热身词语

　　carpenter: a person who works with wood/makes wooden products

　　bricklayer: a person who lays bricks/builds houses of bricks

　　roofer: someone who makes roofs/covers roofs with all-weather materials

　　I loved building houses. It's really a marvelous thing. You work with people that work with their hands. When the carpenters come in to work, goddamn it, they're good. When the bricklayers came in, they gotta know their job. I had a roofer, a Norwegian or whatever the hell he was-when he went up on that roof and he bucked that stuff there, man, you knew you were gonna have the best roof you ever had on a house. I didn't cheat on the house. I sold my own houses, wouldn't turn them over to an agent. I enjoyed doing that more than anything I ever enjoyed in my life. I don't know why I didn't continue it.

　　the World's Fair: a big exhibition -such as the World Expo

　　shambles: complete mess/complete failure

　　with a whole skin unwounded: (=with a whole skin) unwounded

　　I invested in a hotel. It had 101 keys. I got fascinated with hotels, the operation of it, how it was put together, who came, who went. I came out with a quarter of a million and I built my own hotel-alongside the World's Fair grounds. We did the biggest job of any motel at the fair. In two years the fair was a shambles. The area was a desert, death. I walked away with a whole skin unwounded but gave the hotel back to the bank.

　　fiddle around with: not take something seriously; idle about

　　mumbo jumbo: nonsense/unrealistic

　　While I was fiddlin' around with the hotel I began to play the market. I got lucky at some point and made about a hundred thousand dollars. That convinced me I could make this my way of life. I thought it would be a nice way to live. I began to study to be a stockbroker. I passed the exam. You learn the ethical side of the business, what you can and can't do. It's all mumbo jumbo.

　　gentile: non-Jewish people (a Jewish word for all non-Jewish people)

　　Larchmont: a US town

　　Westport: a US town

　　I really thought of the market as a sort of river. Money running to the sea. I figured all I had to do is just stand on that bank and lower a bucket every once in a while and take a little bit of that out. I didn't care how much these gentle gentiles, with those little briefcases under their arms, took back to Larchmont or how much went up to Westport. I figured they're gonna let me lower my bucket. But they don't let anybody lower a bucket.

　　goody: something particularly attractive, pleasant, or desirable

　　rig: arrange an event dishonestly for one's own advantage

　　intrinisic value: real powerful value (money or emotional value)

　　I'm afraid the work of a stockbroker is superfluous. He did have a function at one time, when little people were allowed in the market and given a chance to share in part of the goodies. The market really is a game played by very skilled people, who accumulate stocks at low levels so they can be distributed at high. The market is rigged. Knowledgeable people buy certain stocks, whether they have intrinsic value or not, and at some later hour the public is told these stocks represent good values and should be purchased.

　　ticker tape: the share price that runs across the bottom of a TV/computer screen

　　avidly: eagerly, concentrating really hard on doing/watching/listening to something

　　immersed: just concentrating on doing one thing --- or totally into something, such as being totally covered in water - "immersed in water"

　　It's up at six thirty, I read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal before eight. I read the Dow Jones ticker tape between eight and ten. At three thirty, when the market closes, I work until four thirty or five. I put in a great deal of technical work. I listen to news reports avidly. I try to determine what's happening. I'm totally immersed in what I'm doing. For the amount of work and intelligence I bring to this job, I'm not being properly compensated. I make a routine living now. The only compensation is like me against the machine. I'm trying to use my intelligence against the wheel.

　　get even: in this case, not lose money

　　humped: pushed around; treated badly and unfairly

　　People who go into the market are committed to losing money. They don't blame the broker. They don't blame the machine, which is rigged against them. The moment you buy a stock, you're hooked. You're gonna pay a commission on the way in or on the way out. Normally that's a sizable percentage. The stock has to move up at least a point and a quarter for you to get even. If you bought a stock at , it has to move to .35 before you'd get even. You're being humped before you even get around the corner. The moment you buy that stock, you're a loser.

　　invulnerability: that no one can do anything bad to them

　　Maybe if I was twenty, twenty-five years and I came out of Harvard Business School and I believed bullshit, which is packaged and wrapped . . . Wall Street, Madison Avenue. The people even look the same. They really believe in their invulnerability. They believe their own success story. I don't believe it. That's a hell of an argument to be a broker. In a crazy way I do a service. I try to give such customers as I have a rational explanation for an investment. I try ...

　　a hell of a sight: an amazing thing to see

　　I try to perform a function that has some meaning. I try to take somebody's money and not make shit out of it. If a banker's taking your money and giving you five percent and he's earning twelve percent on it, there should be a better way for the little man to participate. He should do a hell of a sight better than giving it to an insurance company or a bank. It shouldn't be that rigged. He should have a chance to get a fair return on that money. He's worked for it. Somebody else shouldn't be able to use that money and get a twelve percent return while paying the little guy five in front.

　　smash: really big success

　　The real money made in the market is being made by people with real wealth. I'll say, "If you give me five thousand dollars, I can make you a ten percent return. If we're pretty good, maybe I can get you twenty percent. If it's a smash, maybe we'll double it." But the only way you're gonna make a million dollars is to start with a million dollars.

　　octopus: eight-legged underwater animal, like a squid

　　I'm trying to use my intelligence, which I've exercised in other businesses. But its like wrestling with an octopus. Too many things that I can't control are happening. I can tell you what happened after the fact, but it's very difficult to tell you before the fact. The market never really repeats itself exactly in the same way day after day. There is similarity over the years.

　　a house of cards: a structure that may look strong, but that has very weak foundations

　　It's really an illusion. It's only real because enough people believe it's real. The whole market is based on a premise-potential growth. You can put any kind of multiple on a stock. If a stock earns a dollar a year, it sells for a hundred. It's selling at a hundred times its earning capacity. If you believe the stock is a reflection of some future experience, that you can invest in a hundred times its earning capacity and that you will subsequently benefits you qualify as a true believer. But the moment you question that premise, the whole thing collapses like a house of cards. You have to buy this whole crazy fiction or there would be no market.

　　cynicism: a pessimistic attitude to life

　　People like me start out with a feeling that there's a place for them in society, that they really have a useful function. They see it destroyed by the cynicism of the market. A piece of worthless stock can be given glamour and many people may be induced to buy it. Excitement, public relations. The people can be wiped out with the absolute cynicism that brings those who conceived it to the top.

　　buck this machine: do sth. to resist the complicated system

　　Can you imagine? I really felt I could buck this machine. When I began, I was sure I could win. I no longer have that confidence. What's happening is so extraordinary. It's so much bigger than I am.

　　manipulate: if you are manipulated, you are skillfully forced or persuaded to do what the others want

　　When I built the houses, I hired a bricklayer, I hired the roofer, I determined who put the goddamned thing together. And when I handed somebody a key, the house was whole. I made it happen. I can't do it in the market. I'm just being manipulated and moved around and I keep pretending I can understand it, that I can somehow cope with it. The truth is I can't. Oh, I'd like one morning to wake up and go to some work that gave me joy. If I could build houses all over again, I would do it. Because when it's finished, somebody's gonna live in it, and the house is gonna be built and it's gonna be there after I'm gone.