"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.

如果你想見見無情的金融交易員，以下是我的建議。忘了倫敦金融城(City of London)或華爾街吧；你只需上樓，敲敲一扇臥室門，向你的十幾歲孩子問好。

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.

根據朋友和熟人與子女打交道的經歷來判斷，你的子女很有可能是一位市場老手。他或她的資產不是固定收入、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.

你可能想知道他們整天都在手機上幹什麼。他們可能是在Snapchat和Instagram上與朋友們消磨時光，但也有可能是在查看他們在Ebay或Depop的賬號，買賣潮牌Supreme的衛衣和英國品牌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.

當然，孩子們一向在交易：徽章、糖果、唱片。但買賣的規模以及他們的財務和技術悟性都令人驚歎，甚至讓人不安。

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.

總部位於倫敦的購物應用Depop的創始人西蒙?貝克爾曼(Simon Beckerman)講了一個友人的故事，這人的14歲女兒需要錢爲自己購買一雙鞋。她在Ebay看到了一條她認爲過於便宜的項鍊，於是她把這條項鍊的屏幕截圖放到Depop上，以更高價格叫賣。

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.

當有人在Depop出價購買這條項鍊時，她就會在Ebay下單買下項鍊，然後直接快遞給她在Depop的買家。通過買賣這條她從未戴過也不曾擁有過的項鍊，她賺到了買鞋的錢：給這個小女生在高盛(Goldman Sachs)的套利交易部門安排一份工作吧。

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.

服裝交易並不僅限於少男少女：它在成年人中間很普遍，尤其是女人。轉售已從Ebay擴大到專門的網站和應用，例如ThredUp和Poshmark，它們鼓勵用戶脫手自己不想要和“輕微磨損”或“私物閒置”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.

很多衣服從未穿過：一時衝動買下或者一份不想要的禮物。ThredUp估計，在典型美國女性的衣櫃中，有70%的衣服沒有穿過，同時科技讓處理這些資產變得更爲容易：Poshmark擁有250萬成人用戶，他們每天曬出400萬美元的庫存，試圖脫手。

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，就買賣服裝的嫺熟自如而言，十幾歲的青少年不同於較老一代，爲了兜售服裝，他們往往會展示自己穿着剛剛購買的服裝的照片。Instagram和Depop等應用侵蝕了所有權和市場營銷之間的壁壘。

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.

青少年時裝處於交易熱潮的最前沿，這是一種亞文化，購買服裝和鞋子主要是爲了從轉售中獲利。流動性最強的市場是Supreme和Palace等滑板品牌的街頭服飾，以及具有偶像地位的阿迪達斯(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.

其關鍵是“滴漏”(drop)策略，這是Supreme率先使用的一種銷售方法，1994年在曼哈頓創建的該品牌，已成爲時裝和分銷領域的潮流引領者。如果你路過Supreme位於洛杉磯、倫敦、巴黎和日本的一家門店，看到以年輕男子爲主的人流在排隊購買店裏推出的新品，這就是“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會推出季度系列，但是會陸續讓新品上架銷售，而不是一下子推出。它不會公開門店每週上什麼新品，粉絲們必須查看博客和Facebook的非公開羣組（例如The Basement）來找到答案。這一切都是經過精心設計的，目的是製造一種稀缺感，去年12月Supreme門店的一款衛衣售價150美元，但在轉售時賣出1000美元的高價。

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的影響力在擴大。耐克上月發佈了由克里夫蘭騎士隊(Cleveland Cavaliers)球員勒布朗?詹姆斯(LeBron James)簽名的46雙盒裝限量版籃球鞋。這是爲了讓該籃球隊在運動鞋交易網站StockX的基金會受益，在該網站上，每雙鞋的售價最高可達1.1萬美元。本週，相同式樣的鞋子以不到200美元的價格出現在零售銷售平臺上。

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.

這種戰術開始讓服裝行業的運作變得與金融業類似：服裝價格不是由銷售商確定，而是受到交易平臺供需的影響。各品牌試圖通過嚴格控制供應來刺激需求，就像H&M和Zara等快時尚零售商推出知名時裝設計師設計的限量版系列那樣。

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.

不要爲那些被品牌如此操縱的少男少女感到難過。我知道的那些年輕人都能無情地殺價。與他們的父母不同，他們生下來就置身於一個高度流動市場和價格透明的世界：他們非常清楚要花錢買什麼。

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.

最近我與兩個年輕人的交談更是印證了這點。倫敦的一個Supreme的粉絲對該品牌與路易威登(LV)的合作感到懷疑。這個桀驁不馴的品牌現在很受富裕家庭子女的歡迎，這也讓他揣測這個品牌是否在隨波逐流。

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歲的買賣鞋子老手，她是在紐約布魯克林區的校車上跟我交談的。她不再相信爲了多數新品在店外排隊，因爲她已經算出，轉售利潤往往只相當於在等待時間拿最低時薪。

Who knows what they will be buying or selling by next year but one thing is clear: the kids will be all right.

誰知道他們明年會買賣什麼，但有一點是確定的：孩子們會照顧好自己。