed the opinion that the holiday, falling by happy chants in the middle of the crisis, and thus providing an opportunity for the cooling of overheated emotions, may have been the biggest factor in preventing the crisis from becoming a disaster.
这件事情无疑为证券交易所及其会员组织提供了一个机会，让他们在假期期间坚持在各自岗位上，开始收拾残局。成千上万的客户以为自己以50美元买入了美国钢铁，然而后来却发现实际上支付了54或55美元，这种令人困惑的延迟报价效应必须被解释清楚。另一些顾客的投诉则没有那么容易解决。一家券商发现它同时发送到交易大厅的两笔订单——一笔是按当前价格买入电话股份，另一笔是按当前价格卖出同等数量的股份——结果卖家每股获得了102美元，而买家却支付了108美元。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
What it indubitably did provide was a chance for the stock exchange and its member organizations, all of whom had been directed to remain at their battle stations over the holiday, to begin picking up the pieces. The insidious effects of a late tape had to be explained to thousands of naive customers who thought they had bought U.S. Steel at, say, 50, only to find later that they had paid 54 or 55. The complaints of thousands of other customers could not be so easily answered. One brokerage house discovered that two orders it had sent to the floor at precisely the same time, one to buy telephone at the prevailing price, the other to sell the same quantity at the prevailing price, had resulted in the sellers getting 102 per share for his stock, and the buyers paying 108 for his.
由于发生了一件似乎让人怀疑供需法则有效性的事件，这家经纪公司受到了严重的震动。经过调查，他们发现买入订单在交易高峰时被暂时遗忘，直到股价上涨了六点才到达15号交易台。由于这个失误不是客户的责任，因此经纪公司支付了他所差的金额。至于证券交易所本身，他们在周三需要处理各种问题，其中包括让加拿大广播公司的一组电视工作人员满意。这个团队因为忘记了美国在5月30日有假日的习俗，特地从蒙特利尔飞下来，想要拍摄周三的交易情况。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Badly shaken by a situation that seemed to cast doubt on the validity of the law of supply and demand, the brokerage house made inquiries, and found that the buying order had got temporarily lost in the crush, and had failed to reach post 15 until the price had gone up six points. Since the mistake had not been the customers, the brokerage firm paid him the difference. As for the stock exchange itself, it had a variety of problems to deal with on Wednesday, among them that of keeping happy a team of television men from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, who, having forgotten all about the United States custom of observing a holiday on May 30, had flown down from Montreal to take pictures of Wednesday's action on the exchange.
与此同时，交易所的官员们不得不思考周一和周二行情播报滞后的问题。大家一致认为，这个问题几乎是历史上最严重的技术问题的核心原因，甚至可能是直接原因。交易所在事后详细说明了他们的立场，实际上是在抱怨危机比预期提前了两年到来。交易所承认，现有设施并未能以正常的速度和效率为所有投资者提供服务，并以一贯保守的态度表示，预计1964年将安装一个速度几乎是当前两倍的行情播报系统。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
At the same time, exchange officials were necessarily pondering the problem of Mondays and Tuesdays scandalously laggard ticker, which everyone agreed had been at the very heart of, if not indeed the cause of, the most nearly catastrophic technical snarl in history. The exchange's defense of itself, later set down in detail, amounts, in effect, to a complaint that the crisis came two years too soon. It would be inaccurate to suggest that all investors were served with normal speed and efficiency by existing facilities, the exchange conceded with characteristic conservatism, and went on to say that a ticker with almost twice the speed of the present one was expected to be ready for installation in 1964.
事实上，新安装在其他各种自动化设备上的新打字机，基本上按时进行，表现得异常有效，以至于1968年4月那段疯狂的交易速度也几乎没有出现明显的延迟。1962年的飓风袭击了正在施工中的避难所这一事实，被交易所认为可能是一种讽刺。周四早上仍然有很多令人担忧的因素。在经历了一段恐慌性抛售后，市场往往会报复性反弹，然后继续下跌。许多经纪人回忆起，1929年10月30日，在历史上创纪录的两天下跌之后，正是在随后持续多年并引发大萧条的真正灾难性下跌开始之前，道琼斯指数曾上涨28.40点，这种反弹与当前的情况有着不祥的相似。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In fact, the new ticker in various other automation devices, duly installed, more or less on time, proved to be so heroically effective that the fantastic trading pace of April 1968 was handled with only negligible tape delays. The fact that the 1962 hurricane hit, while the shelter was under construction, was characterized by the exchange as, perhaps, ironic. There are still plenty of cause for concern on Thursday morning. After a period of panic selling, the market has a habit of bouncing back dramatically, and then resuming its slide. More than one broker recalled that on October 30, 1929, immediately after the all-time record two-day decline, and immediately before the start of the truly disastrous slide that was to continue for years and precipitate the Great Depression, the Dow Jones gain had been 28.40, representing a rebound ominously comparable to this one.
换句话说，市场有时仍然受到 De La Vega 所称的“反向震荡”现象的影响。“反向震荡”指的是市场有逆转的倾向，而后又逆转逆转，如此反复。采用“反向震荡”分析体系的人可能会认为市场即将再次大跌。但实际上，情况并非如此。星期四这一天，股票价格稳步有序地上涨。开市几分钟后，大范围的新闻传播开来，称经纪商们接到大量买入订单，其中许多来自南美洲、亚洲和通常活跃在纽约股市的西欧国家。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In other words, the market still suffers at times from what De La Vega clinically called anti-parastasis. The tendency to reverse itself, then reverse the reversal, and so on. A follower of the anti-parastasis system of security analysis might have concluded that the market was now poised for another dive. As things turned out, of course, it wasn't. Thursday was a day of steady orderly rises in stock prices. Minutes after the ten o'clock opening, the broad tape spread the news that brokers everywhere were being deluged with buying orders, many of them coming from South America, Asia, and the Western European countries that are normally active in the New York stock market.
订单仍然源源不断地从四面八方涌来，十点五十左右时，广泛市场报告兴奋地宣布。损失的钱仿佛魔法般地重现，并且还有更多收益在赶来的路上。接近两点时，道琼斯市场报告，从狂喜转为无忧无虑，还抽空报告了一则关于弗洛伊德·帕特森对阵桑尼·利斯顿的拳击赛计划。欧洲市场在回应纽约的上涨时也猛涨，就像之前在下跌时一样。纽约的铜期货已收复了周一和周二早上的损失的80%以上，因此智利的财政状况大部分得到了缓解。至于道琼斯工业平均指数收盘时为613.36，意味着本周的损失已完全弥补，甚至还有些许盈余。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Orders still pouring in from all directions, the broad tape announced exultantly just before eleven. Lost money was magically reappearing, and more was on the way. Shortly before two o'clock, the Dow Jones tape, having proceeded from euphoria to insouciance, took time off from market reports to include a note on plans for a boxing match between Floyd Patterson and Sonny Liston. Markets in Europe, reacting to New York on the upturn, just as they had on the downturn, had risen sharply. New York copper futures had recovered over 80 percent of their Monday and Tuesday morning losses, so Chile's treasury was mostly bailed out. As for the Dow Jones industrial average at closing, it figured out to 613.36, meaning that the week's losses had been wiped out in total, with a little bit to spare.
危机已经结束。用摩根的说法，市场已经波动过了。用德拉维加的说法，反效应已经显现出来。整个夏天，甚至到了第二年，证券分析师和其他专家们都在努力解释事情的经过，而这些分析如此富有逻辑、严肃认真且详细，以至于即便大多数作者在危机发生前对其毫无预见也只削弱了他们的观点的一点说服力。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The crisis was over. In Morgan's terms, the market had fluctuated. In De La Vega's terms, anti-parastasis had been demonstrated. All that summer, and even into the following year, security analysts and other experts cranked out their explanations of what had happened, and so great, with the logic, solemnity, and detail of these diagnoses, that they lost only a little of their force through the fact that hardly any of the authors had had the slightest idea what was going to happen before the crisis occurred.
纽约证券交易所提供了一份可能是关于导致危机的卖出行为最权威、最详细的报告。这份报告是通过向其个人和公司会员发送详细调查问卷后得到的。证券交易所计算发现，在危机发生的三天中，美国农村地区的市场活动比平时活跃，女性投资者卖出的股票是男性投资者的两倍半，外国投资者也比平时活跃得多，占总交易量的5.5%，并且总体来说，他们大量抛售了股票。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Probably the most scholarly and detailed report on who did the selling that caused the crisis was furnished by the New York Stock Exchange itself, which began sending elaborate questionnaires to its individual and corporate members immediately after the commotion was over. The exchange calculated that during the three days of the crisis, rural areas of the country were more active in the market than they customarily are, that women investors had sold two and a half times as much stock as men investors, that foreign investors were far more active than usual, accounting for 5.5% of the total volume, and on balance were substantial sellers.
最引人注目的是，交易所所指的“公众个人”，即个人投资者（而不是机构投资者），在整个事件中扮演了惊人的角色，占据了前所未有的56.8%的交易量。在我们习惯的描述中，这些人会被称为“私人个人”而非来自华尔街。他们的参与程度令人震惊。具体来说，交易所对这些“公众个人”按照收入类别进行了分析，发现年收入超过25,000美元的家庭是最大的卖家，并且频繁进行卖出交易。而年收入低于10,000美元的家庭，在周一和周二早盘卖出股票之后，周四又购买了大量股票，结果在这三天期间他们实际上成了净买家。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Most striking of all, that what the exchange calls public individuals, individual investors as opposed to institutional ones, which is to say people who would be described anywhere but on Wall Street as private individuals, played an astonishingly large role in the whole affair, accounting for an unprecedented 56.8% of the total volume. Breaking down the public individuals into income categories, the exchange calculated that those with family incomes of over $25,000 a year were the heaviest and most insistent sellers, while those with incomes under $10,000 after selling on Monday and early on Tuesday bought so many shares on Thursday that they actually became net buyers over the three-day period.
此外，根据交易所的计算，大约有一百万股，即在这三天内总交易量的3.5%，是因为追加保证金通知而被出售的。总的来看，如果说有“反派”存在的话，似乎是那些与证券行业无关的相对富有的投资者，而这些投资者当中女性、农村地区或外国背景的比例，比预期的要高。在很多情况下，这些投资者有部分资金是通过借贷来参与市场的。令人惊讶的是，扮演“英雄”角色的，竟然是市场中最让人心生畏惧的尚未经过考验的力量——共同基金。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Furthermore, according to the exchange's calculations, about a million shares, or 3.5% of the total volume during the three days, were sold as a result of margin calls. In sum, if there was a villain, it appeared to have been the relatively rich investor not connected with the securities business, and more often than might have been expected, the female, rural, or foreign one. In many cases, playing the market partly on borrowed money. The role of the hero was filled, surprisingly, by the most frightening of untested forces in the market, the mutual funds.
交易所的统计数据显示，周一股价暴跌时，基金买入的股票数量比卖出的多53万股，而周四，一般投资者争相购买股票时，基金净卖出了37.5万股。换句话说，基金不仅没有加剧市场波动，反而充当了稳定市场的力量。关于这种意想不到的稳定作用具体是如何产生的，目前仍存在争议。由于没有人认为基金是在危机中出于公益心而行动，因此可以合理推测，基金在周一购买是因为基金经理发现股价有了低价优惠，而在周四卖出则是趁机兑现了利润。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The exchange's statistics showed that on Monday, when prices were plunging, the funds bought 530,000 more shares than they sold, while on Thursday, when investors in general were stumbling over each other trying to buy stock, the funds on balance sold 375,000 shares. In other words, far from increasing the market's fluctuation, the funds actually served as a stabilizing force. Exactly how this unexpectedly benign effect came about remains a matter of debate. Since no one has been heard to suggest that the funds acted out of sheer public spiritedness during the crisis, it seems safe to assume that they were buying on Monday because their managers had spotted bargains and were selling on Thursday because of chances to cash in on profits.
关于赎回的问题，正如人们所担心的那样，当市场崩盘时，有大批共同基金的持有者要求将他们的钱以现金方式赎回，总金额达数百万美元。但显然，这些共同基金持有大量现金，因此大多数情况下它们可以在不大量抛售股票的情况下偿还持有者。总体来看，这些基金非常富有且管理保守，因此它们不仅能够经受住市场风暴，甚至还因为意外之喜减少了市场动荡的程度。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
As for the problem of redemptions, there were, as had been feared, a large number of mutual fund shareholders who demanded millions of dollars of their money in cash when the market crashed. But apparently the mutual funds had so much cash on hand that in most cases they could pay off their shareholders without selling substantial amounts of stock. Taken as a group, the funds proved to be so rich and so conservatively managed that they not only could weather the storm, but, by happy inadvertent could do something to decrease its violence.
翻译成中文，尽量易读：
至于未来某次风暴中是否会出现相同的情况，那是另一回事。最后分析，1962年危机的原因仍然深不可测。已知的是，那次危机发生了，而且类似的事情可能再次发生。正如华尔街一位匿名的老预言家最近所说，我很担心，但我从未认为这会是另一个1929年。我从未说过道琼斯指数会跌到400点。我说的是500点。重点是，现在与1929年不同，无论是共和党政府还是民主党政府，都意识到必须关注企业的需求。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Whether the same conditions would exist in some future storm was, and is, another matter. In the last analysis, the cause of the 1962 crisis remains unfathomable. What is known is that it occurred, and that something like it could occur again. As one of Wall Street's aged, ever anonymous seers put it recently, I was concerned, but at no time did I think it would be another 1929. I never said the Dow Jones would go down to 400. I said 500. The point is that now, in contrast to 1929, the government, Republican or Democratic, realizes that it must be attentive to the needs of business.
华尔街将不会再有卖苹果的人，不是因为五月那件事不会重演。实际上，这种事当然可能会再次发生。我认为人们可能会谨慎一两年，但随后我们可能会看到另一轮投机热潮，紧接着又是一次崩盘，如此反复，直到上帝让人们变得不那么贪婪。正如德拉维加所说，当你尝过甜美的蜂蜜后，认为自己可以轻易从交易中退出是愚蠢的。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
There will never be Apple sellers on Wall Street again as to whether what happened that may can happen again. Of course it can. I think that people may be more careful for a year or two, and then we may see another speculative buildup followed by another crash and so on, until God makes people less greedy. Or as De La Vega said, it is foolish to think that you can withdraw from the exchange after you have tasted the sweetness of the honey.