Billionaire for 5 hours

[tjchaos]

Could you imagine?

http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budget ... five-hours


Pretty cool that the interest alone for those five hours would have been over 7 million.

[Chuckg]

Well, given that the ground rules of their thought experiment are that you have to give back whatever profit you made at the end of the 5 hours, or whatever stuff you bought, really, about the only thing you could do is go to Vegas and do up some blackjack and hookers. If you can't keep anything, then the only thing you can buy is experiences.

[Kirai]

No you have to give back what you bought or invested it in. No mention of the profits you make.

So you have to buy stuff that makes you the most profit within 5 hours.

For example, buy up some shares from one company or other, for those billions, wait for the price to go up(hopefully) then sell them before the 5 hours are up. Give back the billions keep the profit you made.

[Chuckg]

Oh, well in that case, time to hit the international currency market for some arbitrage.

Not that I know a damn thing about arbitrage, but I'm pretty sure the world's greatest expert at that is willing to do 5 hours of work for ten percent of the profits.

[Dervon]

BET FIVE BILLION ON THE CURRENCY OF A COUNTRY DEVALUING!

>advicedog.jpg

MAKE UNTOLD BILLIONS AS THE ECONOMY OF THAT COUNTRY INSTANTLY COLLAPSES!

...

Seriously, how is it "betting" when the existence of the bet itself causes it to come true?

[Chuckg]

I dunno if I actually want to crash the economies of countries. I mean, I'm living through one right now, its not fun. Why do the same thing to someone else?

God, I miss the Cold War. :p (Of course, the Soviet Union didn't publicly trade the ruble then, so, no point.)

[tjchaos]

Seriously, how is it "betting" when the existence of the bet itself causes it to come true?

I dunno either but I think George Soros did something like that to the U.K. years ago.


Chuckg which country are you in?

[Chuckg]

The US. And yeah, we're not totally crashed, but its been a notable recession for a while.

As for Soros, on November 16, 1992, the British government withdrew the pound from the European exchange rate after they were unable to keep pounds sterling above the agreed-upon lower limit. While several factors (not all of which I entirely understand, to be honest) led to this, the part where Soros chose that day to short-sell $10 billion worth of the British pound on the world currency market, thus driving the value into the dumpster, damn sure didn't help any. Reportedly, he made $1+ billion alone in profit that day.

[Calinero]

I don't think I could put it in a bank account, it would take more than five hours to set up...and I don't know if banks even are willing to compound hourly. Stocks might be a risk--sure, you could win big, but if you lost money on that scale and still had to pay back the millions....could be bad.

[tjchaos]

The US. And yeah, we're not totally crashed, but its been a notable recession for a while.

We're just getting started on our currency crash here in the U.S. We've got a long way down to go still. All of the stuff I hear from the politicians cracks me up despite being ridiculously depressing, since just about everything they're doing is going to make the problem much, much worse once the short term fixes they're doing run their course. I think at the very least we're looking at something that'll be worse than the Great Depression. At the very worst, well I don't like to think about that. I'm hoping that we get really lucky and that it won't get any worse than what that Ferfal guy wrote about the Argentina economic collapse about a decade ago. Although I do think that we're in the beginning stages of the end of the U.S. dollar.

[Chuckg]

I'm still hoping we can avoid that... but yeah, its getting to be largely a self-inflicted wound at this point.