"交易高手"出少年
If you want to meet a ruthless financial trader, here is my advice. Forget the City of London or Wall Street; simply walk upstairs, knock on a bedroom door and say hello to your teenager.
如果你想见见无情的金融交易员，以下是我的建议。忘了伦敦金融城(City of London)或华尔街吧；你只需上楼，敲敲一扇卧室门，向你的十几岁孩子问好。To judge by the experiences of friends and acquaintances with their offspring, there is a fair chance that yours is a market veteran. His or her asset class is not fixed income, equities or commodities but clothes and shoes.
根据朋友和熟人与子女打交道的经历来判断，你的子女很有可能是一位市场老手。他或她的资产不是固定收入、股票或大宗商品，而是衣服和鞋子。You may wonder what they do on their phones all day. They could be idly spending time on Snapchat and Instagram with friends but they are equally likely to be monitoring their Ebay or Depop accounts, trading Supreme hoodies and Palace caps.
你可能想知道他们整天都在手机上干什么。他们可能是在Snapchat和Instagram上与朋友们消磨时光，但也有可能是在查看他们在Ebay或Depop的账号，买卖潮牌Supreme的卫衣和英国品牌Palace的帽子。
Kids have always been traders, of course: badges, sweets, vinyl records. But there is something impressive, if rather unnerving, about the scale on which these operate, and their financial and technological acumen.
当然，孩子们一向在交易：徽章、糖果、唱片。但买卖的规模以及他们的财务和技术悟性都令人惊叹，甚至让人不安。Simon Beckerman, founder of Depop, a London-based trading app, tells of a friend whose 14-year-old daughter needed money to buy herself a pair of shoes. She saw a necklace on Ebay that she believed was too cheap, so she took a screenshot of it and placed her own advertisement for the same item at a higher price on Depop.
总部位于伦敦的购物应用Depop的创始人西蒙?贝克尔曼(Simon Beckerman)讲了一个友人的故事，这人的14岁女儿需要钱为自己购买一双鞋。她在Ebay看到了一条她认为过于便宜的项链，于是她把这条项链的屏幕截图放到Depop上，以更高价格叫卖。When someone bid for the necklace on Depop she filled the order by buying it on Ebay and arranging for it to be sent directly to her Depop buyer. She made her shoe money by selling jewellery she had never worn and did not own: give that young woman a job in arbitrage trading at Goldman Sachs.
当有人在Depop出价购买这条项链时，她就会在Ebay下单买下项链，然后直接快递给她在Depop的买家。通过买卖这条她从未戴过也不曾拥有过的项链，她赚到了买鞋的钱：给这个小女生在高盛(Goldman Sachs)的套利交易部门安排一份工作吧。Clothes trading is not confined to teenagers: it has become common among adults, especially women. Reselling has expanded from Ebay to dedicated US sites and apps such as ThredUp and Poshmark, which encourage users to offload unwanted and “gently worn” or “preloved” items.
服装交易并不仅限于少男少女：它在成年人中间很普遍，尤其是女人。转售已从Ebay扩大到专门的网站和应用，例如ThredUp和Poshmark，它们鼓励用户脱手自己不想要和“轻微磨损”或“私物闲置”的物品。A surprising amount has not been worn at all: it was bought on a whim or was an unwanted gift. ThredUp estimates that 70 per cent of the average American woman’s wardrobe is unused and technology has made it easier to exploit this asset: Poshmark has 2.5m adult users, who upload $4m of inventory for sale each day.
很多衣服从未穿过：一时冲动买下或者一份不想要的礼物。ThredUp估计，在典型美国女性的衣柜中，有70%的衣服没有穿过，同时科技让处理这些资产变得更为容易：Poshmark拥有250万成人用户，他们每天晒出400万美元的库存，试图脱手。But teenagers differ from older generations in the native ease with which they buy and sell clothes, often displaying photos of themselves wearing items they have just bought in order to sell them. Apps such as Instagram and Depop have eroded the barrier between ownership and marketing.
但是，就买卖服装的娴熟自如而言，十几岁的青少年不同于较老一代，为了兜售服装，他们往往会展示自己穿着刚刚购买的服装的照片。Instagram和Depop等应用侵蚀了所有权和市场营销之间的壁垒。Teenage fashion is at the cutting edge of the trading boom — a subculture in which batches of clothes and shoes are bought mainly to make profits from reselling. The most liquid market is streetwear by skateboard brands such as Supreme and Palace, along with cult Adidas and Nike shoes.
青少年时装处于交易热潮的最前沿，这是一种亚文化，购买服装和鞋子主要是为了从转售中获利。流动性最强的市场是Supreme和Palace等滑板品牌的街头服饰，以及具有偶像地位的阿迪达斯(Adidas)和耐克(Nike)鞋。The key is the “drop” — a sales technique pioneered by Supreme, a brand founded in Manhattan in 1994 that has become a trendsetter in fashion and distribution. You will have encountered a drop if you have passed one of Supreme’s shops in Los Angeles, London, Paris and Japan and witnessed lines of (mostly) young men lining up to buy a new batch of items inside.
其关键是“滴漏”(drop)策略，这是Supreme率先使用的一种销售方法，1994年在曼哈顿创建的该品牌，已成为时装和分销领域的潮流引领者。如果你路过Supreme位于洛杉矶、伦敦、巴黎和日本的一家门店，看到以年轻男子为主的人流在排队购买店里推出的新品，这就是“滴漏”。Supreme produces seasonal collections but drops them gradually instead of releasing them all at once. It does not declare publicly what will be in its shops each week — aficionados must check blogs and closed Facebook groups such as The Basement to find out. All this is finely calculated to create a sense of scarcity — one hoodie sold for $150 in Supreme shops in December but fetched $1,000 at resale.
Supreme会推出季度系列，但是会陆续让新品上架销售，而不是一下子推出。它不会公开门店每周上什么新品，粉丝们必须查看博客和Facebook的非公开群组（例如The Basement）来找到答案。这一切都是经过精心设计的，目的是制造一种稀缺感，去年12月Supreme门店的一款卫衣售价150美元，但在转售时卖出1000美元的高价。Supreme’s influence is spreading. Nike this month launched a limited release of 46 boxed pairs of basketball shoes endorsed by LeBron James, the Cleveland Cavaliers player. They were sold to benefit his team’s foundation on StockX, a sports shoe trading site, where they sold for up to $11,000 per pair. The same styles went on retail sale this week for less than $200.
Supreme的影响力在扩大。耐克上月发布了由克里夫兰骑士队(Cleveland Cavaliers)球员勒布朗?詹姆斯(LeBron James)签名的46双盒装限量版篮球鞋。这是为了让该篮球队在运动鞋交易网站StockX的基金会受益，在该网站上，每双鞋的售价最高可达1.1万美元。本周，相同式样的鞋子以不到200美元的价格出现在零售销售平台上。Such tactics are starting to make the clothing industry work like the financial one: instead of prices being fixed by sellers, they are influenced by supply and demand on exchanges. Brands attempt to stimulate excitement by keeping a tight rein on supply, as fast fashion retailers such as H&M and Zara do with limited edition collections by well-known fashion designers.
这种战术开始让服装行业的运作变得与金融业类似：服装价格不是由销售商确定，而是受到交易平台供需的影响。各品牌试图通过严格控制供应来刺激需求，就像H&M和Zara等快时尚零售商推出知名时装设计师设计的限量版系列那样。Do not feel sorry for the teenagers who are thus manipulated by brands. Those I know are capable of striking hard bargains. Unlike their parents, they were born into a world of liquid markets and price transparency: they know precisely what to spend.
不要为那些被品牌如此操纵的少男少女感到难过。我知道的那些年轻人都能无情地杀价。与他们的父母不同，他们生下来就置身于一个高度流动市场和价格透明的世界：他们非常清楚要花钱买什么。This view was reinforced this week by talking to two of them. One, a Supreme fan in London, is sceptical about its collaboration with Louis Vuitton. The fact that a rebellious brand is now popular with children from wealthy families also makes him wonder if it is drifting.
最近我与两个年轻人的交谈更是印证了这点。伦敦的一个Supreme的粉丝对该品牌与路易威登(LV)的合作感到怀疑。这个桀骜不驯的品牌现在很受富裕家庭子女的欢迎，这也让他揣测这个品牌是否在随波逐流。The other, a 15-year-old veteran of shoe trading, spoke from her school bus in Brooklyn. She no longer believes in lining up outside shops for most drops, calculating that the resale profit is often no more than the minimum wage per hour of waiting.
另外一位是15岁的买卖鞋子老手，她是在纽约布鲁克林区的校车上跟我交谈的。她不再相信为了多数新品在店外排队，因为她已经算出，转售利润往往只相当于在等待时间拿最低时薪。Who knows what they will be buying or selling by next year but one thing is clear: the kids will be all right.
谁知道他们明年会买卖什么，但有一点是确定的：孩子们会照顾好自己。
