看看大MM是怎麽玩的. (中譯本不準, 請諒)

The Blow-Up Artist
Can Victor Niederhoffer survive another market crisis?
《破產的藝術家——維克多·尼德霍夫能再一次在市場危機中生存嗎？》
by John Cassidy
作者：約翰·卡西迪
October 15, 2007
2007年10月15日
翻譯：張軼 2009年01月31日
翻譯目的：尼德霍夫是索羅斯的合作夥伴，出版了2本書《投機者養成教育》和《投機實戰》。長陽論壇有人建議我翻譯。
Niederhoffer’s approach is eclectic. His funds, a friend says, appeal “to people like him: self-made people who have a maverick streak.”
尼德霍夫的方法是折中的。一個朋友評論他的基金：“容易吸引他這樣的人：自己自足的異端派。”
Keywords
Niederhoffer, Victor; Hedge Funds; Stock Market; Investors, Investing; Manchester Trading; Squash; “Practical Speculation”
關鍵詞
維克多·尼德霍夫，對衝基金，股市，投資者，投資，曼徹斯特交易公司，打壓，《投機實戰》。
On a wall opposite Victor Niederhoffer’s desk is a large painting of the Essex, a Nantucket whaling ship that sank in the South Pacific in 1820, after being attacked by a giant sperm whale, and that later served as the inspiration for “Moby-Dick.” The Essex’s captain, George Pollard, Jr., survived, and persuaded his financial backers to give him another ship, but he sailed it for little more than a year before it foundered on a coral reef. Pollard was ruined, and he ended his days as a night watchman. The painting, which Niederhoffer, a sixty-three-year-old hedge-fund manager, acquired after losing all his clients’ money—and a good deal of his own—in the Thai stock market crash of 1997, serves as an admonition against the incaution to which he, a notorious risktaker, is prone, and as a reminder of the precariousness of his success.
尼德霍夫辦公桌對麵的牆上有一副大油畫，名字叫艾塞克斯號，這艘船1820年在南太平洋被一條巨大的抹象鯨攻擊後沉沒了，這個事件為小說《白鯨》提供了創作靈感。艾塞克斯號的船長喬治·波拉德生存下來了，他成功地勸說他的投資方又幫他買了一艘船，一年後又裝到了珊瑚礁。波拉德的事業毀了，後來他隻好去做看門的人。63歲的對衝基金經理尼德霍夫在1987年泰國股市蹦盤中把客戶的錢虧光了——自己的錢也虧了很多，他就得到了這幅畫，作為對自己冒險行為的警戒。
Niederhoffer has been a professional investor for nearly three decades, during which he has made and lost several fortunes—typically by relying on methods that other traders consider reckless or unorthodox or both. In the nineteen-seventies, he wrote one of the first software programs to identify profitable trades. In the early eighties, he went into business with George Soros, then arguably the world’s most successful investor. A few years later, when prominent money managers were based almost exclusively in Manhattan, Niederhoffer moved his home and his trading room to Connecticut, to a twenty-thousand-square-foot neo-Tudor mansion crammed with books, manuscripts, silver jewelry, art work, and a collection of seashells. The walls of his vast living room, which has a ceiling about thirty feet high, are covered with more than two dozen paintings, many depicting industrial landscapes or Western shoot-’em-ups, and the floor is occupied by, among other objects, a large painted pony, a black-spotted wooden hound carrying three quail on its back, a seated pig, and two miniature black bears. Niederhoffer’s home is also frequently occupied by various of his children. (He has six daughters and an infant son, from two marriages and an extramarital relationship.)
尼德霍夫總是采用其他交易認為是魯莽的，不正常的方法，在他接近30年的事業生涯中，他幾次大起大落。他在70年代編了一個軟件，以找到確認賺錢的交易。他在80年代初和喬治·索羅斯合作，然後又和全世界最成功的交易者合作。幾年後，當著名的基金經理都把基地設立在曼哈頓時，他把家和交易室搬到了康涅狄格州2000平方英尺的新都鐸風格的大房子，裏麵布滿了書，手稿，銀飾，藝術品還海貝。客廳很大，屋頂有35英尺高，牆上有20多幅油畫，很多是關於工業風景或西部槍戰，地板上有很多東西，還有多種油畫，小馬，背上馱著3隻鵪鶉的黑點獵狗，坐著的豬，2隻迷你黑熊。很多小孩經常去參觀尼德霍夫的家。（他有6個女兒，一個很小的兒子，這些孩子來自他的2次婚姻和1次婚外情。）
After the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Niederhoffer was forced out of business for several years. Then, in his late fifties, he made a dramatic recovery. He founded three new hedge funds and launched a Web site, DailySpeculations.com, where he posts his idiosyncratic insights into the stock market—“What can we learn from shelled species about the markets?” he wrote in May—as well as opinions about sports, politics, and culture (“ ‘The Fantasticks,’ currently running as a revival on Broadway, is the perfect musical”). He has mentored dozens of successful traders, many of whom regard him as a guru. “Before I joined Victor, I used to trade for a Wall Street firm,” James Lackey, a self-employed Florida investor who placed trades for Niederhoffer from 2002 to 2006, told me. “But I quickly realized that I didn’t know very much. What he taught me was how to approach the market as a whole, and how to analyze it scientifically. He was just amazing at seeing what was happening and showing us how to make money.”
1997年亞洲金融危機以後，尼德霍夫幾年無所事事。然後，在50多歲時，他的事業又回複了。他成立3隻對衝基金，並開了一個網站：dailyspeculation.com，他在這個網站發表自己獨特的股市觀點。“我們從市場的稀有品種學到了什麽？”他在5月寫道——就像關於體育，政治和文化的觀點一樣（百老匯正在上演的《異想天開》是不錯的音樂劇。）他培養了幾十個成功的交易者，很多人把他當作大師。有一個個人投資者叫詹姆士·拉克，他2002年到2006年替尼德霍夫下單，他告訴我：“我以前為華爾街的公司打工，後來為維克多做事。但我發現自己懂的東西不多。他叫我用整體的觀點理解市場，並科學地分析市場。他很神奇地教我們賺錢。”
Niederhoffer, a former national squash champion who is considered one of the most talented Americans to have played the game, relishes the acclaim, but he knows that in his field circumstances can change quickly. By the end of August, his funds were in trouble, and on Wall Street rumors circulated that he would soon be out of business again. Niederhoffer had been worried all summer, but he tried to project a wry, self-deprecating humor. “If an event like 1997 occurred again, my dependents would be up the creek, and I would be a night watchman somewhere, just like Captain Pollard,” he said to me when I visited him at his home one morning in June. “In America, they give you a second chance but not a third.”
尼德霍夫過去是壁球冠軍，有人認為他是最有天賦的球員之一，雖然他很喜歡這個說法，但他知道他所在的環境變化很快。到了8月底，他的基金出了麻煩，華爾街流言說他又要破產了。整個夏天，尼德霍夫都很擔心，但是他自我解嘲地說：“如果像1997年的事再次發生，我就慘了，我可能就要像波拉德船長一樣去看門了。”6月的一天，我去他家參觀，他告訴我：“在美國，他們會給你第二次機會，但不會給你第三次機會。”
Tall and trim (he still looks like an athlete), with closely cropped white hair, olive skin, and a long, expressive face, Niederhoffer speaks softly, with a strong Brooklyn accent. He was wearing a yellow shirt, pink trousers, and white socks, but no shoes—he maintains a “no shoes” rule in the office, to reduce noise—and was sitting behind his desk, which is dominated by two Bloomberg screens, in a large room over the garage which he shares with his partner, Steve Wisdom, and several members of his company, Manchester Trading. (The trading operation fits into two rooms; the other one is over the kitchen.) In one hand, he was holding a telephone receiver, and his light-blue eyes were fixed on the computer screens. “The market’s way down today,” he said by way of greeting. Turning back to the telephone and addressing his broker at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, he asked, “Can you repeat those quotes, please?” After a few seconds, he said, “I’ll sell two hundred red March at five hundred and ten. I’ll sell two hundred blue March at eleven ten.”
尼德霍夫又高又瘦（看起來還像運動員），白色的頭發齊齊的，橄欖色的皮膚，臉比較長，表情豐富，他說話聲音低，帶有強烈的布魯克林口音。他穿著黃色的襯衫，但不穿鞋——他在辦公室不穿鞋，目的是為了減少噪音——他坐在桌子後麵，桌子上麵有2個大屏幕，顯示著報價行情，在停車房上麵有個大房間，他和史蒂夫·威斯頓以及其他一些曼徹斯特交易公司的同事在一起交易。（他們分在兩個房間，其他人則在廚房的上麵的房間。）另一方麵，他還拿著電話，藍色的眼睛盯著屏幕。他一邊迎接我，一邊說：“今天市場跌了。”他轉過身，繼續和芝加哥商業交易所的經紀人通話，他問：“請你再講一下報價，好嗎？”幾秒鍾後，他說：“我將在510賣出200份5月份紅色合約。我將在1110賣出200份3月份藍色。”
The Chicago Merc is a futures market, where people trade contracts that give them the right to purchase a particular commodity at a specified date in the future. Originally, the items traded on the exchange were physical commodities, such as eggs, butter, and pigs, and its main customers were farmers and food companies. In recent decades, futures trading has become more abstract; professional speculators now use the exchange to place bets on the prices of financial securities, such as stocks, bonds, and currencies—a development that Niederhoffer, a former math prodigy who has a Ph.D. in economics, has exploited. He likes to be at his desk well before the Chicago market opens, especially on days when he has big positions riding overnight. He is mainly a short-term operator—he bets on how prices will move in the subsequent few minutes, hours, or days—and most of his knowledge of current events comes from Bloomberg. (He doesn’t read newspapers or watch television.) When he arrives at his office, he turns on his computer and reads about developments in the Asian and European markets, which often foreshadow the day’s action in the United States.
芝加哥商業交易所是期貨市場，人們交易的合約約定人們在將來特定的日期交割一定的商品。最初，市場隻交易實物，比如雞蛋，油和豬，主要客戶是農民和食品公司。最近幾十年，期貨交易變得更加抽象，專業的投機者在賭金融證券的價格，比如股票，債券，外匯——尼德霍夫過去是經濟學博士，還是數學天才，他就交易這些東西。他喜歡在開盤的時候坐在桌子前麵，尤其是頭天晚上持有很多的倉位的時候。他基本上是短線交易者——他賭價格在幾分鍾，幾小時或幾天內的變化——他大部分市場事件知識來自彭博社。（他不看報紙，不看電視。）當他到辦公室的時候，他打開電腦，了解亞洲和歐洲的市場情況，這些市場預示了美國市場的當天行為。
At the end of the previous week, the yield on ten-year Treasury bonds had surged to almost five per cent, prompting Niederhoffer to turn uncharacteristically bearish on stocks. Once the bond yield reached five per cent, he had reasoned, some investors would move their money from stocks to bonds, which would depress stock prices. Accordingly, he had sold short more than a billion dollars’ worth of stock futures. (Selling short, a common tactic among speculators, involves selling something you don’t own with the intention of buying it back later, at a cheaper price. If the price of the security falls while you are “short,” you make a profit; if the price rises, you lose money.)
上個周末，10年期債券幾乎漲了5%，促使尼德霍夫去看空股票。一旦債券漲幅超過5%，他就知道有些投資者會把資金從股票轉移到債券，這樣就打壓了股票的價格。故，他已經做空了10億多的股指期貨。（做空是投機者的普遍戰術，也就是賣出你並不擁有的東西，然後再更便宜的價格買回來。如果證券的價格在你做空之後下跌了，你就賺錢了，如果價格漲了，你就虧錢了。）
Even by Niederhoffer’s generous standards, going short a billion dollars of stock futures was a large bet, but it worked out well. Not long after the markets reopened on Monday, the bond yield climbed to five per cent, and stocks and stock futures tumbled. On Wednesday, the morning of my visit, shortly after the opening bell sounded on Wall Street, Niederhoffer repurchased the futures he had sold, making more than five million dollars.
即使按照尼德霍夫的標準，做空10億美元的股指期貨也是賭博，但是結果很賺錢。當周一開市時，債券漲了5%，股票和股指期貨則下跌。到了周三我參觀的時候，也就是華爾街開盤的時候，尼德霍夫買入了他之前做空的期貨，結果賺了500多萬美元。
He didn’t look pleased, though. During the morning, stocks had continued to fall, and he knew that if he had waited he could have made an even bigger profit. He says that in twenty-eight years as a professional investor he hasn’t had a single truly satisfactory trading day. At eleven o’clock, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had slipped about a hundred points and the S. & P. 500 Index was down about thirteen points. Niederhoffer stared morosely at his Bloomberg screens. “The score doesn’t look good,” he muttered. The screens were tracking the movements of various stock-market indices in Europe and Latin America, but I noticed that they weren’t displaying any American prices. Niederhoffer used to invest heavily overseas, but since his 1997 misadventure in Thai stocks he has confined his trading to the United States. He explained that when the U.S. market was falling he preferred to track the DAX, a German stock index that generally moves in synch with the American market. “You can see how much you are losing, but it doesn’t hurt as much as watching the S. & P.,” he said.
但是他看起來並不高興。在那天上午，股票繼續下跌，如果他再等等，他可以賺的更多。他說交易28年來，他沒有一天為自己的交易真正感到滿意。11點時，道瓊斯工業指數跌了100點，標準普爾500股指期貨跌了13點。尼德霍夫愁眉苦臉地看著屏幕上的報價自言自語地說：“我的成績不怎麽樣。”屏幕上顯示了歐洲和拉丁美洲的股市報價，但是我發現沒有美國的報價。尼德霍夫過去喜歡在海外大量投資，但是自從1997年的泰國股市惡運以來，他主要交易美國的市場。他向我解釋說，如果美國股市下跌，他寧願跟蹤德國的股指，因為它一般是跟蹤美國市場的。他說：“你可以知道自己虧了多少，但比看標準普爾股指期貨要好。”
Before long, Niederhoffer cheered up a bit. “There have been three big down opens in a row, which is unusual,” he said. “The market doesn’t like to do the same things repeatedly.” He turned to Alex Castaldo, a thin, bespectacled fifty-three-year-old Italian who has a degree in electrical engineering from M.I.T. and a Ph.D. in finance from CUNY, and asked him to compile some data. “Doc,” he said to Castaldo, “what does the market do when it opens down a lot three days in a row?” A few minutes later, Castaldo handed Niederhoffer a computer printout, which showed that since the start of 2003 there had been just ten occasions on which, for three consecutive days, the S. & P. 500 had fallen sharply in the first hour and a half of trading. On eight of those occasions, stocks had bounced back, with the average market rise by the end of the following trading day amounting to three tenths of one per cent. For a trader like Niederhoffer, who uses leverage—borrowed money—to scale up his bets, the ability to predict even relatively small changes in the market can pay off handsomely.
很快，尼德霍夫就高興了，他說：“市場總是跳空低開，這不尋常。市場不會總是這樣。”他轉向亞曆克斯·卡斯達多，亞曆克斯長的瘦，戴眼鏡，53歲，意大利人，擁有美國理工大學的電氣工程學位和紐約大學的金融博士學位，尼德霍夫叫亞曆克斯處理一些數據：“博士，如果市場連續3天跳空低開很多，市場下一步會如何？”幾分鍾後，卡斯達多把打印件給了尼德霍夫，打印件表明自從2003年以來，標準普爾500股指期貨有10次在1.5個小時內下跌，且跌了3天。有8次股票反彈了，在第4天反彈了百分之一的10分之3。像尼德霍夫這樣的交易者，他使用杠杆——借來的錢——去賭短線，在市場如果有能力預測到一個小辦法都能賺很多錢。
The software that Niederhoffer uses to identify stock-price patterns is a version of the code that he wrote thirty years ago. Many hedge funds and Wall Street banks now rely on such programs to spot potentially lucrative market fluctuations and place orders automatically—a practice known as “black box” investing—but Niederhoffer is scornful of this method. Although markets sometimes move in predictable ways, he says, the patterns change constantly, and reliance on mathematical algorithms can be disastrous. At Manchester Trading, Niederhoffer or Wisdom reviews each trade before it is placed.
尼德霍夫使用的分析軟件是他30年前編的。很多對衝基金和華爾街的銀行都是依靠軟件去找到潛在的賺錢的機會並自動下單——其實就是“黑盒子”投資——但是尼德霍夫看不起這個辦法。他說雖然有時候市場確實和預測的方向一致，但模式總是在變，依靠數學編程可能是災難性的。在曼徹斯特公司，尼德霍夫和威斯頓在下單前都要互相檢查一下。
In this instance, Niederhoffer expected the market to rebound, but he decided to hold off on buying. Morgan Stanley had just issued a notice advising its clients to reduce their stock holdings. “Plus, the Fed has been making bearish noises,” Niederhoffer said. A few minutes earlier, the Dow had dropped below thirteen thousand five hundred. Castaldo went over to Niederhoffer’s Bloomberg and called up some U.S. stock charts. Niederhoffer, looking at the falling lines, announced, “It’s gone down two per cent—that’s enough.” Then he turned to Owen Wilson, a young Englishman who has worked for him for a couple of years. Holding a phone to his ear, Wilson shouted out quotes from the Chicago Merc. “Buy a hundred and fifty at eighteen seventy-five,” Niederhoffer said. Wilson placed the trades and called out more numbers. Again, Niederhoffer told him to buy. Within a few minutes, Wilson had purchased tens of millions of dollars’ worth of stock futures.
此時，尼德霍夫希望市場反彈，但是他不想買入。摩根士坦利剛剛給客戶發了一個顧問通知，叫他們減倉。尼德霍夫說：“另外，美聯儲也發布了看空的噪音。”幾分鍾前，道瓊斯跌到了13500以下。卡斯達多走到尼德霍夫的屏幕前麵，看了幾個美股的圖表。尼德霍夫看著下跌的曲線宣布：“跌了2%——夠了。”然後他轉向歐文·威爾遜，歐文是英國人，已經為他工作了幾年。歐文拿著電話，大聲喊出報價。尼德霍夫說：“在50買入100份，在1875買入150份。”威爾遜下單並報出了更大的數字。然後尼德霍夫叫他再次買入。幾分鍾內，威爾遜就買了幾千萬美元的股指期貨。
Niederhoffer received his first lessons in finance as a child growing up in Brighton Beach. He learned to bet on stoopball, paddleball, and checkers, which he played with other local kids, and with adults who went by nicknames such as Bitter Irving, Bookie, and Nervous Phil. His father, Artie, a New York City cop who spent twenty years on the force before becoming a professor of sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, tried unsuccessfully to dissuade him from gambling. “Everything was a money game,” Niederhoffer told me. “My father hated it, but I loved to win a nickel or a dime.” With the encouragement of his uncle Howie, who was in high school, he also placed wagers on professional sports. In October, 1951, on Yom Kippur, Howie and Victor, who was eight, sneaked out of synagogue and bet eight hundred dollars on the Brooklyn Dodgers, who were playing the New York Giants in a pennant-decider. When Bobby Thomson hit his famous home run, defeating the Dodgers, Howie and Victor were devastated. (The knowledge that only two of the lost dollars were Niederhoffer’s did little to console him.)
尼德霍夫小時候在布萊頓海灘就學到了金融方麵的知識。尼德霍夫和玩伴們玩街頭棒球，扳手球和下棋的時候就知道如何下注，他還和大人玩，包括比特而·歐文，布基和緊張的飛利浦。他爸爸叫阿蒂，過去20年在紐約做警察，然後成為約翰傑司法學院的社會學教授，他爸叫他不要賭博，但是失敗了。尼德霍夫告訴我：“任何事都是關於錢的遊戲。我爸討厭賭博，但是我喜歡去賺點錢。”他的叔叔豪伊支持他，豪伊在中學工作，他喜歡賭馬等體育。1951年10月，贖罪日這天，豪伊和當時8歲的維克多溜出猶太教會，花了800美元去賭布魯克林道奇隊，當時這個隊正在和紐約巨人隊打棒球。當波比·湯姆森打出了著名的本壘打，打敗了道奇隊時，豪伊和維克多就虧光了。（事後來看，這次虧的錢並不多，這對尼德霍夫是一個安慰。）
Niederhoffer says that as far back as the Middle Ages his ancestors were money changers. At the end of the nineteenth century, his paternal great-grandparents moved from Austria to the Lower East Side, where several of their seven sons sold fruit from a horse and cart. Niederhoffer’s grandfather Martie, who had a good head for figures, became an accountant. In the boom years of the nineteen-twenties, Martie borrowed money and invested it in real estate and stocks, assembling a portfolio that made him nearly a millionaire. The stock-market crash of October, 1929, destroyed most of his wealth; two years later, the market dived again, wiping out what he had left.
尼德霍夫說他的祖輩都是金融家。19實際末，他爸爸的曾祖父，曾祖母從澳大利亞移民到東部下城區，他們的7個兒子用馬車賣水果。尼德霍夫的祖父叫馬蒂，他精通數字，做了會計。在20年代的繁榮時期，馬蒂借錢並投資房地產和股市，差點成為百萬富翁。1929年股市崩盤，他把大部分錢都虧了，2年後，股市又跌了，他剩下來的錢也虧了。
Martie, who spoke Yiddish and pidgin Spanish, got a job as a translator in a Brooklyn courthouse. But he retained an interest in the stock market, and in 1954 he financed Victor’s first equity investment: a hundred shares of the Benguet Mining Company, which was trading at fifty cents. For several years, the stock hardly moved. Then, in just a few months, it doubled in value. On Martie’s advice, Victor sold his shares, and made a profit of fifty dollars. During the next thirty-six months, the stock’s value increased to thirty dollars a share. “I have repeated the mistake of grabbing at small profits and selling at a targeted round number over and over in my speculative career,” he wrote in “The Education of a Speculator,” a memoir that he published in 1997. “I believe many others make this same error.”
馬蒂會說依地語和西班牙語，他在布魯克林法院找了一個工作做翻譯。但是他對股市還是有興趣，1954年他資助維克多投資，買了當時價格是50分的班格特礦產公司100股股票。幾個月後，就翻番了。根據馬蒂的建議，維克多把股票賣了，賺了50美元。之後的3年中，股票的價格漲到了每股30美元。他在1997年出版的回憶錄《投機者教育》中寫道：“在我的投機生涯中，我總是犯這樣的錯誤：為了賺點小利潤，在某個整數價位就賣掉了。我知道很多人都容易犯這個錯誤。”
At the age of six, Niederhoffer says, he was such an accomplished paddle-tennis player that he had to spot his opponents fifteen points a game. At thirteen, he defeated a seventeen-year-old to win the New York City junior singles tennis championship. (In school, his competitiveness elicited mixed reactions. At the end of his last year at P.S. 225, his sixth-grade teacher wrote, “Although a little trying at times, you were the spark the class needed this year. You have a keen mind; learn to curb your inclinations to demonstrate superiority.”) At Abraham Lincoln High School on Ocean Parkway, Niederhoffer was the president of his class, the captain of the tennis team, the star of the math team, a pianist in the orchestra, a clarinettist in the band, the sports editor of the newspaper, and a frequent contributor to Vanguard, the school magazine. In an article that appeared in the June, 1958, issue, Niederhoffer warned that automation “will require a complete reorientation” in the attitudes of trade unions. Five months later, displaying a view of government intervention that he would later renounce, he argued that “federal aid to education is imperative if equality of educational opportunity in our democracy is to have real meaning.”
尼德霍夫說他在6歲時網球打的很好，每局比賽他能贏對手15個點。13歲時，他打敗了17歲的對手，贏得了紐約市少年組的網球冠軍。（在學校，他的競爭性引起了不同的反應。他在P.S. 225學校的最後一年裏，他的6年級老師寫道：“雖然有時候需要努力，但你是本班需要的火花。你頭腦敏銳。但要學會不能太招搖。”）在海洋大道上的亞伯拉罕林肯高中，他是班裏的領導人物，網球隊長，數學明星，在管弦樂隊彈鋼琴，吹單簧管，為報紙做體育編輯，為學校的雜誌《先鋒》撰稿。在1958年的6月的一篇文章中，尼德霍夫警告交易自動化：“需要完全的重新定位。”5個月後，他又反對政府的幹預，後來他又否決了，他說：“如果我們的民主說教育機會是平等的，那麽聯邦的教育幹預是專橫的。”
Niederhoffer’s father, whom he idolized, encouraged his athletic and intellectual pursuits, and his mother, Elaine, who was descended from a long line of rabbis, pressed him and his younger brother and sister—now, respectively, a commodity-fund adviser and a psychiatric social worker—to succeed. “My mother was never content,” Niederhoffer told me. “She pushed us to be No. 1.” In January, 1960, at his mother’s urging, he applied to Harvard. In a letter of recommendation, his academic adviser and tennis coach, Milton Hecht, wrote, “Victor ranks among the first in intellectual achievement and promise in comparison with the thousands of students I have taught in the last thirty years.” Harvard awarded him a partial scholarship, as did Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania. Niederhoffer chose Harvard, where he majored in economics.
尼德霍夫的爸爸還是鼓勵他搞體育並發展智力上的追求。他的媽媽叫伊萊恩，祖上都是信猶太教的，他媽總是逼他，他的弟弟和妹妹去成功——他的弟弟現在是商品顧問，他妹妹是精神病方麵的義工。尼德霍夫告訴我：“我媽總是不滿意。她逼我們成為最優秀的。”在1960年1月，在他媽的催促下，他申請到哈佛念書。在推薦信中，他的學校顧問和網球教練米爾頓·赫奇特寫道：“維克多是我過去30年中所教的幾千個學生中最聰明的，最有前途的學生。”哈佛大學給了他部分獎學金，哥倫比亞大學和賓夕法尼亞大學都提出了同樣的條件，他最終選擇了哈佛大學，他的專業是經濟學。
Niederhoffer spent less time in the classroom than he did on the squash court. Until he moved to Cambridge, he had never played squash—or squash racquets, as it was then called—but the physical demands of the game appealed to him. He borrowed every book on squash at the Widener Library, and took some with him to the practice court, where he opened them on the floor and repeatedly copied the moves they described. In 1962, as an eighteen-year-old sophomore, Niederhoffer won the junior championship of the National Intercollegiate Squash Racquets Association. A year later, he won the Harry Cowles tournament, a prestigious competition for amateurs. “He has good size, quickness, and a skillful touch,” his Harvard coach, Jack Barnaby, told the News and Views of Harvard Sports, a campus publication, in January, 1963. “But a lot of players have those attributes. What he has beyond that is one of the most competitive characters I’ve ever seen. He makes you feel like you are watching a person of Ty Cobb’s cut in action again.”
尼德霍夫花在課堂上的時間沒有花在網球上的時間多。他到劍橋大學之前沒有打網球，但是對他來說，非常有吸引力。他到偉德恩圖書館借來所有關於網球的書，並在學球的時候也帶著這些書，他翻開書，照著書中的內容去打球。1962年，作為18歲的大二學生，尼德霍夫贏得了網球協會的國家大學賽的冠軍。1年後，他贏了哈裏考雷斯錦標賽，這是業餘選手的榮譽。他的哈佛教練傑克·巴納比在1963年1月的《哈佛體育新聞觀察》中說：“他體形好，動作快，技術強。但是很多運動員都有這些特點。我認為他的強項就是他的個性具有很強的競爭力。他讓你覺得就是在現場看泰·柯布的比賽。”
In the 1963-64 season, Niederhoffer, now a senior, was captain of the Harvard squash team, which went undefeated. He also won the individual national collegiate title, and his aggressive playing style attracted the attention of a reporter at Sports Illustrated, who wrote, “Niederhoffer thinks he is unbeatable and clamors loudly for justice when his shots go awry. Consequently, on those rare occasions when he loses a tournament, squash lovers are delighted.” The reporter quoted Niederhoffer’s freshman coach, Corey Wynn, who recalled his former student’s penchant for “handballing it”—physically blocking his opponents from reaching the ball, a tactic that was frowned upon in New England. Niederhoffer’s mother read the article and consulted a Fifth Avenue law firm, Cohn & Glickstein, about suing Sports Illustrated for libel. (On the firm’s advice, she decided not to file a suit.)
63——64年，尼德霍夫成人了，他是哈佛網球隊的隊長，這個球隊沒輸過。他還取得了全國大學賽的個人冠軍，他的進取風格引起了《體育畫報》記者的注意，他寫道：“尼德霍夫認為自己是不可戰勝的，當他的球打偏了，他就大吵大鬧要公平。結果是，有時候他沒有拿到冠軍，網球愛好者就高興了。”記者引用了尼德霍夫大一教練科裏·懷恩的話，科裏回憶了這個學生的愛好——他能阻止對手碰到球，這個戰術在新英格蘭是禁止使用的。尼德霍夫的媽媽看到這篇報道，然後去找第五大街的約翰和格裏斯坦律師行商量，他準備告《體育畫報》誹謗。（在律師行的建議下，他媽沒有打這個官司。）
In February, 1966, Niederhoffer won the U.S. national amateur championship, the culmination of a series of important victories. Sports Illustrated and Time sent reporters to these events, and Niederhoffer wasn’t pleased with the coverage. First, he wrote to Time, denying its claim that during the national championship he had offered odds of two-to-one against himself. An editor replied, defending the magazine’s reporting as having been based on “reliable sources.” Unsatisfied, Niederhoffer wrote another letter, to a senior executive at Time-Life, the parent company of both Time and Sports Illustrated, complaining that the articles had “created the impression that I was a poor boy from Brooklyn who had adjusted badly to the rigors of a social sport.”
1966年2月，尼德霍夫打贏了很多比賽，最終贏得了國家業餘冠軍。《體育畫報》和《時代》雜誌派記者去報道，但尼德霍夫對報道不滿。首先，他寫信給《時代》，否認所謂的在冠軍賽中他為自己製造了2：1的優勢。一個編輯回信說，根據可靠的資料，這個報道是真實的。尼德霍夫不滿意，又寫了一封信給“時代生活”的高管，“時代生活”是《時代》和《體育畫報》的母公司，他抱怨這些報道“說我在布魯克林時就是一個壞小孩，在體育比賽時表現更壞。”
An aura of class and ethnic prejudice pervaded press accounts of Niederhoffer’s achievements; he was widely viewed as an ill-mannered upstart from the wrong side of the East River. The Times Magazine noted that he was “built wrong for a squash player: not lithe and wiry, or even tall and gracefully powerful. He is shaped rather like a block—fairly broad in the shoulders, no waist, thick shapeless legs—and his color is sallow, the deep oyster sallow of a New York street creature.” In Chicago, where Niederhoffer moved in 1964, to attend graduate school, he couldn’t find a squash club that would admit him. He was so offended that for several years he gave up the game.
媒體認為尼德霍夫的成就和種族歧視有關係，很多人認為這個粗魯的來自東河的新秀有問題。《時代》雜誌說他是“他不適合做網球選手，他不敏捷，沒有韌性，也不高，沒有力量。他的體形像牆——肩膀寬，沒有靈活的關節，腿太粗——皮膚蒼白。”尼德霍夫1964年搬到芝加哥，去上研究生，沒有一個網球俱樂部願意接受他。他很受挫折，幾年後他就放棄了網球。
After he returned to the court, in 1972, he won the national amateur championship four years running, an unprecedented feat. In January, 1975, in Mexico City, he won the North American Open, a major professional tournament, defeating the legendary Pakistani player Sharif Khan in four games. Afterward, Niederhoffer wasn’t very gracious. “Khan had a fatal plan—a lack of real toughness,” he told Sports Illustrated. “He’s been winning so long he doesn’t know anymore what it is to play a battle to the death.”
他於1972年重返賽場，他連續4年贏得了業餘組的全國冠軍，空前漂亮。1975年1月，他在墨西哥市贏得了北美公開賽，這是專業的錦標賽，4次打敗了傳奇人物巴基斯坦的選手沙利夫·可汗。之後，尼德霍夫就沒有那麽光榮了。他告訴《體育畫報》：“可汗有一個致命的計劃——不夠強悍。他贏的時間太長了，他不知道什麽是決死一戰。”
Shortly after noon, a housekeeper’s voice announced over an intercom, “Victor’s lunch is ready. Does he want it?” “No,” Niederhoffer replied. “I can’t eat lunch with the market like this.” He looked at his screens. “Europe got killed,” he said to nobody in particular. He was still irked by Morgan Stanley’s bearish notice to clients. “If the big brokerage houses are going to make money from commissions, they have to get people selling as well as buying,” he said dismissively. Unlike most Wall Street firms, Manchester Trading doesn’t have a television in its trading room, partly because Niederhoffer doesn’t want to be distracted but also because he can’t abide doom-mongering market commentators, like Alan Abelson, a columnist for Barron’s, the financial weekly, and Robert Prechter, Jr., the publisher of the Elliot Wave Theorist. “These people have been bearish since Dow 700,” Niederhoffer said angrily. “When the market is going up, they can’t get a hearing. But when the market falls they get invited back on. They say it’s like 1997, or 1987, or 2002. How about 1907? That was a bad year. Interest rates went up; the market went down by nearly fifty per cent.”
午後不久，管家對講機上問：“維克多的午餐準備好了，還想吃嗎？”尼德霍夫回答：“不想吃。市場這個樣子，我吃不下。”他看著屏幕自言自語地說：“歐洲市場被屠殺了。”摩根士坦利給客戶的看空通知一直讓他苦惱。他輕蔑地說：“如果經紀公司想靠傭金賺錢，他們就要像讓人們買入一樣叫人們賣出。”和大部分華爾街的公司不同，曼徹斯特交易公司的交易室裏麵沒有電視，一部分原因是尼德霍夫不想分心，還有一個原因是他受不了有些人天天忽悠世界末日，比如《巴倫》周刊的專欄作家艾倫·阿巴森，還有《艾略特波浪理論家》的出版人羅伯特·普瑞切。尼德霍夫生氣地說：“自從道瓊斯工業指數到了700點，他們就天天看空。當市場上漲的時候，每人理他們的。但是當市場下跌的時候，就有人邀請他們發言。他們說就像1997，1987或2002年一樣，那麽1907年會如何？1907年很慘，利息上漲，市場跌了接近50%。”
Just after one o’clock, the market hit a new low for the day, with the Dow down about a hundred and twenty-five points, and the S. & P. 500 down about fourteen points. It is a strange feature of financial markets that time occasionally seems to speed up. On quiet days, when prices aren’t moving much, traders monitor their positions, read the papers, and chat with each other, and it can seem as though an eternity passes before the closing bell sounds. But when the market becomes volatile every move brings with it a fresh opportunity for profit or loss, and each minute can fly by. The mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, who pioneered the application of chaos theory to financial markets, refers to this phenomenon as the “multifractal nature of trading time.”
1點鍾以後，市場到達當天的最低點。道瓊斯跌了125點，標準普爾500跌了14點。金融市場就奇怪在到了那個時點市場有時候會加速上漲。在平靜的交易日裏，如果價格波動不大，交易者就監視自己的倉位，看報紙，聊天，在收盤的鍾聲響起前，這段時間似乎很漫長。但是當市場波動厲害的時候，那麽就有機會賺錢或虧錢，每一分鍾都過的那麽快。伯尼特·曼德爾布羅特是數學家，他首先把混沌理論運用到金融市場，他說這種現象是交易時間的不規則性。
Niederhoffer turned to Castaldo. “This day is far from over,” he said. “Doc, what happens when the market is down twelve points at one o’clock and it has been down significantly the previous two days?” A few minutes later, Castaldo handed him another computer printout. “Most of the time, these computer analyses don’t work, but it gives you an anchor,” Niederhoffer said as he scanned the sheet. “My checkers teacher said even a bad system is better than no system at all.” The data showed that the last time trading seemed to follow the current pattern was between November, 2000, and September, 2002, when there had been eight such three-day periods. In most of these instances, the market had rebounded strongly during the subsequent seventy-two hours. Niederhoffer looked at Owen Wilson. “I’ll buy another fifty at eleven-fifty,” he said.
尼德霍夫轉向卡斯達多。他說：“今天還沒結束。博士，你看看，如果市場已經嚴重地下跌了2天，今天又在1點鍾跌了12點，那麽接著會如何？”幾分鍾後，卡斯達多又給他一張打印件。尼德霍夫在看的時候說：“大部分時間，這些電腦分析的結果並沒有效果，但是它們會給你一個依靠。我的經濟學老師告訴我，即使是差的係統也比沒有係統好。”數據表明在2000年11月到2002年9月間有8次出現了這樣的連續3天下跌的現象。在大部分情況下，市場會在其後3天內強力反彈。尼德霍夫看著歐文·威爾遜說：“我要在1150再買入50份。”
Niederhoffer’s investment philosophy is based on a belief that over the long term the market goes up, but over the short term it constantly reverses itself. In his books—his second, “Practical Speculation,” was published in 2003—he compares the behavior of investors to that of herds of rampaging elephants that retrace their steps over and over. He refers to this pattern as a “LoBagola,” after Bata LoBagola, the author of “LoBagola: An African Savage’s Own Story,” a book published in 1930 describing the customs and wildlife of West Africa. After the book appeared, LoBagola was revealed to be an African-American vaudeville entertainer from Baltimore, the son of a former slave. In a 2004 post on DailySpeculations.com, Niederhoffer wrote, “Regrettably LoBagola was an American con man. . . . Nevertheless, I claim that despite his imposture, the moves back and forth in big markets often follow a LoBagola, and even though, nay especially because, LoBagola was an impostor his name should be given to major moves which would seem to follow a symmetry up and down.”
尼德霍夫的投資理念的基礎是：長期而言，市場會漲，短期而言，市場總是反轉。在他2003年出版的第二本書《投機實戰》（中信翻譯成《華爾街賭局》）中——他把投資者和暴躁的一次又一次地重複自己步調的大象做比較。他把這種現象叫做婁巴格拉，取自巴塔·婁巴格拉的書《婁巴格拉：一個非洲野人的自傳》，此書1930年出版，描述了西非的風俗和生活。自從此書出版以後，婁巴格拉成為非洲舞者的代名詞。尼德霍夫2004年在dailyspeculations.com寫道：“很可惜婁巴格拉是非洲人……除了市場的似是而非之外，市場上上下下的波動就像婁巴格拉一樣，婁巴格拉舞蹤不定，市場上上下下也不定。”
Niederhoffer doesn’t claim to be able to say what the Dow or the S. & P. 500 will do next week or next month, but he believes that over shorter periods—hours or days—there are sometimes predictable patterns that can be exploited. In “The Education of a Speculator,” he devotes an entire chapter to this notion, comparing the market’s movements to some of his favorite pieces of classical music, and juxtaposing pages of sheet music with stock charts. “When the markets are moving in my favor in a nice, gentle way—never below my initial price—I often think of the ‘Trout Quintet,’ ” he writes. “Another frequent work I hear in the market is Haydn’s Symphony No. 94. . . . Right after lunch, or before a holiday, the markets have a tendency to meander up and down in a five-point range above and below the opening. The pattern is similar to the twinkling C-major fifths of Haydn’s symphony.”
尼德霍夫無法預測道瓊斯或標準普爾500下周或下個月的走勢，但是他相信在短期內——幾個小時或幾天內——有些模式是可以預測的。在《投機者養成教育》中，他用整個章節談自己的理念，把市場的波動和自己最喜歡的經典音樂對比，把樂譜和股票圖形放在一起看。他寫道：“當市場在優雅輕柔地波動時——永遠在我的成本之上時——我經常想到《鱒魚五重奏》。另外，我還會在市場中聽到海頓的94號交響樂……在午飯後或放假前，市場喜歡在開盤價上下5個點的範圍內上上下下。這個模式和海頓的C調第5交響樂很相似。”
In the early eighties, when he was making a presentation to potential clients, Niederhoffer sometimes took along Robert Schrade, a friend who was a classical pianist. After Niederhoffer talked about his methods, Schrade would demonstrate the rhythms of the market on the piano. This double act didn’t always impress investors. “CalPERS”—the California Public Employees’ Retirement System—“is not going to be interested in investing with Victor, nor is the Harvard endowment,” Paul DeRosa, a partner at the hedge fund Mt. Lucas who has known Niederhoffer since the late seventies, said to me. “Your basic, buttoned-down endowment, advised by professional consultants, wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole. His is a fund that is going to appeal to people like him: self-made people who have a maverick streak.”
在80年代初，尼德霍夫在給潛在客戶演講的時候，總是帶上羅伯特·素雷德，這個朋友會彈鋼琴。當尼德霍夫演講完以後，素雷德就用鋼琴來解釋市場的節奏。但這個組合並沒有讓投資者有什麽深刻印象。盧卡斯對衝基金的保羅·蒂柔沙在70年代末就認識尼德霍夫，他告訴我：“加州事業性員工退休係統沒興趣投資給維克多，哈佛養老金基金也沒興趣。守舊的養老金是不會碰他的。他的基金隻能吸引這樣的人：有不同想法的人。”
A few months ago, after visiting a Redwood forest in Northern California, Niederhoffer became fascinated by the ecology of trees. He bought several books on the subject and posted an article on his Web site applying what he had learned about trees to the stock market:
幾個月前，尼德霍夫在北加州參觀了紅木森林以後，他就對生態學感到著迷。他買了一些書，並在自己的網站上麵說他從書木中學到了一些股市知識：
Lesson Two: The forest thrives and benefits after many seemingly disastrous events. Fires clear the underbrush. Dead trees still standing provide cover for much flora and fauna. Trees contain so much water that there is still much biomass left when they die, and they contain the nutrients and moisture that other plants or fungi need for survival. This situation is called a biological legacy by the scientists, but is just known as a gift by the laymen.
第二課：森林經曆了很多災難性的事件之後生存並繁榮下來。或清理了小草。死數為植物和動物提供保護。書富含水分，死後還有很多物質存在，這些營養物質和潮濕是其它植物或真菌需要的。科學家把這種情況稱為生物遺傳，外行稱為禮物。
The number of, the amount of time in between, and the extent of watershed declines that the market has witnessed in the last year, as well as the resilience of the market to these declines, is a good measure of the health of a system. It is often good for future growth, to see decimated parts of the market landscape, such as the U.S. real-estate sector, which has currently taken it on the chin, or the Saudi Arabian market, which is down 75%.
市場下跌的時間，反彈的時間，這些都是衡量係統健康的東西。它對期貨有好處，能看到市場的一部分狀況，比如美國的房地產已經讓人喜上眉梢了，或者是沙特阿拉伯的市場，跌了75%。
After he wrote the article, Niederhoffer gave the books he had read to one of his employees, Charles Pennington, a former professor of physics, and asked him to develop precise numerical analogies between the life cycles of forests and those of corporations, in the hope that the exercise might suggest some profitable investments. Niederhoffer’s employees are used to such requests. “Things sometimes work that you wouldn’t believe, and things don’t work that you would expect to work,” Steve Wisdom said to me after we had left Niederhoffer at his desk and gone downstairs to eat lunch in his formal dining room. (The dining room is next to the library, where Niederhoffer keeps his collection of rare books and manuscripts, including a first edition of Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” and a copy of David Ricardo’s “Principles of Political Economy and Taxation” which has margin notes by Thomas Malthus.)
尼德霍夫寫完文章後，他把自己看過的書給自己的一個員工看，這個員工叫查爾斯·潘寧頓，過去是物理學教授，尼德霍夫叫他用數字模擬森林循環和公司起落，以期待這種模擬也許能幫忙找到賺錢的投資機會。尼德霍夫的員工對這種要求習以為常。史蒂夫·威斯頓在離開尼德霍夫的辦公桌下樓吃飯的時候告訴我：“有時候你信它，結果它不會發生；有時候你不信它，結果它發生了。”（餐廳在圖書館隔壁，尼德霍夫在圖書館收集了很多罕見的書和手稿，包括亞當·斯密第一版的《國富論》和托馬斯·馬爾薩斯在旁邊做了筆記大衛·裏卡多寫的《政治經濟學及稅賦原理》。）
Wisdom, a clean-cut man of forty-six, met Niederhoffer twenty-five years ago, in New York City, when Wisdom was a philosophy major at Harvard and the chairman of the university’s Libertarian Club. “We hit it off, and that was that,” Wisdom recalled. After graduating, in 1983, Wisdom worked for Niederhoffer for fourteen years, until Niederhoffer’s business collapsed, in 1997. He returned in 2003, largely, he told me, because of Niederhoffer’s willingness to try new ideas. “Everyone has computers; everyone has Ukrainian math Ph.D.s,” Wisdom said. “There are people chopping at the data every which way. Making money is not easy, and it requires a lot of creativity. Victor always says, ‘Suppose I didn’t know anything. Suppose I’d never traded this instrument before. What would I think?’ ”
威斯頓46歲，衣冠整潔，他25年在紐約就認識了尼德霍夫，威斯頓在哈佛修哲學，而且還是大學自由俱樂部的主席。威斯頓回憶說：“我們很投緣。”1983年畢業後，威斯頓開始為尼德霍夫工作，一直工作了14年，直到1997年尼德霍夫破產。他在2003年又回來了，他告訴我是因為尼德霍夫想試試新方法。威斯頓說：“每個人都有電腦，每個人都有烏克蘭的數學博士學位。每天都要分析數據。賺錢不容易，它需要很多創造性。維克多總是說‘假如我什麽都不知道，假如我從來沒有用過這個工具，我會怎麽想？’”
Manchester Trading’s three hedge funds are relatively small by current standards. At the end of June, the funds’ collective value was about three hundred and fifty million dollars, of which about half belonged to Niederhoffer and Wisdom. In 2003 and 2004, the funds increased in value by more than forty per cent each year, and in 2005 the value of the largest fund, Matador, rose fifty-six per cent—a performance that earned Niederhoffer an industry award. Last year, his funds were flat. But in the first six months of 2007 they were up again, by between thirty and forty per cent.
用現在的標準來看，曼徹斯特交易公司現在管理的3個對衝基金就相對很小了。在6月底，基金的總價值是3.5億美元，其中有一半是尼德霍夫和威斯頓的。2003年和2004年，基金每年增值40%以上，2005年，最大的基金鬥牛士增值了56%——這個業績讓尼德霍夫拿到了行業內的獎項。去年他的基金沒賺錢，但是2007年上半年又增值了，大約增值了30——40%。
Niederhoffer acknowledges that his aggressive investing style and his reliance on borrowed money increase the volatility of his returns and the likelihood that he will suffer a calamity. In May, 2006, Matador lost about thirty per cent of its value, and in February of this year it suffered another big fall. Many hedge funds claim that they can generate high returns with little risk. Niederhoffer tells friends who want to invest money with him that it is too risky. (Most of his clients are multimillionaires and financial institutions.) “The idea that you can make a lot of wealth in a steady, unspectacular fashion, with no great gyrations, is a canard,” he said to me. “If you are going to try and make forty or fifty per cent a year, tremendous variations are inevitable.”
尼德霍夫承認自己的投資風格很冒險，而且他自己喜歡借錢，這樣就導致了他的回報不穩定，也有可能遇到災難。2006年5月，鬥牛士大約縮水30%，今年2月又有大縮水。很多對衝基金都說自己可以產生很高的回報，同時風險不大。尼德霍夫告訴像投資給他的朋友們說那太危險了。（他的大部分客戶都是千萬富翁和金融機構。）他告訴我：“不依靠投機的方法穩定賺大錢，且中間沒有大幅的縮水，這個想法其實是謠傳。如果你想每年賺40%或50%，很大的波動是不可避免的。”
At three o’clock, when Wisdom and I went back upstairs, Niederhoffer was outside playing tennis with one of his traders, Duncan Coker. Soon, however, he returned, sitting down at his desk in a T-shirt, tennis shorts, and sneakers, ignoring the no-shoes rule. “The market’s supposed to go up from three until the close,” he said. “Let’s see if it does.” While Wisdom and I were having lunch, the Dow had stabilized and Niederhoffer had sold some of the stock futures he had purchased earlier in the day. “The worst mistake in this business is to be in over your head,” he said. “I was long about seventy-five million dollars. In addition to that, I had my regular option position. So I took the opportunity to reduce my exposure.”
威斯頓很我3點鍾回到樓上，尼德霍夫正在和他的一個交易者打網球，這個交易者叫鄧肯·柯克。尼德霍夫很快又回到了他的辦公桌，穿著T恤衫，網球衣和運動鞋，他忘了不穿鞋的規則。他說：“從3點鍾開始，市場要漲，一直漲到收盤。讓我們看看它是如何做到的。”我和威斯頓一起吃飯的時候道瓊斯工業指數穩定了，尼德霍夫則賣出了一些他頭一天買的股指期貨。他說：“做交易最大的錯誤就是頭昏。我大概做多了7500萬美元，另外，我還有期權倉位。所以我要找機會減倉。”
In addition to speculating on short-term market movements, Niederhoffer frequently sells financial contracts, called “put options,” which, in the event of a steep fall in the market, would oblige him to pay out large sums of money. The buyers of these options are usually other investors seeking to hedge their positions, and in a sense Niederhoffer acts like an insurance company: in return for a premium—the price of the option—he agrees to bear the risk of a market crash. Often, this is a good business; but whenever the market enters a volatile period he is in peril. (“He is his own worst enemy,” Nassim Taleb, the author and derivatives trader, says of Niederhoffer. “One of the most brilliant men I have ever met, and he wastes his time selling options—something nobody can have any skill in—and it leaves him vulnerable to blowing up.”)
除了做短線，尼德霍夫還常常賣出金融合約，叫看跌期權。在如此下跌的市場，這麽做需要支付很多資金。買入期權的投資者一般是為了對衝自己的倉位，似乎尼德霍夫就是一個保險公司：為了得到賣期權的收益——他願意承受崩盤時的風險。很多時候，這是一筆好買賣，但是一旦市場進入振蕩行情，他就慘了。（納西姆·塔勒布是作家，也是交易者，他是這樣評論尼德霍夫的：“他是他自己最大的敵人。他是我遇到的最出色的人之一，他總是浪費時間去賣出期權——每人懂期權——他這麽做很容易破產。”）
As 4 P.M.—the close of trading—approached, the Dow was again down, by about a hundred and twenty points. Niederhoffer didn’t seem particularly discouraged, though. He thought that he discerned a LoBagola pattern. “It’s going to be very bullish for tomorrow,” he said. “It will be the first one-hundred-point drop in sixteen hundred points. I’m going to buy some more futures.”
下午收盤時間是4點鍾，時間快到了，道瓊斯又跌了，差不多跌了120點。尼德霍夫似乎沒有氣餒。他認為這是婁巴格拉模式，他說：“明天會大漲。已經跌了1600點，這100點是最後一跌，我明天要買點股指期貨。”
Niederhoffer’s theories about market behavior date to his college years. In 1964, when he was a senior at Harvard, he wrote a thesis on stock-market patterns. At the time, the so-called “efficient market hypothesis,” which states that stock prices move randomly and therefore can’t be predicted, was coming into vogue. Niederhoffer, citing data on trading volumes and subsequent price movements, claimed to have found evidence that contradicted the random model. His argument didn’t fully convince his adviser, the economist Robert Dorfman, but it helped earn him admission to the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, where he enrolled in September, 1964.
尼德霍夫在讀大學的時候就形成了自己的市場行為理論。1964年，他在哈佛讀大四，他寫了一篇關於市場模式的論文。當時，所謂的有效市場理論說股價是隨機波動的，是無法被預測的，那時這個理論正在逐漸流行。尼德霍夫則說他利用成交量，價格波動等證據，能證明隨機理論是有問題的。他的理論並沒有讓他的顧問經濟學家羅伯特·多夫曼認同，但是卻讓他步入了芝加哥大學研究生院，他於1964年9月到該學院報道。
At Chicago, Niederhoffer wrote several research papers arguing that it was possible to detect predictable movements in the stock market. He uncovered evidence, for example, that the market tended to do worse on Mondays than on Fridays. Several members of the faculty had helped to develop the efficient market hypothesis, and Niederhoffer’s relationships with his professors were often contentious. At one seminar, he later recalled, “I criticized all those who had concluded that markets were random, including most of the professors in the room, as being too heavy-handed in their testing methods to uncover the structure of price variations. Further, I cautioned them that their failure to disprove a hypothesis that no structure existed was methodologically inadequate to support a conclusion that prices were random. When I put it in the vernacular, ‘You can’t prove a negative,’ pandemonium broke loose.”
尼德霍夫在芝加哥寫了幾篇調查報告說股市的波動是可能被預測的。比如說，他發現周一的市場比周五要糟糕。有些大學教授在幫忙發展有效市場理論，而尼德霍夫則常常和教授們吵架。他回憶說，在一次研討會上：“我評論了所有支持隨機市場的人，也評論了在場的教授們，他們的研究價格波動的方法是笨手笨腳的。另外，我警告他們，他們沒有足夠的證據證明價格是隨機的。當我說‘你們無法舉反證’時，現場就沒人吵了。”
Niederhoffer was an early proponent of what is now called behavioral economics, and his unorthodox theories made him something of an academic celebrity. In 1969, he was hired at Berkeley as an assistant professor, and several hundred students signed up for his course on finance. Three years later, enrollment had dropped precipitately. “I wasn’t too good at it, frankly,” he told me. “I was not a very good teacher, and I had my own ideas about things. I was earning nine thousand dollars a year. I was playing squash, doing research, dabbling in business. It was all too much.”
尼德霍夫很早就捍衛行為經濟學，他的反傳統理論讓他成為學校的名人。1969年，他被伯克利聘為助理教授，有幾百個學生報名學金融。3年後，報名的人大減。他告訴我：“坦白說，我不行。我不是優秀的老師，我有自己的想法。我當時一年賺9000美元。我還要打網球，做研究，搞生意。我研究的東西太多了。”
Niederhoffer had also married—Gail Herman, a graduate of Bryn Mawr whom he met at the wedding of a Harvard friend, the economist Richard Zeckhauser. In the early seventies, Gail and Niederhoffer, who had decided to leave academe, moved to New York, where he started an investment-banking firm that sought out small, family-owned companies and helped sell them to bigger, public companies. The venture proved so successful that before long Niederhoffer and a partner, Dan Grossman, started buying and operating businesses themselves. Among the firms they acquired were American Almond, a Brooklyn company that provided almond paste to bakeries, and Tech Com Inc., a Florida defense contractor that built navigation equipment for planes and ships. “I would run the companies. Victor would visit them every two years or so, and cause havoc,” Grossman, a lawyer by training, recalled recently. “He’d say something like ‘What this company needs is sales. No more research, no more secretarial duties—I want you all out there selling things.’ Then he’d leave, and I’d say, ‘Don’t take any notice of what he said. That’s just Victor being Victor.’ ”
尼德霍夫在參加哈佛朋友經濟學家理查德·濟科豪瑟的婚禮時遇到了布林默爾大學的吉爾·赫爾曼，並和她結婚了。在70年代早期，吉爾和尼德霍夫決定離開學校，搬到紐約去，他們在紐約開了一家家庭公司，也就是投資銀行公司，最後賣給了大公司。他們的創業很成功，不久尼德霍夫有了一個夥伴，丹·格羅斯曼，於是他們就自己做生意，買賣公司。他們收購的公司包括美國杏仁，這家布魯克林的公司生產杏仁蛋糕；他們還收購了佛羅裏達州的防衛承建商，這家公司專門為飛機和船舶製造導航設備。律師格羅斯曼前不久回憶說：“我當時管理這些公司。維克多則1，2年才來看一次，導致了一些麻煩。他說公司要做的事就是銷售。不必做研究，不必搞行政——我希望你們全部出去賣產品。然後他走了，我就說‘不要理他。維克多就是那個樣子。’”
By the late seventies, Niederhoffer and Gail had two daughters: Galt, who was named after Francis Galton, the Victorian polymath who helped to develop regression analysis and coined the term “eugenics”; and Katie. In 1981, Niederhoffer and Gail separated, and he began dating his assistant, Susan Cole, whom he married in 1991. They have four daughters: Rand, Victoria, Artemis, and Kira. The mother of Niederhoffer’s son, Aubrey, who is one and a half, is Laurel Kenner, a former editor at Bloomberg whom he met in 1999. “My personal life is more complicated than Rupert Murdoch’s,” Niederhoffer joked to me. (Murdoch has six children from three marriages.)
到了70年代末，尼德霍夫和吉爾有了2個女兒：一個叫高特，高特這個名字來自弗朗西斯·高爾頓，弗朗西斯是維多利亞時代的智者，他幫忙形成了回歸分析，並創造了優生學這個名詞。另一個女兒叫凱蒂。尼德霍夫和吉爾在1981年離婚，然後他開始和自己的秘書蘇珊·科爾約會，他們於1991年結婚。他們有4個女兒：藍蒂，維多利亞，阿特米斯和琦雅。尼德霍夫兒子的媽媽叫
Niederhoffer began investing seriously in the stock market when Galt and Katie were young. In 1979, using money he had saved, he started trading more or less full time and opened an office in midtown. “I got lucky,” he told me. “In eighteen months, I ran fifty thousand dollars up to twenty million dollars. I had an idea that there was going to be inflation, so I kept selling Treasury bonds and buying gold and silver. For a long time, it worked very well. Then one day I was playing racquetball in Staten Island with a guy who subsequently became the U.S. champion. After the first game, I called the office to see where the market was. The price of gold had fallen from eight hundred and fifty dollars to six hundred dollars in an hour. My net worth had gone down to ten million dollars.
在高特和凱蒂比較小的時候，尼德霍夫就開始很認真地投資於股市了。1979年，他用存款或多或少地全職交易，並在市中心開了一個辦公室。他告訴我：“我很幸運。我在18個月內把5萬美元增值到了2000萬美元。我知道要發生通貨膨脹，所以我總是賣出債券，並買入黃金和白銀。結果一直很好。有一天，我和一個人在斯塔藤島打壁球，後來這個人成為全國冠軍了。打完第一局，我打電話給辦公室，以了解市場狀況。黃金的價格在1個小時內從850美元跌到了600美元。我的淨值跌到了1000萬美元。”
“That was where my Brighton Beach training came in,” Niederhoffer went on. “I’d seen a lot of gamblers die broke. My father used to say I’d end up on the Bowery, like the other gamblers. I’d say, ‘Dad, I’ve got a system.’ He’d say, ‘Baloney. Those guys on the Bowery had more statistics and systems than you’ve got.’ I took what he said seriously. I told my assistant, who later became my second wife, ‘If I ever lose more than half my stake, close out all my positions. Don’t let me trade anymore.’ I went back to my match. During the second game, she sold everything. By then, my ten million dollars had dwindled to five million, but at least I got out with that much.”
尼德霍夫繼續說：“當時我要到布萊頓海邊去培訓，我看見很多賭徒破產了。我爸過去經常說我會像其他賭徒一樣，生活在紐約的貧困區。我就說‘爸，我有一個係統。’他就說‘胡扯，貧困區的那些人有比你更好的統計數字和係統。’我不幸讓他言中了。我告訴我的妻子，他就是我的第二個老婆‘如果我的本金虧掉了一半，你就要幫我全部平倉，不能再讓我交易了。’結果我真的虧了一半。在我打第二局的時候，他幫我全部平倉了。結果1000萬美元變成了500萬美元，至少我還有那麽多。”
Wall Street in the late seventies was much less technologically sophisticated than it is today. “If you could solve two equations in two unknowns, you were a high-tech person,” Paul DeRosa recalled. “Someone with Victor’s quantitative skills was a rare bird. In the early years, that gave him a big advantage.” In 1981, George Soros, who was by then a wealthy investor but who was having a bad year, heard about Niederhoffer’s reputed ability to predict short-term market movements and arranged to meet him at his office. Soros left the meeting impressed, and gave Niederhoffer some money to manage. The men shared an intellectual fascination with markets, and they became close, talking on the phone nearly every day, and playing tennis or chess several times a week. “My father had just passed away,” Niederhoffer recalled. “George was struggling. He needed a ledge to give him some purchase. I provided that.”
70年代末的華爾街不像現在那樣使用技術。保羅·蒂柔沙回憶說：“如果你能解有2個未知數的2元方程式，那麽你就是高手。像維克多一樣懂技術的人很少。在早年，懂技術是很占優勢的。”喬治·索羅斯在1981年很富有，但是那年的投資卻不順利，索羅斯聽說尼德霍夫能預測市場短期的變化，他就約尼德霍夫到他的辦公室會麵。會後索羅斯印象深刻，給尼德霍夫一些資金讓他管理。他們對市場一樣著迷，所以他們很快就走近了，他們幾乎每天通電話，每周打網球或下棋。尼德霍夫回憶說：“當時我爸剛去世。喬治則交易艱難。他需要一個幫手，正好我出現了。”
By the mid-eighties, Niederhoffer was managing many of Soros’s investments in bonds and commodities, which were worth hundreds of millions of dollars. On Tuesday, October 20, 1987, a day after the Dow dropped five hundred and eight points, Niederhoffer and Soros played tennis, as usual. Both men had lost a lot of money in the crash, and Niederhoffer had trouble concentrating; Soros, however, was calm. Don’t worry, he told Niederhoffer, the market will reopen tomorrow, and there will be plenty of opportunities to make back our losses.
到了80年代中期，尼德霍夫為索羅斯管理很多債券和商品，價值幾億美元。1987年10月20日周二，前一天道瓊斯跌了508點，尼德霍夫和索羅斯像往常一樣在打網球。在這次崩跌中，他們都虧了很多錢，尼德霍夫無法集中精力進行交易。索羅斯也不安心。索羅斯告訴尼德霍夫，市場還在，我們有無數機會把錢賺回來。
Over the next several years, Niederhoffer’s funds yielded an annual average return of about thirty per cent, which put them near the top of the industry. In 1994, Business Week named him the best commodities-fund manager in the country. A year later, he started two new hedge funds: Niederhoffer Investments and Niederhoffer International Markets. For a while, he hardly slept. During the day, he traded stocks and currencies in Europe and the United States, and at night he bought and sold Japanese yen. He also invested in emerging markets, making successful plays in Turkish bonds and Mexican stocks.
隨後幾年，尼德霍夫基金的收益是每年30%左右，讓他成為行業的佼佼者。1994年，《商業周刊》說他是行業內最優秀的商品基金經理。1年後，他又啟動了2個對衝基金：尼德霍夫投資和尼德霍夫國際市場。有一段時期，他連睡覺的時間都沒有。他白天要交易歐洲和美國的股票和外匯，晚上要交易日元。他還投資於新興市場，他在土耳其債券和墨西哥股票都取得了成功。
Toward the end of 1996, another profitable year for him, Niederhoffer decided that he wanted to invest in Southeast Asia, which was widely seen as a growing market. He dispatched an old friend, Steven (Bo) Keeley, to the region. Keeley, a veterinarian who spent six months of the year living in the California desert without a telephone or electric power, had trekked in dozens of countries. On one trip, while paddling down the Amazon, he had contracted malaria, briefly gone blind, and been comatose for a week. Keeley believed that assessing a developing country’s economic prospects involved not only meeting with the C.E.O.s of leading companies but studying the lengths of discarded cigarettes—the theory being that the wealthier people are, the longer their butts—and the state of the brothels. After a couple of months in Asia, he reported to Niederhoffer that the brothels in Bangkok had recently become much cleaner and safer, and that Thailand was an excellent place to invest. During the previous decade, the Thai economy had grown at an annual rate of almost ten per cent; its interest rates were among the lowest of any country in the region; and its stocks were cheap because they had fallen sharply earlier in the year. In the spring of 1997, Niederhoffer invested several hundred million dollars in Thailand. Instead of buying stocks in some of the country’s biggest companies, he entered into complicated deals with Wall Street firms to buy futures contracts that were tied to the value of Thai stocks. The margin requirements for futures purchases are much lower than those for stock purchases, so he was able to put up a relatively modest amount of cash, while using borrowed money to accumulate substantial holdings.
到了1986年底，這一年他也賺了很多錢，尼德霍夫決定投資於南亞，當時南亞市場正在興起。他派遣自己的老朋友史蒂文·波·凱利去南亞。凱利是獸醫，他曾經在加州沙漠待過半年，沒有電話，沒有電，他去過很多國家。有一次在亞馬遜，他得了痢疾，差點瞎了，昏迷了一周。凱利認為要評估一個發展中的國家，不但要和大公司的首席執行官了解情況，還要研究他們的服務行業——理論上人越富，越喜歡享受——妓院越發達。在亞洲待了幾個月後，他向尼德霍夫報告說，曼穀的妓院越來越幹淨，越來越安全，泰國是投資的好地方。過去幾十年來，泰國的經濟成長率是每年10%，利息是南亞最低的，股市則跌到了很便宜地步。1997年春天，尼德霍夫向泰國投資了幾億美元。他像華爾街的公司一樣，沒有投資於股票，而是買了股指期貨。由於股指期貨有杠杆效應，他還借了錢，買了很多的股指期貨。
His timing was atrocious. In May and June, a wave of selling swept through the Asian financial markets, and Thailand was especially hard hit. Many overseas investors tried to repatriate their money, and the Thai government started to run out of foreign-exchange reserves. On July 2nd, it was forced to abandon what amounted to a fixed exchange rate between the baht and the dollar, which had been in place for more than a decade. The Thai currency collapsed, and so did the stock market. The value of many of Niederhoffer’s Thai holdings dropped by more than ninety per cent. His lenders demanded that he put up more collateral. In order to meet their demands, he was forced to sell many of his profitable investments, which left his funds severely depleted. “We were like someone who is immune-deficient,” Steve Wisdom recalled. “We had lost so much money that we had no resistance left to other maladies.”
他的時機太糟糕了。到了5，6月，亞洲金融市場出現了賣盤，泰國跌的最厲害。很多海外投資者都在拚命撤資，而泰國政府已經沒有外匯儲備了。7月2日，泰國政府隻好放棄泰銖和美元之間長達幾十年的固定匯率。於是泰銖就貶值了，股市也崩盤了。尼德霍夫的倉位虧了90%以上。他的投資者要求他分散投資，為了滿足投資者的要求，他就被迫把賺錢的投資賣了，這樣他的基金就虛空了。史蒂夫·威斯頓回憶說：“我們就像是免疫力低下的人，我們虧了很多錢，無法抵擋其它疾病了。”
Apart from his Thai holdings, Niederhoffer’s most substantial investments were in the American futures markets. At first, the U.S. market weathered the Asian crisis pretty well, but in the fall of 1997 it became more volatile. On October 27, 1997, the Dow fell by more than five hundred points, and, for the first time in recent history, the market closed early. Amid widespread panic, Niederhoffer fielded calls from lenders. Some, including Refco, a large commodities broker, demanded that he give them more money to support his options positions. Niederhoffer was unable to come up with the cash, and the next morning Refco liquidated his portfolio.
除了在泰國的投資，尼德霍夫大部分投資是美國期貨市場。一開始，亞洲金融危機的時候，美國市場還沒事，但是到了1997年，美國市場也開始波動了。1997年10月27日，道瓊斯跌了500多點，結果市場有史以來第一次提前收盤。恐慌快速傳播，尼德霍夫無法滿足投資者的撤資要求。其中一個大經紀公司瑞富要求尼德霍夫追加資金以維護他的期權倉位。尼德霍夫沒有足夠的資金，瑞富第二天上午就把他的倉位平掉了。
“It was a very poor decision on my part to invest in Thailand,” Niederhoffer told me. “I had no scientific basis for investing there. In the U.S. market, there is evidence that it is a good time to invest after a big fall. In Thailand, there was no such statistical evidence. It was purely a qualitative idea. I’d seen Soros do that a lot of times and make a lot of money, but it didn’t work for me. Previously, I had had two or three qualitative ideas that made money—Turkish bonds, Mexican stocks—and it lured me into a false sense of security.”
尼德霍夫告訴我：“投資泰國的決定是錯誤的。我沒有投資泰國的科學依據。對於美國市場，有充分的理由在大跌後投資。對於泰國，沒有統計數據證明這點。定性不同。我隻知道索羅斯投資了很多次，賺了很多錢，但是他的方法我用就不行。之前，我在土耳其債券和墨西哥股市賺了錢，我就以為投資泰國也是安全的。”
We were sitting on a bench outside a building in the East Fifties, where Laurel Kenner lives and Niederhoffer stays when he visits. He was drinking a bottle of organic lemonade. I asked him whether hubris had contributed to his downfall. “Yeah, I’d say,” he replied. “In those days, we always wanted to be No. 1 in the ratings. There was a Canadian firm, Friedberg—they were having a good year, and we wanted to keep up with them. It was always nip and tuck between us and them.” Niederhoffer was silent for a moment. Then he spoke quickly: “You asked for reasons—I could name another ten. We had no stops. We picked the wrong country to invest in. We were too illiquid. We had too big a percentage of the market, and we didn’t have the ability to get out of our positions. We were too financially vulnerable to the brokers. I didn’t take account of the fact that I could be squeezed and that customers could withdraw their money. But mainly I didn’t have a proper foundation for my investment there. I had no knowledge of the country. I’d never even visited the country. All I had done was finance a trip by Bo Keeley to the brothels there.’’
尼德霍夫去東50街勞雷爾·肯特的家裏訪問，我們一起坐在外麵的椅子上。他喝檸檬的時候，我就問他是不是傲慢導致了他的虧損。他回答說：“是的。我過去總是想成為第一。當時的加拿大公司叫弗萊德博格，他們當年做的不錯，我們想和他們一樣。我們和他們總是旗鼓相當。”尼德霍夫沉默了一會兒，然後他很快地說：“你問我原因——我能再找到10個理由。我們沒有止損。我們投資錯了國家。我們沒有流動資金了。我們在單一市場的倉位太大了。我們沒有能力及時平倉。我們無法追加資金給經紀公司。我沒有看清事實，沒想到客戶會撤資。但主要原因是我沒有合適的投資基礎。我對其它國家不了解。我甚至沒有去研究過那個國家。我隻是和凱利去了一次妓院。”
After his funds folded, Niederhoffer fell into a deep depression. His eldest daughter, Galt, a film producer and novelist who is thirty-one and lives in Manhattan, recalls coaxing him to Long Island for a walk on a beach, where he knelt on the sand like a zombie. “It wasn’t just depression,” she said. “It was self-hatred and hopelessness. He felt like he had let people down. It was so shameful. This was a guy who grew up in a modest house, the son of a cop. Imagine what it would be like to create all of those things for your family and then to lose them.”
基金倒閉以後，尼德霍夫極度壓抑。他的大女兒高特是電影製片人和小說家，31歲，住在曼哈頓，她陪著他爸在長島散步，並安慰他，但是她爸卻呆呆地跪在地上，她說：“他不僅僅是壓抑，他是悔恨，無助。他覺得自己害了別人。他很羞愧。他是警察的兒子，他出身好。想象一下吧，你為家人創造了一切，然後又失去了一切。”
Niederhoffer had managed to retain some of his assets. He mortgaged his house in Connecticut and sold a collection of trophy and presentation silver and some of his rare books, which enabled him to pay off his creditors. He used this period of enforced inactivity to reconsider his approach to investing and to retool his pattern-recognition software. After about six months, using several hundred thousand dollars of his own money, he started trading again. “I had no brokerage account—no broker would do business with me under ordinary terms,” he said. “No customers would open a new account with me.” In 1999 and 2000 he did well, and in 2002 he started Matador, an offshore hedge fund. Its biggest investor was Octane, a hedge fund based in Switzerland, whose chief investment officer, Mustafa Zaidi, is an old friend of Niederhoffer’s.
尼德霍夫盡力保留了一些資金。他把康涅狄格州的房子抵押貸款，變賣了一些銀質獎章，變賣了一些好書，這樣就可以還債了。他利用這段時間重新思考自己的投資方法並重新改造自己的模式識別軟件。大約半年後，他用自己的幾十萬美元又開始了交易。他說：“我沒有經紀賬戶——經濟公司一般不願意和我合作。沒有新客戶投資給我。”他在1999年和2000年做的很好，並於2002年創辦了鬥牛士基金，這是一個海外對衝基金。他的最大的投資者是瑞士的對衝基金辛烷，辛烷的首席投資官穆斯塔法·柴迪是尼德霍夫的老朋友。
At the beginning, Matador had less than ten million dollars to invest. In its second year, the fund had a return of forty-one per cent, and Niederhoffer’s renewed success helped him attract more money, including some from former clients who had lost their investments in 1997. (For these investors, he waived the hefty fees that hedge funds normally charge.) Eventually, he had enough cash to open two more funds. In February, 2003, Niederhoffer published “Practical Speculation,” a manual for serious investors, which he co-wrote with Laurel Kenner, whom he had been dating for several years. That year, he separated from his wife, Susan, and in 2004 he and Kenner launched DailySpeculations.com, which they dedicated to “the scientific method, free markets, deflating ballyhoo, creating value, and laughter.
一開始，鬥牛士的資金不到1000萬美元。第二年，這個基金的回報是41%，尼德霍夫的再次成功讓他吸引了很多的資金，包括1997年遭受虧損的客戶。（對於這些投資者，他不再收昂貴的手續費。）最後，他的資金夠多，他又創建了2個基金。2003年2月，尼德霍夫出版了《投機實戰》，這本為認真投資者寫的書是和勞雷爾·肯特合著的，他們約會了好幾年。當年，他和蘇珊離婚了，然後他在2004年和肯特創辦了dailyspeculations.com，他們在這個網站談論科學的方法，自由的市場，不吹牛，創造價值和笑聲。
The Web site has since evolved into an informal social-networking site for speculators and aspiring speculators. “I met a lot of my friends through the site,” James Lackey, the trader who once worked with Niederhoffer and who posts regularly on the site, said. “Victor is like the hub where the wheels of speculation turn. He’s the center of so many of our relationships—we call him the Chairman. He’s the guy who keeps everyone in line.”
這個網站後來成為投機者交流的場所。詹姆斯·拉基是一個交易者，曾經和尼德霍夫共事過，他經常在網站發帖，他說：“維克多像車軸一樣，投機的車輪在滾動著。他是我們友誼的中信——我們稱他為主席。他讓每個人各就各位。”
In April, 2006, Niederhoffer attended a dinner at the St. Regis Hotel, where MARHedge, a company that published a newsletter for the hedge-fund industry, presented him with an award as the top manager in the commodity-fund category. “What I’m proudest of is that we’ve made several hundred million dollars after fees,” Niederhoffer said to me in July. “We’ve returned a lot more money to our investors than they have invested.”
2006年4月，尼德霍夫到聖裏吉斯酒店參加一次宴會，一個叫三月對衝的公司為對衝基金業出版了一份報告，並為尼德霍夫頒發獎章，認為他是商品基金的頂尖經理。尼德霍夫在7月告訴我：“我最驕傲的就是淨賺了幾個億。我們給投資者的回報很多。”
As Niederhoffer and his funds prospered, it appeared to many of his old friends and colleagues that he had finally become a master speculator. “It is impossible to go through what Victor went through without it altering what you do,” Paul DeRosa told me in July. “It made him more conscious of risk, more attuned to it. It was an expensive education, but the important thing is that it wasn’t wasted.” Irving Redel, a former gold and silver trader and chairman of the New York Commodities Exchange, who was a mentor to Niederhoffer in his Wall Street days, said, “To be a great trader you need discipline. You have to have certain strategies that you follow, but you also have to have the flexibility to know when it is going wrong. And you have to know to never go beyond what you can afford to lose.” I asked Redel whether Niederhoffer has these qualities. He replied, “He does now.”
當尼德霍夫和他的基金興起時，他的朋友和同事都覺得他是投機大師。保羅·蒂柔沙在7月告訴我：“隻有經曆維克多經曆的事才能成長。這樣他就更擔心風險，更適應風險。這是昂貴的教訓，但重要的這不是浪費。”歐文·拉德爾是黃金白銀交易者，也是紐約商品交易所的主席，他也是尼德霍夫的導師，他說：“要想成為優秀的交易者，你必須要有紀律。你必須有一定的策略，你還要足夠靈活，在犯錯的時候知道自己錯了。你還必須知道度在哪裏，做事不能過度。你要知道你隻能虧多少。”我就問拉德爾是否尼德霍夫具備了這些特質，他回答：“他現在有了。”
On the first Thursday of every month, Niederhoffer hosts a meeting of libertarians at the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, on West Forty-fourth Street. One Thursday evening in early June, about seventy people were gathered in the society’s library, listening to an elderly woman in a white hat, who stood at a lectern talking enthusiastically about Christopher Hitchens’s book “God Is Not Great.” A middle-aged man with a beard spoke next, urging the others to accompany him on a walking tour he hosted called Ayn Rand’s New York, in which he visited local buildings where Rand had lived and held objectivist salons, as well as sites—the Waldorf-Astoria, Grand Central Terminal—that served as inspirations for places in her novel “Atlas Shrugged.”
每個月的第一個周四，尼德霍夫就在西44街技工和商人協會為自由人士搞聚會。6月初的一個周四晚上，大約有70人聚在協會的圖書館，聽一個戴白帽的老年婦女站在那裏激動地講克裏斯托弗·希坎斯的書《上帝並不偉大》。然後是一個有胡須的中年男人呼籲大家一起去參觀艾因·蘭德的紐約，他們參觀了蘭德的住處和蘭德主持的沙龍，還有沃爾托夫啊斯托裏亞，這是一個很大的酒店，就是在這個地方她寫出了著名的《地球顫栗》。
The meetings are open to the public, and Niederhoffer, who was sitting on a table at the back of the room, swinging his legs, encourages each person to speak. He calls these sessions the New York City Junto, after the discussion group that Benjamin Franklin founded in Philadelphia in 1727, which held meetings for thirty years and eventually became the American Philosophical Society. Niederhoffer’s Junto is more casual, but he takes libertarianism seriously, considering it to be a natural complement to speculating. As a statement on his Web site puts it, “Victor Niederhoffer believes the purpose of life is the pursuit of happiness and achievement, and that the voluntary transactions that flow naturally out of an enterprise system are the key to material and personal freedom, and peace.” In an op-ed article that he published in the Wall Street Journal in 1989, he argued that speculators serve several important economic functions. When a good becomes scarce, he said, speculators bid up prices, which encourages firms to produce more and consumers to buy less, and helps to restore balance to the market. “I am proud to be a speculator,” Niederhoffer wrote. “I am proud that my humble attempts to predict Tuesday’s prices on Monday are an indispensable component of our society. By buying low and selling high, I create harmony and freedom.”
這個聚會是公開的，尼德霍夫坐在後麵的桌子上，晃著腿，鼓勵其他人去演講。他說這些聚會就是紐約的秘密聚會，這是仿照本傑明·富蘭克林1727年在費城搞的研討會，這個聚會搞了30年，後來成為美國哲學會。尼德霍夫的秘密聚會比較普通，但是他很關注自由，他認為投機是自然的。他在網站上說：“維克多·尼德霍夫認為生活的目標就是追求幸福和成就，辦公司就是為了實現個人的自由和平靜。”他在1989年《華爾街日報》的一篇文章說投機者扮演著幾個重要的經濟角色。他說，一旦貨物稀缺，投機者就報高價，這樣就鼓勵公司多生產產品，客戶少買產品，這樣市場就平衡了。尼德霍夫寫道：“我是投機者，我感到驕傲。我相信我預測價格本身就是社會不可缺少的一部分。我低買高賣，創造了和諧和自由。”
The guest speaker at the meeting was Thomas DiLorenzo, an economics professor at Loyola College, in Maryland, and the author of fourteen books, including “How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country from the Pilgrims to the Present.” DiLorenzo’s subject was the filmmaker and liberal gadfly Michael Moore. Not having seen Moore’s latest movie, “Sicko,” DiLorenzo was at something of a disadvantage, but he expressed outrage at Moore’s failure, in his previous films, to recognize the importance of competition, the virtues of sweatshops, and the depredations of socialism. At one point, Niederhoffer interrupted him and asked, “What are the general principles?” DiLorenzo replied, “Markets work and government-run monopolies don’t.”
聚會的嘉賓是托馬斯·蒂洛倫佐，他是馬裏蘭州聖徒學院的經濟學教授，他出版了14本書，包括《資本主義如何拯救了美國：我國從清教徒到現在的未知曆史》。蒂洛倫佐談到了製片人和自由牛虻邁克爾·摩爾。蒂洛倫佐沒有看過摩爾最新的電影《醫療內幕》，蒂洛倫佐也不占優勢，但是他說摩爾的電影是失敗的，他說競爭是重要的，血汗工廠有好處，社會主義是有破壞性的。尼德霍夫有時會打斷他，問他：“你的主要原則是什麽？”蒂洛倫佐回答說：“反對政府壟斷。”
At least one member of the audience, a gray-haired man, seemed to think that this was going a bit too far. He cited the Federal Home Loan Banks, an agency that makes mortgages more readily available, and the National Park Service. Don’t you agree that the government does some things well? the man asked. “No,” DiLorenzo replied. “The government has screwed up the national parks. I think capitalism would do a much better job with land.”
最後一個灰頭發的男人認為這個話題扯遠了。他提到了聯邦家庭貸款銀行和國家公園局，前者提供穩定的抵押貸款。這個人問道：難道你不承認政府做了一些好事？蒂洛倫佐回答：“不，政府毀了國家公園局。我認為資本主義可以更好地處理好工作問題和土地問題。”
Shortly after ten o’clock, Niederhoffer ended the meeting. I was eager to speak to him about the stock market, which had fallen by almost two hundred points that day. “I can’t talk about it,” he said when I approached him. “It’s too painful. I might be able to review it in a few days.” He walked across the room to greet Kenner and Aubrey. He put his son on his shoulders and disappeared onto Forty-fourth Street.
剛過10點，尼德霍夫宣布會議結束。我急著和他談股市，當天股市幾乎跌了200點。當我找他的時候，他說：“我不想談這個。太痛苦了。我準備好好反省一下。”他走過去和肯特和奧布裏打招呼。他把兒子架在肩膀上然後消失在44街。
On May 3, 2006, the day that Aubrey was born, Niederhoffer’s wife, Susan, filed for divorce. As his spouse and the legal owner of many of his assets, which he had transferred to her in 1997, she had claim to much of his fortune. For months, the couple’s lawyers argued. Then, in February, Niederhoffer persuaded Susan to drop the divorce proceedings. In return, he agreed to leave Kenner at the end of 2007 and return to her. Then he informed Kenner of the plan.
2006年5月3日是奧布裏的生日，也就是這天蘇珊提出離婚。由於他們是合法夫妻，所以在離婚時，她分到了大部分的財富。他們的律師吵了幾個月。然後在2月，尼德霍夫勸蘇珊放棄離婚。作為回報，他同意在2007年底和肯特分手。然後他把這件事告訴了肯特。
For now, Niederhoffer shuttles between the women. From Sunday to Tuesday, he and Susan share the house in Connecticut. (Three of their four daughters have left home; the youngest, Kira, attends boarding school.) He spends the rest of the week in Manhattan, with Kenner and Aubrey. “He’s emotionally involved with both of those women right now,” Galt said to me. “He never really leaves women. Wives become extended-family members, like in-laws, or honorary members of the harem. They tolerate it because he’s a flawed genius and a man. They take the good with the bad. It’s all I’ve ever known. All I’ve ever known is we are weird.”
目前，尼德霍夫還在女人間來回奔波。從周六到周二，他和蘇珊住在康涅狄格州的家裏。（4個女兒中有3個女兒已經不在家裏住了，最小的女兒叫吉雅，還在讀書。）剩下來的時間則到曼哈頓和肯特及奧布裏一起住。高特告訴我：“他同時愛上了2個女人。他沒有離開她們。這2個老婆像一家人一樣，就像伊斯蘭國家一樣和諧。她們忍受他，是因為他是有缺點的天才。她們把壞事當做好事。據我所知，我們太奇怪了。”
I was having lunch with Galt at a French restaurant near her apartment in Chelsea. Although Aubrey’s birth had been a shock to the family, she went on, her father sees his other children regularly, and he is on good terms with his first wife, Gail—Galt’s mother—who divides her time between New York and Texas. “We’ve become kind of like this very functional dysfunctional family,” Galt said. “To most people, it is completely abnormal, and yet we’ve come to have this somewhat wholesome, happy dynamic. All of the girls are close. My mother and Susan have grown very close.” Recently, Galt added, she, Gail, Susan, and all her sisters except Artemis, who was away, got together to celebrate the third birthday of her daughter, Magnolia. Laurel was not at the party. “Laurel is another story,” Galt said. “Susan and Laurel are not close. There’s nothing happy about that.”
我們在高特切爾西區公寓附近的法國餐館吃飯。雖然奧布裏的出生對她們家是一個震驚，她還要繼續生活下去，她的爸爸會定期看望孩子們，他對第一個妻子吉爾有誠信的——也就是高特的媽媽——高特的媽媽在紐約和特克薩斯之間奔波。高特說：“”我們對這種奇怪的家庭有點適應了。對於大部分人來說，這不正常。但是我們還是比較高興的。所有的女孩都很親近。我媽和蘇珊的關係也不錯。高特補充說，最近除了遠在外地的阿特米斯，她，吉爾，蘇珊以及所有的姐妹都一起去慶祝她女兒木蘭的生日。但勞雷爾沒有來。高特說：“勞雷爾情況不同，蘇珊和勞雷爾關係不好。”
Last year, Galt published a novel, “A Taxonomy of Barnacles,” which she described to me as “an effort to exorcise my demons about living in a family that was different from everybody else’s.” The novel features an eccentric and domineering businessman who has six daughters and desperately wants a male heir. Eventually, he acquires one in surprising circumstances. Shortly after the book came out, Niederhoffer took Galt to lunch at the Four Seasons and told her that her book had been prescient. “Oh, my God, you have a love child!” Galt blurted out. “No,” Niederhoffer said. “I have a son.” A few months later, Aubrey was born.
去年，高特出版了一部小說《不同的人》，她告訴我“努力去除住在一個每個人都持不同看法的家庭的怪怪的感覺。”這個小說說一個古怪的，強勢的生意人有6個女兒，但是又死想要個兒子來繼承他。最終，他在一個奇怪的場合下得到了一個兒子。小說出版後不久，尼德霍夫就帶高特去四季酒店吃飯，並告訴她他知道她會寫這樣的書。高特立刻說：“哦，上帝，你有可愛的孩子！”尼德霍夫說：“不，我有一個兒子。”幾個月後，奧布裏就出世了。
Kenner, who is fifty-three, told me that she is unhappy about Niederhoffer’s arrangement with her. “Obviously, there is a lot of anger there,” she said. “But it is not just me. There is a baby involved.” I expressed surprise that her relationship with Niederhoffer remained cordial. “We had eight great years,” she replied. “He gave me so much. I am immeasurably better off on so many levels through meeting Victor. He was the best lover I ever had—not just in sexual terms. We wrote a book together. He is a great, romantic, gentle person.”
肯特現在53歲，她告訴我她對尼德霍夫對她的態度不滿。她說：“很明顯，我很生氣。不僅僅是我感到生氣。還要涉及到一個小孩。”我則為她和尼德霍夫的關係還保持興奮狀態而感到奇怪。她回答：“我們有8年時間過的很好。他給了我很多。我和維克多在一起很開心。他是我最好的愛人——不僅僅指性。我們在一起寫了一本書。他很偉大，很浪漫，也很紳士。”
Niederhoffer declined to discuss his relationship with Susan. As for Kenner, he said, “We’ve had a very fine collaboration and had much pleasure and happiness together, and we have a wonderful son. We’re parents, and we still have mutual respect and admiration for each other.” He went on, “We didn’t have in mind the ultimate outcome, but we created a fantastic legacy—the baby, the books, and the articles.”
尼德霍夫則不願意談論蘇珊。對於肯特，他說：“我們在一起合作的很好，也很快樂，幸福。我們有一個好兒子。我們是父母，我們互相尊重，互相尊敬。”他繼續說：“我們沒去想最終結果，但我們創造了偉大的傳奇——小孩，書和文章。”
On Tuesday, July 17th, the Dow rose above fourteen thousand for the first time. The economy was growing, the long-term interest rate had dropped back to five per cent, and the volatile trading days of early summer seemed largely to have been forgotten. After the market closed, however, Bear Stearns announced that two of its hedge funds, which had investments in securities tied to subprime mortgages, had lost almost all their value. Problems in the subprime market spilled into money markets that banks and other financial institutions rely on to finance their daily activities; several more hedge funds went under; and commentators began to speak of a looming “credit crunch.” Stock markets around the world experienced wild fluctuations.
7月17日周二，道瓊斯第一次漲到14000點以上。經濟在成長，長期利息跌到了5%，人們似乎忘了夏初的市場波動。然而，收盤後，貝爾斯登宣布他們的2個對衝基金，由於之前投資了次級債市場，現在已經幾乎虧光了。次級債市場的問題導致金融業和銀行業都出現了問題，很多基金虧損了，評論家則提到了信貸緊縮。全世界的股市都在嚴重波動。
On Tuesday, July 24th, the Dow fell two hundred and twenty-six points. Two days later, it dropped three hundred and eleven points. Commentators on CNBC were making ominous pronouncements. I sent Niederhoffer an e-mail, saying that I hoped he had been well positioned for the market’s correction. He replied in three words: “I was not.” On Friday, July 27th, the Dow fell another two hundred points, closing four per cent down for the week. The markets were still volatile a week later, when Niederhoffer came into Manhattan for his monthly libertarian meeting. After it ended, we went across the street to a restaurant, where he ordered a cappuccino. He looked pale and haggard, and years older. For several minutes, we sat in silence. Then, in a low voice, he said, “Things have changed totally since we last spoke. The situation is fundamentally different. It is critical.” Kenner and Aubrey joined us, but Niederhoffer hardly seemed to notice them. “We are fighting for survival night and day,” he said when I pressed him for details. “I was caught wrong-footed in the market turbulence. I’m not as smart as I thought I was.”
7月24日周二，道瓊斯跌了226點。2天後，它跌了311點。美國全國廣播公司財經頻道的評論家發出了悲觀言論。我給尼德霍夫發了一封電子郵件，我希望他已經準備好了市場的修正動作。他用3個字回複：“我沒有。”7月27日周五，道瓊斯又跌了200點，當周的收盤價跌了4%。一周後，市場還在波動，尼德霍夫則到曼哈頓參加自由黨的例行每月聚會。聚會結束後，他到街對麵的餐館點了一份卡布奇諾。他看起來臉色蒼白，形容枯槁，似乎老了幾歲。他呆坐了好幾分鍾。然後他低聲說：“自從我上次發言以後，事情發生了重大變化。基本麵已經變了，這太關鍵了。”肯特和奧布裏也在一旁，但他似乎沒有注意到她們的存在。當我問他具體情況時，他說：“我們現在是為生存而戰。我又被套了。我沒有自己想象的那麽聰明。”
The previous week, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, in response to the turmoil in the market, had raised its margin requirements on futures traders, a move that was potentially devastating for Niederhoffer, who had hundreds of millions of dollars in options. He had more money in reserve than he had had in 1997, but he was worried. “It’s a matter of redeploying resources,” he said. “Also, in trying to be courageous in response to the crisis, I put up a lot of my own capital. You remember the story of the Essex and Captain Pollard? We are like a tiny fishing boat off the coast of Alaska that has been caught in the biggest waves in a hundred years.”
上周，市場波動劇烈，麵對如此情況，芝加哥商業交易所對期貨交易者提高了保證金比例，這個舉動對尼德霍夫來說是災難性的，因為他持有幾億美元的期權。雖然他的準備金比1997年多，但是他還是擔心。他說：“現在要重新組合資源。我有勇氣麵對危機，我自己也投資了很多。你還記得艾塞克斯號的船長波拉德嗎？我們就像是一艘小漁船被困在了阿拉斯加幾百年來的最大波浪中。”
Talking about his predicament seemed to improve Niederhoffer’s mood a little. He ate some sorbet and played with Aubrey. Then he said, “Now I have to go home and work.” Kenner got up to leave, straightening her dress and inadvertently exposing a thigh. “Do that again,” Niederhoffer commanded. “Do what?” Kenner asked. “Lift it up,” he said. “It can keep a man afloat.” They both laughed.
談論他的困境，似乎能讓尼德霍夫的情緒好點。他喝了一點果汁飲料，和奧布裏玩了一會兒。然後他說：“我要回家去研究了。”肯特起身，準備離開，拉了一下衣服，不小心露出了大腿。尼德霍夫大喝：“你又這樣。”肯特問：“又什麽？”他說：“把衣服拉太高了，這樣會讓男人心神不寧的。”他們2個都笑了。
During the next two weeks, I tried repeatedly to talk to Niederhoffer. Part of the reason for his reticence was that he feared a leak. Hedge funds depend on access to borrowed money. If lenders learn that a fund is in trouble, they might decide to stop giving it money—which can have disastrous consequences for the fund. On July 30th, Sowood Capital Management, a Boston-based fund, announced that the assets under its management had lost more than fifty per cent of their value in a few weeks, and the fund closed shortly afterward. By mid-August, two funds operated by Goldman Sachs had lost about a third of the value they’d had at the beginning of the year. Goldman decided to invest two billion dollars of its own money in one of the funds, Global Equity Opportunities, and it persuaded several wealthy investors to put up another billion dollars on favorable terms.
之後2周，我嚐試再次和尼德霍夫通話。結果他表示沉默，也許是害怕泄漏什麽。對衝基金的錢是借來的。如果投資者知道這個基金有麻煩了，他們也許會撤資——這樣基金就會出現災難。7月30日，波士頓的基金索無德資金管理宣布在最近幾周虧損了50%以上，然後這個基金很快就倒閉了。到了8月中旬，高盛管理的2個基金和年初相比大約虧損了33%。高盛決定自己再投資20億美元給其中一個基金“全球資金機會”，同時還在勸說幾個富有的投資者再追加10億美元，他們給出了比較好的條件。
The spectacle of one of Wall Street’s most profitable firms being forced to shore up one of its flagship funds suggested some of the pressures that Niederhoffer was confronting. In today’s interconnected financial markets, there is no such thing as an isolated incident. When a dramatic event occurs in one sector, the effects are felt in others. The Goldman funds were computer-driven funds, and their software programs had failed to predict the size and speed of movements in the stock market. Prices had got “way out of whack,” David Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial officer, complained. “We were seeing things that were twenty-five standard-deviation moves several days in a row.”
華爾街最賺錢的公司被迫支撐自己的旗艦基金，這說明尼德霍夫也遇到了壓力。在如今高度關聯的金融市場，事件都是相關的，沒有例外。隻要有一個地方發生了災難，其它地方就會受影響。高盛基金是用電腦投資的基金，他們的電腦沒有預測到股市波動的大小和速度。高盛的首席金融官大衛·維尼亞抱怨說：“價格不對頭啊，價格在連續幾天內出現了25個標準背離值的波動。”
Like Niederhoffer’s funds, the Goldman funds were heavily leveraged. For every hundred dollars of capital that the Global Equity Opportunities fund owned, it had borrowed about six hundred dollars. When a fund is leveraged six to one, a five-per-cent fall in the value of its portfolio becomes a thirty-per-cent loss in capital. “Leverage is a double-edged sword,” Richard Bernstein, an analyst at Merrill Lynch, wrote in a note to clients a few days before Goldman announced its efforts to prop up the Global Opportunities fund. “It enhances returns on the upside, but also makes underperformance more rapid and severe.”
像尼德霍夫的基金一樣，高盛基金也是高杠杆。對於“全球資金機會”基金，其中100美元就意味著它還借了大約600美元。如果基金的杠杆是6比1，隻要標的資產的價格跌5%，這個基金整體就會虧30%。美林的分析師理查德·伯恩斯坦在高盛宣布“全球資金機會”基金虧損的前幾天給客戶的報告上麵寫著：“杠杆是雙刃劍，它能提高回報，但是也加強了負麵效果。”
Of course, Niederhoffer was aware of these dangers. But, between the middle of 2003 and the start of this year, the financial markets had been mostly calm. Stock prices had gone up, and, atypically, they had done so in a fairly straight line, with only two significant reversals, in May, 2006, and in February, 2007. From Niederhoffer’s perspective, the decline in market volatility was a welcome development, because it made his options trading much less risky. With prices steady or rising, he was less likely to be caught on the wrong end of a big market move. As the quiet times continued, many investors were lulled into believing that a less volatile era had begun. Alan Greenspan, who was the chairman of the Fed until February, 2006, helped to feed this illusion by talking about how financial innovations, such as the development of asset-backed securities, had spread risks more widely, making the market less vulnerable to shocks.
當然了，尼德霍夫意識到了這些危險。但是，從2003年年中到今年初，金融市場基本上是平靜的。股價漲了，但它們幾乎是直接上漲，隻是在2006年5月和2007年2月出現了2次明顯的回調。尼德霍夫喜歡市場的回調，因為這樣期權的風險就不大。隻要市場穩定或上漲，他就不會錯過大行情。如果市場繼續平靜，很多投資者就以為市場不會再大起大落了。阿蘭·格林斯潘在2006年2月前是美聯儲的主席，他大談金融改革，比如有資產保證的證券大大地分散了風險，市場可以承受衝擊，這些都是假象。
The crisis in the subprime-mortgage market changed all this. In the stock market, volatility was more pronounced than it had been for years. Even on days when the Dow closed just a few points down, prices lurched around. On Friday, August 10th, the Dow fell more than two hundred points before recovering at the close. On Thursday, August 16th, it fell almost three hundred and fifty points before closing down just fourteen points. A measure of market turbulence which many traders watch closely is the Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, known as the VIX. Between January, 2003, and January, 2007, the VIX fell from more than thirty to about ten. By the end of July, it had surged above twenty, and on August 16th, the day before the Fed cut the discount rate, it hit thirty-seven.
次貸危機改變了一切。股市的振蕩更加劇烈。即使收盤價道瓊是隻跌了幾點，價格也是又蹦又跳。8月10日周五，道瓊斯在收盤前跌了200多點。8月16日周四，它差不多跌了350點，收盤時隻跌了14點。很多交易者用芝加哥期權交易所波動指數VIX來衡量市場的波動性。2003年1月到2007年1月，VIX從30多跌到了10左右。到了7月底，它漲到了20，8月16日，在美聯儲降息之前，它達到了37。
The surge in volatility prompted the Chicago Merc to raise its margin requirements for options on S. & P. 500 Index futures twice, first from two per cent to three per cent, and then from three per cent to four per cent. Niederhoffer was asked to double the amount of capital supporting his positions, and he found it difficult to raise the necessary cash. Some of his investments had lost a lot of their value, and the value of others was difficult to determine. There were so many moving parts in his portfolio that he wasn’t sure where he stood. When a trader can’t meet his margin requirements, he is at the mercy of his creditors. As Niederhoffer’s financial situation deteriorated, ADM Investor Services, a Chicago-based brokerage firm that caters to futures traders, ordered him to liquidate some of his options positions. Working late into the night, Niederhoffer berated himself for leaving himself so exposed. Referring to the margin calls, he said to one acquaintance, “I shouldn’t have been in the position where it could have had such an impact.” Despite the lessons of 1997, and the precautions he had taken, he was again in over his head.
波動性的增加導致芝加哥交易所2次提高標準普爾500股指期貨期權的保證金，第一次從1%提高到3%，第二次從3%提高到4%。尼德霍夫則被通知要追加保證金，以維持自己的倉位，但他發現自己沒有足夠的資金。他的很多投資虧錢了，其它投資則情況不明。他投資的資產項目太多了，他不知道要把哪個平倉。一旦一個交易者無法麵對追加保證金的通知，他就要看他的投資者怎麽想了。隨著尼德霍夫金融狀態變壞，芝加哥的經紀公司ADM投資者服務公司命令它平掉部分期權倉位。尼德霍夫工作到深夜，痛罵自己的倉位太重。關於追加保證金的通知，他對一個熟人說：“我真不應該持有如此重的倉位，打擊太大。”雖然他在1997年吃了教訓，自己也謹慎了，但是這次又頭昏了。
Every August, Niederhoffer throws a big party in New York City, to which he invites dozens of regular contributors to his Web site as well as some of his friends. This year, there were about seventy-five guests. Most were New Yorkers, but some had come from as far away as England. For three days, Niederhoffer entertained them at his expense. On Friday, he organized a trip to the New York Botanical Garden and to a Mets game. On Saturday, he hosted a beach outing at Coney Island and a dinner at Delmonico’s, near Wall Street. On Sunday, he provided a picnic brunch in Central Park’s Conservatory Garden.
每年8月，尼德霍夫都要在紐約開一個大派對，他會邀請他網站上的很多人，還有很多朋友。今天，他邀請了75個客人。大部分是紐約人，但也有一些人是從英國趕來的。3天來，尼德霍夫自費招待他們。周五，他帶大家去紐約植物園參加一個遊戲。周六，他在康尼島和華爾街附近的戴爾莫尼克餐館招待客人。周日，他在中央公園的溫室花園搞野餐活動。
As the crisis in the market spread, Niederhoffer had briefly considered cancelling the party, but he decided that to do so would have alerted people to his troubles. At three o’clock on Saturday afternoon, I saw him in the crowd on the boardwalk at Coney Island, across from the Cyclone roller coaster. As usual, he wasn’t difficult to spot: he was wearing yellow trousers and a yellow T-shirt that said “Chief Speculator” on the back. On the beach, his staff had set up a blue canopy, and about a dozen people had gathered underneath it, taking shelter from the sun.
隨著危機的蔓延，尼德霍夫也不想取消派對，因為這麽做會讓客人感到警覺。周六下午3點，我看見他在康尼島玩過山車。就像平時一樣，他不太好找：他穿著黃褲子，黃T恤衫，背麵還寫著：“投機之王”。他的員工在海灘上搭了一個大蓬，幾十人擠在下麵，因為太陽很曬。
Niederhoffer had Aubrey on his shoulders, and he seemed to be in a better mood than when I had last seen him. He makes frequent visits to Coney Island and Brighton Beach; the house he lived in as a boy was about half a mile east of where we were standing. “We are going on the Wonder Wheel,” Niederhoffer said, gesturing over his shoulder at the slowly turning Ferris wheel, which dates to 1920. While he was gone, I spoke with two of his guests, a young Liberian M.B.A. student who said that he had recently posted an article on DailySpeculations.com about gambling on thoroughbred racing, and an older Frenchman who traded stocks at a Wall Street firm. The atmosphere was friendly and relaxed. None of the guests mentioned Niederhoffer’s financial predicament.
尼德霍夫把奧布裏托在肩膀上，他似乎比我上次看見的時候狀態要好。他經常去康尼島和布萊頓海灘，他小時候準的房子離他現在站的地方大約有半英裏。尼德霍夫指著摩天輪說：“我們去玩摩天輪。”，那是1920年就有的摩天輪。當他去玩的時候，我和他的2個客人聊天，一個是利比裏亞年輕的工商管理碩士學生，他說他最近在dailyspeculations.com發了一個帖子，內容是關於賭馬的，另一個人是法國人，年紀大些，他在華爾街的公司交易股票。我們談話的氣氛有好而輕鬆。沒有一個客人提到了尼德霍夫的金融困境。
At 6 P.M., the party reconvened at Delmonico’s, which Niederhoffer had reserved for the evening. After cocktails in the dark-panelled bar, his guests entered the ornate dining room, where a Broadway tap dancer and a family of Hawaiian singers performed. I was seated next to Laurel Kenner and Aubrey, but didn’t see much of Niederhoffer, who was wearing a lilac jacket and spent most of the evening table-hopping. After dessert was served, he stood up to speak.
下午6點，大家到戴爾莫尼克餐館吃飯，尼德霍夫已經預定好了。在黑木酒吧喝完雞尾酒以後，客人們就來到了豪華的餐廳。那裏有百老匯式的跳舞表演和夏威夷的歌手在唱歌。我坐在勞雷爾·肯特和奧布裏的旁邊，但是很少看見尼德霍夫，他穿著紫色的夾克，整個晚上周旋於不同的餐桌之間。上了點心之後，他站起來說話了。
“This is a historic gathering,” he said, swaying slowly back and forth. “We are here in the middle of one of the greatest turmoils in Wall Street history. I am sure that many of you are keen to know how we are doing. Well, I can tell you that it has been very difficult. The battle has been joined, and it is still to be determined who the victor is. I always say that when you are in the middle of one of these situations it is better to say nothing. If you say you are doing badly, it gives ammunition to your enemies. If you say you are doing well, you are tempting fate. . . . We will see what happens and who wins the final point.”
他輕微地前搖後擺地說：“這是曆史性的聚會。我們在華爾街有史以來最大的動蕩中聚會。我知道，有很多人想知道我們做的如何。嗯，我將告訴你們確實有困難。戰爭剛開始，還不知道誰會贏。我總是說，如果你處於這種狀況，最好還是不要隨便說話。如果你說你做的很差，這等於漲他人誌氣。如果你說你做的很好，等於有點玩世不恭……我們還是拭目以待吧，看看最終誰會贏。”
Later in August, after the Federal Reserve cut the discount rate—the rate at which it lends to banks—the markets calmed down; but Niederhoffer’s woes continued. In September, he was forced to close two of his funds, including his flagship, Matador, which had declined in value by more than seventy-five per cent. After cashing out many of his investments, Niederhoffer repaid his lenders and returned what money was leftover to his clients. He laid off several employees and consulted with his lawyers. Meanwhile, rumors circulated on the Internet that, for the second time in a decade, his funds had “blown up.”
8月下旬，美聯儲宣布降低貼現率——也就是它借給銀行的利率——市場平靜了，但是尼德霍夫的痛苦還在繼續。9月，他被迫關閉了2個基金，包括他的旗艦鬥牛士基金，鬥牛士跌了75%以上。當他把大部分倉位平掉以後，尼德霍夫償還了客戶剩餘的錢，以及投資者的錢。他開除了一些員工，並找了律師。同時網上有流言說，10年來他的基金第二次破產。
Had he been able to wait a little longer before liquidating his trades, his funds might have recouped most of the losses. After the Federal Reserve cut interest rates again, on September 18th, the stock market rallied further and volatility decreased. Still, Niederhoffer sounded philosophical. “The market was not as liquid as I anticipated,” he said. “The movements in volatility were greater than I had anticipated. We were prepared for many different contingencies, but this kind of one we were not prepared for.” Niederhoffer was still trading for his own account, and for some remaining clients. “My basic ideas about the creative power of the market, buying in panics, buying on weakness—I don’t think what has happened has anything to do with that stuff,” he said. “I am going to keep going, for better or worse.”
如果他再等等，遲點平倉，他的基金是可以挽回大部分虧損的。當美聯儲再次降低貼現率之後，股市在9月18日大幅反彈。然而尼德霍夫還是有自己的哲學觀點。他說：“市場的流動性還是沒有想象的那麽好。波動的能量比我想象的要大。我們已經準備好了麵對各種意外事故，但是還是沒想到這次事故會發生。”尼德霍夫仍然為自己和部分剩餘的客戶交易。他說：“我的基本市場思想是創造性的力量，在恐慌時買入，在弱市買入——但是已經發生的事和這些思想都沒有關係。不管好不好，我還要繼續交易。”