Reborn in America, I am a legendary short seller on Wall Street.

Chapter 2 Take a Gamble

After eating oatmeal and hard bread mixed with gluten, and saying goodbye to his mother, who resembled the nurse from his previous life, Larry Livingston hurriedly left his home, preparing to walk to the city center three miles away.

"I am Larry Livingston now, not Chen Ping!"

“I am 14 years old this year. After graduating from 8 years of primary school education, I started my working life because I couldn’t afford to go to middle school.”

"I'm in Boston in 1891! Hmm, when I make some money, I'll eat Boston lobster first."

"My current task is to go to Paine Weber Securities in the city center to apply for the position of market data clerk."

Walking on the red brick road, Larry Livingston kept muttering to himself, trying to familiarize himself with his reborn identity as soon as possible and not reveal any flaws.

According to the original owner's memories, late 19th-century America was steeped in Puritanism, and the average person's thinking was very conservative. If a normal boy possessed the strange ability to "innately understand Chinese," his parents would certainly see it as "possessed by a demon," causing shock in the church and community.

Therefore, the reborn Larry Livingston must constantly remind himself not to expose himself or be taken away by the church and state police for joint biopsies.

After muttering to himself for a while, Larry walked to a high point overlooking Boston in 1891.

The weather was slightly overcast, and the morning mist, carrying the salty smell of the sea, drifted over the Charles River. The deep blue Atlantic Ocean in the distance and the gray-roofed buildings nearby complemented each other, showing the prosperity of a seaside city.

(Charles River)
The Freedom Path leading to the city center square is lined with cobblestones on both sides and red bricks in the middle. Unfortunately, the red bricks here are very old, the stones are uneven, and there are dried horse manure residues in the gaps. There are rows of cast iron gas lamps along the road, and the lamp posts are covered with faded circus advertisements.

Larry was only 14 years old, but he was already 5.6 feet tall, which is about 1.7 meters in the metric system of his previous life.

At that moment, he was walking on the red brick road when he was startled by the sudden sound of a copper bell.

Larry glanced over and saw the public carriage being pulled by two thin, panting horses, churning as it moved forward. The mud splashed up as the wooden carriage rolled over the tracks, nearly wetting the hems of the gentlemen's tailcoats.

"Get out of my way, you damn thing!"

The coachman brandished his whip and cursed the newsboy who was crossing the road.

Larry noticed that the stack of newspapers in the newsboy's hand was the Boston Globe, with the headline on the front page: "Strike at Carnegie Steel! Police Crackdown!"

As he continued onward, more workers in coarse cloth overalls appeared in his entourage. They hurried along, carrying tin lunchboxes, their leather shoes making rapid drumbeats on the road.

Further on, Larry arrived at the city center square and found the Paine Weber Securities Company next to the old North Church with its pointed spire.

Larry straightened his rough cloth shirt and overalls, walked into the company, and explained his purpose to the staff at the door.

The man led him to Mr. Saul Porter's office.

The obese and balding Mr. Potter glanced at Larry, then turned and opened the blinds behind him, gesturing towards the outside with his chin.
"So, kid, are you confident enough to be a market data copyist?"

Larry took two steps forward, looked out the window at the stock exchange, and unconsciously opened his mouth.

This is what a securities brokerage looked like in 1891!

In the high-ceilinged hall, neat tables and chairs were arranged. At the far end of the room was a price quote board more than three meters high, on which the names of stocks and futures contracts were written in painted cursive script.

At this moment, a red-haired youth of about seventeen or eighteen is climbing a sliding ladder, constantly erasing and writing the latest stock price for the customers in the seats.

On one side of the hall were several counters, one for a telegraph machine and the other for a teller service desk. The outermost counter was a cashier's counter with iron bars, and in front of the counter were three security guards in gray uniforms.

In his previous life, Chen Ping had absolutely no impression of America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, only having glimpsed it briefly in movies with that background.

At this moment, Larry was quite surprised, because he had no idea when the telegraph machine was invented, nor what stock trading was like now. However, for some inexplicable reason, Larry felt a surge of ecstatic joy from the depths of his heart, as if he had found the path to heaven.

“Yes, Mr. Porter, I want to be a quote clerk!” Larry said solemnly as he turned around.

Mr. Potter nodded. “Five dollars a week, son, half for the probation period. I’ll have to see your memory and your hand speed first.”

Larry then became a quote clerk at Paine Webber Securities on the Portland Stock Exchange.

Surprisingly, Larry could sense that the original owner had exceptional memory and mental arithmetic skills, which made him thrive at work.

Every day, the clattering telegraph machine would bring the latest stock transaction prices from Wall Street in New York, and Larry was responsible for quickly writing these quotes on the blackboard.

No matter how noisy the scene was or how fast the telegraph machine quoted prices, Larry could always write the market prices on the blackboard with perfect accuracy, thanks to his extraordinary memory and sensitivity to numbers.

However, this job is quite tiring. You have to climb up and down ladders all day long and keep copying.

It's already very good if we can avoid making mistakes.

During breaks, Larry sometimes couldn't help but think that in this day and age, it's incredible that stockbrokerage clients can place orders simply by looking at those quotes without ever having invented candlestick charts.

However, to be fair, even such a large blackboard can't hold all the stocks and futures products; there's only room to write the latest quotes.

There's no space to draw any candlestick charts here.

In my previous life, I didn't know much about stocks, but after being reborn, I started dealing with stock prices, which was quite novel.

However, the daily copying of price quotes gradually made Larry interested in the prices he had in his hands.

Because Larry was the only one copying down the latest stock prices for the entire company all day long.

As Larry writes, he can roughly predict how the next price will change based on the changes in the quoted price.

This is a sensitivity to the changes in numbers themselves.

Over time, this situation often occurs.

A stock price had been hovering around $2.8 for half an hour. Larry had a feeling that the next price quote should be higher than $3, so he wrote down the 3 before he heard the quote.

The result was exactly as he expected; the latest stock price was $3.1.

Larry, who has a particular talent for numbers, has found a lot of creative ways to be a market data copyist.

One day during the midday market break, Larry sat alone in a corner of the brokerage, flipping through his small notebook that recorded stock price fluctuations.

At this moment, the red-haired scribe from before leaned close to Larry and asked in a low voice,
"Larry, did you bring any money?"

"Why are you asking this?" Larry looked up at the red-haired youth.

The red-haired youth, with a face full of freckles, named Logan, grinned at Larry.
"Hey, I just heard some inside information about Barrington, it's awesome, I'm going to play with it."

"What do you mean by 'playing it once'?" Larry was a little confused.

Logan, the red-haired man, smiled mysteriously. "Of course, it's a gamble. Buy stocks, sell them after they go up, and if you bet right, your principal can double!"

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(End of this chapter)