CHAPTER 1

MY CALL TO ADVENTURE:  我的冒险经历

1949–1967

Iwas born  in 1949 and grew up in a middle-class Long Island neighborhood, the only son  of a professional jazz musician and a stay-at-home mom. I was an ordinary kid  in an ordinary house and a worse-than-ordinary student. I loved playing  around with my pals—touch football in the streets and baseball in a  neighbor’s backyard when I was young, and chasing girls when I got older.

我出生于1949年，成长在一个长岛附近的中产阶级家庭。是家里唯一的男孩，父亲一个是职业爵士音乐家而我母亲是一个不怎么爱出门的家庭主妇。我是一个普通家庭的普通孩子  但却是一个中等偏差的学生。年少的时候，我喜欢和同伴们在街头玩足球或者在邻居家的后院玩篮球，稍大一点就到处追求女孩了。

Our DNA gives us our  innate strengths and weaknesses. My most obvious weakness was my bad rote  memory. I couldn’t, and still can’t, remember facts that don’t have reasons  for being what they are (like phone numbers), and I don’t like following  instructions. At the same time, I was very curious and loved to figure things  out for myself, though that was less obvious at the time.

Dna决定了我们天生的力量和缺点。我最显著的缺点就是我的糟透了的记性。我不能，任然做不到记住那些不明所以的事实，并且我不喜欢尊崇教导，同时我好奇心旺盛，热衷自己探究事物，显然那时候有点不明智。

I didn’t like  school, not just because it required a lot of memorization, but because I  wasn’t interested in most of the things my teachers thought were important. I  never understood what doing well in school would get me other than my  mother’s approval.

我不喜欢去学校，不仅仅因为学习需要大量的记忆，更因为我对于老师认为重要的事情不感兴趣。我永远不明白如何做才能得到妈妈的认可。

My mother adored me  and worried about my poor grades. Up until middle school, she would make me  go to my room and study for a couple of hours before going out to play, but I  couldn’t bring myself to do it. She was always there for me. She folded and  rubber-banded the newspapers I delivered and baked cookies for the two of us  to eat while we watched horror movies together on Saturday nights. She died  when I was nineteen. At the time, I couldn’t imagine ever laughing again. Now  when I think of her I smile.

妈妈爱我很担心我的学业。直到中学，妈妈常常会强制在我的房间，陪我一起学上几小时才放我出去玩，我自己是做不到的，所以母亲常常为了我那样做。妈妈将我要送的报纸包好，周六的晚上我们一起看恐怖片时还烘烤了小甜饼。我19岁的时候母亲去世了。从那时候起，我就再没笑过，现在我想起她才会笑起来。

My dad worked very  late hours as a musician—until about three in the morning—so he slept late on  weekends. As a result, we didn’t have much of a relationship when I was young  other than him constantly nagging me to take care of chores like mowing the  lawn and cutting the hedges, which I hated. He was a responsible man dealing  with an irresponsible kid. Memories of how we interacted seem funny to me  today. For example, one time he told me to cut the grass and I decided to do  just the front yard and postpone doing the back, but then it rained for a  couple of days and the backyard grass became so high I had to cut it with a  sickle. That took so long that by the time I was finished, the front yard was  too high to mow, and so on.

我父亲作为一个音乐家常常工作到凌晨三点-周目的时候他常常睡得很晚。所以当然，我们没有太多的交流，他更多是让我去做我非常讨厌的短工比如修草坪和树篱。父亲是一个称职的男人。记忆中我们之间的互动现在想起来似乎非常有趣。举例有一次他告诉我去修草坪所以我决定只修前面的草坪，而后面的草坪放到下次，但是紧接着连续下了几天雨，后院的草太高了只能用镰刀割了。就这样我花费了更多的时间，而前院的草也太高不能用割草机修了，所以就这样循环。

After my mother  died, my dad and I became very close, especially when I started my own  family. I both liked and loved him.He had a casual, fun way about him the way musicians  tend to, and I admired his strong character, which I assume came from  living through the Great Depression and fighting in both World War II and the  Korean War. I have memories of him from when he was in his seventies, not  hesitating to drive through big snowstorms, shoveling himself out whenever he  got stuck like it was no big deal. After playing in clubs and cutting records  for most of his life, he began a second career in his midsixties, teaching  music in high school and at a local community college, which he continued  until he had a heart attack at eighty-one. He lived another decade after  that, as sharp as ever mentally.

妈妈去世后，父亲和我变得非常亲近，尤其我有了自己的家庭。我们都喜欢和爱着他。父亲有一个作为音乐家的不固定的爱好，我非常崇拜他超强的性格，我猜是从大萧条时期和第二次世界大战和韩战形成的。我记得父亲在他七十多岁的时候，一次超级大暴雪他毫不犹豫驾车穿过，从没觉得这是个大事。在俱乐部奏乐和录音了大半辈子后，在他60多的时候父亲开始了第二个职业，在一所高级中学和当地的一个社区学院教授音乐，直到老人家81岁时一次心脏病才停止教学，然后他又活了12年依然活力四射。

When I didn’t want  to do something, I would fight it, but when I was excited about something,  nothing could hold me back. For example, while I resisted doing chores at  home, I eagerly did them outside the house to earn money. Starting at age  eight, I had a newspaper route, shoveled snow off people’s driveways,caddied, bussed tablesand washed dishes at a local restaurant, and stocked shelves at a nearby  department store. I don’t remember my parents encouraging me to do these jobs  so I can’t say how I came by them. But I do know that having those jobs and  having some money to handle independently in those early years taught me many  valuable lessons I wouldn’t have learned in school or at play.

我不想做某事的时候，我可能会打起精神战斗，但如果我感兴趣的花，没有什么能阻止我。举个例子，再家的时候我很抵触做短工，但在外面为了挣钱我会积极做短工。从8岁起，我拥有了一条报纸路线，铲雪，送茶叶，吗货柜，在当地的一家餐馆洗盘子，在附近的一家工厂仓库里码货。我不记得父母有鼓励我去做哪些工作，所以我不能说为什么做这些，但是我的确知道经历哪些工作，在我早期的岁月就拥有一笔能独立支配的钱教会我很多在学校或者玩不能教的宝贵东西。

In my early years  the psychology of the 1960s U.S. wasaspirationaland inspirational—to achieve great  and noble goals. It was like nothing I have seen since. One of my earliest  memories was of John F. Kennedy, an intelligent, charismatic man who painted  vivid pictures of changing the world for the better—exploring outer space,  achieving equal rights, and eliminating poverty. He and his ideas had a major  effect on my thinking.

在我年轻的时候，1960’s年代的美国的成功心理学是雄心壮志和励志。我从中没得到任何东西，我早期记忆中的一个人是jf肯尼迪，一个智慧的，有魅力的男人，描绘了栩栩如生的改变世界的蓝图，比如探索外太空，争取平等权利，消除贫困等等。他和他的那些奇思妙想对我的思考有很重大的影响。

The United States  was then at its peak relative to the rest of the world, accounting for 40  percent of its economy compared to about 20 percent today; the dollar was the  world’s currency; and the U.S. was the dominant military power. Being  “liberal” meant being committed to moving forward in a fast and fair way,  while being “conservative” meant being stuck in old and unfair ways—at least  that’s how it seemed to me and to most of the people around me. As we saw it,  the U.S. was rich, progressive, well managed, and on a mission to improve  quickly at everything. I might have been naive but I wasn’t alone.

美国在这个时候到达了他的顶峰在全世界，经济占比是40%而今天是20%；美元成为世界通行货币；美军是最强大的军队。自由主义意味着快速、平等的发展，而保守主义意味着守旧和不平等—至少我和我周围的人是这样认为的。在我们看来，美国是富裕，上进，管理高效，快速推进任何任务。我可能有点天真了，但是不是我一个人这样认为。

In those years,  everyone was talking about the stock market, because it was doing great and  people were making money. This included the people playing at a local golf  course called Links where I started caddying when I was twelve. So I took my  caddying money and started playing the stockmarket. My first investment was  in Northeast Airlines. I bought it because it was the only company I’d heard  of that was selling for less than $5 a share. I figured the more shares I  bought, the more money I would make. That was a dumb strategy, but I tripled  my money. Northeast Airlines was actually about to go broke and another  company acquired it. I got lucky, but I didn’t know it at the time. I just  thought making money in the markets was easy, so I was hooked.

在那些年代，每个人都在谈论股票市场，因为这里面有巨大的交易量，人们都在其中赚钱。当然包括在本地高尔夫场打球的人们，我12岁起就在那里管理柜子。所以我拿出我所有积攒的钱开始在股票市场投资。我第一笔的投资是东北航空公司，只是因为他是我听过的唯一的一家股价少于5美元的公司。我盘算着我买的越多赚得越多，那当然是一个很无语的策略，我依然投注了所有的钱，东北航空实际就要破产了，所幸的是另一家公司接管了他，我很幸运，但当时我并不知道。我只是决定在股票市场赚钱蛮容易的，所以很自然的我被套进去了。

In those days, Fortune magazine had a little  tear-out coupon you could mail in to get free annual reports from Fortune 500  companies. I ordered them all. I can still remember watching the mailman  unhappily lugging all those reports to our door, and Idug intoevery one of  them. That was how I began building an investment library. As the stock  market continued to climb, World War II and the Depression seemed like  distant memories and investing seemed like simply a matter of buying anything  and watching it go up. It would certainly go up, the common knowledge held,  because managing the economy had developed into a science. After all, stocks  had nearly quadrupled over the previous ten years, and some had done much  better than that.

那时候，财富杂志有一种小额的优惠券，你可以撕下来邮寄，每年能得到免费的财富500强公司的报道。我预定了所有的报道。直到现在我任然记得邮差不高兴的带着所有的报道来到我家，每一份我都仔细阅读。我就是这样建立投资图书馆的。股票市场持续上扬，第二次世界大战和大萧条时代仿佛是非常遥远的记忆了，投资也仿佛变得简单，就是买进股票，然后看着股价上涨，几乎确定上涨，常识也支持，因为经济管理已经发展成一门科学。毕竟过去十年股票市场已经上涨了差不多四倍的规模，有一些涨的更多。

As a  result, “dollar-cost averaging”—investing essentially the same dollar amount  in the market every month, no matter how few or many shares it could buy—was  the strategy most people followed. Of course, picking the best stocks was  even better, so that’s what I and everyone else tried to do. There were  thousands to choose from, all neatly listed on the last few pages of the  newspaper.

由于美元平均成本（DCA）意味着投资实际上需要每月有相同数量的美元在市场上，不论他能买少买多—同时也是绝大多数人遵循的策略。当然如果选取最好的股票设置可能更好。这也是我和每个人都尝试做的。股票市场有几千个这样的选择，所有都列在报纸的最后几页上。

While I liked playing the markets, I also loved playing  around with my friends, whether in the neighborhood when I was a kid, using  fake IDs to get into bars when we were teens, or, nowadays, going to music  festivals and on scuba-diving trips together. I’ve always been an independent  thinker inclined to take risks in search of rewards—not just in the markets,  but in most everything. I also fearedboredomand mediocrity much more than I feared  failure. For me, great is better than terrible, and terrible is better than  mediocre, because terrible at least gives life flavor. The high school  yearbookquote my  friends chose for mewas from Thoreau: “If a man does not keep pace  with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let  him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”

我在股票市场投资的同时，我也通我的朋友继续交往，不论是我孩童时期的邻居，还是少年时代一起混酒吧的朋友，或者现如今一起去音乐节，水肺潜水的伙伴。在追求回报方面我一向是一个倾向冒险的独立思考者—不仅仅在股票市场，绝大部分事情。同时我对无聊和平庸的事情比失败更加恐惧，对我来说大比好更可怕，可怕比平庸还要好些，因为恐怖至少给生活带来一点调剂。

高中年鉴中有一句话我很喜欢，来自亨利大卫梭罗：  “如果一个人不能和他的同伴同步，也许是因为他听到了不同的鼓点，就让他继续按着音乐走下去吧，无论合拍还是渐行渐远”。

In 1966, my senior year of high school, the stock market  was still booming and I was making money and having a blast, cutting school  with my best friend Phil to go surfing, and doing what fun-loving high school  boys usually do. Of course I didn’t know it then, but that year was to be the  stock market’s top. After that, almost everything I thought I knew about the  markets was proven wrong.

1966年，我中学高年级，股票市场任然火爆，我也赚到了钱，和我的最好的朋友菲儿来了一次不告而别的旅行，做了爱玩耍的中学生都爱做的。当然我还不知道，哪一年是股票市场的最高峰。从那以后我以为我知道的关于股市的所有事情都被证明是错的。

我是007李小军，以上是我自己的翻译，也许不会太准确，我能保证也不会偏离作者的意思太远，不至于误导各位，谢谢观看。

本章描述了作者雷达利奥18岁以前的学习、家庭、初入股票市场的经历。

作者一开头就讲了他出生在一个中产阶级家庭，父亲是音乐家，母亲是家庭主妇。同我们大多男孩一样，在作者成长的过程中，父亲的教育缺失了，母亲在他的描述中占更多的比例。母亲在作者的成长过程中起到了非常的作用，安静，从容，严格但不严厉，一起看恐怖片还有小甜饼，非常甜蜜的回忆。和父亲的关系在作者成家后得以改善，并且保持了良好的联系，这很难得，这也代表作者的思想的成熟。男人间的友谊和互相理解通常都伴随着男孩的成长增进的。男孩恐怕很难理解一个男人的责任和深沉。作者的父亲很了不起，经历过第二次世界大战和韩战（就是我们称之为抗美援朝的战争），而且居然工作到70多岁，我们可以吗？希望吧。

中产阶级家庭很重要，虽然缺少父爱，但没有耽误作者上学，没有耽误学到必要的知识，想必学校不会差。

作者的父亲从作者8岁起他就开始做报童，修草坪，送快递，帮工等。这很重要，一方面锻炼了作者，同时还积累了启动资金，也正是这部分钱使得作者有本金投资。

作者的第一笔投资是东北航空，按作者的描述是因为东北航空公司股价很便宜，低于5美金一股，否则作者是没有那么多本金投资的。

60年代航空公司是非常兴旺的，可以看看汤姆汉克斯和小李子主演的《catch me if you can-- 逍遥法外》电影，就知道那时候整个航空业蒸蒸日上，股价是很好的，属于朝阳产业。

巧合还是无意，反正作者的第一笔投资是成功的。

这些还不是最重要的，作者所在60年代美国国势在蒸蒸日上，几乎所有股票都是牛市，包括年轻的领导人JF肯尼迪，多么迷人的时代。

以上就是作者的早起投资经历，很有趣对不对？让人汗颜！作者从不超过17岁就开始投资了，而且很成功，赚到了人生第一桶金。

更重要的是，作者反复强调他很痛恨平庸和无聊，甚至宁愿接受失败也不愿平庸的过日子。

就连美国的教育，作者都反复提到他不喜欢，作者好奇心旺盛的，独立思考，这很重要。

当然在顺境中，年轻的作者很多常识都是错的，这预示着下一节的故事主线。

年轻的时候太顺利并不好，适当的挫折和失败是必须的--因为只有挫折和错误能让你成长更快。

DCA   学到的第一个经济学概念：我猜作者在本节提到这个概念也为他后来的失败埋下了伏笔，就像后来的经融危机是因为发行货币和对应的黄金储备引发的，也就是货币超发。

亨利梭罗：对于美国人来说是个很著名的人，感兴趣的人可以去百度。

                                             007-4478李小军

                                             2018-5-29

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