Robert Silverberg - What We Learned from This Morning’s Newspaper

But how could we get next week’s newspaper Bob Thomason still wanted to know?

I can’t answer that said Mike Nesbit. I can only reply that I am willing to accept it as genuine. A miracle if you like.

So am I said Tim McDermott and a few others said the same.

We can make a pile of money out of this thing said Dave Bruce.

Everybody began to smile in a strange strained way. Obviously everybody had looked at the stock market stuff and the racetrack stuff and had come to the same conclusions.

Jerry said there’s one important thing we ought to find out first. Has anybody here spoken about this newspaper to anybody who isn’t currently in this room?

People said nope and uh-uh and not me.

Good said Jerry. I propose we keep it that way. We don’t notify the Times and we don’t tell Walter Cronkite and we don’t even let our brother-in-law on Dogwood Lane know, right? We just put our newspapers away in a safe place and quietly do whatever we want to do about the information we’ve got. Okay? Let’s put that to a vote. All in favor of stamping this newspaper top secret raise your right hand.

Twenty-two hands went up.

Good said Jerry. That includes the kids you realize. If you let the kids know anything they’ll want to bring the paper to school for show and tell for Christ’s sake. So cool it you hear?

Sid Fischer said are we going to work together on exploiting this thing or do we each act independently?

Independently said Dave Bruce.

Right independently said Bud Maxwell.

It went all around the room that way. The only one who wanted some sort of committee system was Charlie Harris. Charlie has bad luck in the stock market and I guess he was afraid to take any risks even with a sure thing like next week’s paper. Jerry called for a vote and it came out ten to one in favor of individual enterprise. Of course if anybody wants to team up with anybody else I said there’s nothing stopping anybody.

As we started to adjourn for refreshments Jerry said remember you only have a week to make use of what you’ve been handed. By the first of December this is going to be just another newspaper and a million other people will have copies of it. So move fast while you’ve got an advantage.

The trouble is when they give you only next week’s paper you don’t ordinarily have a chance to make a big killing in the market. I mean stocks don’t generally go up fifty per cent or eighty per cent in just a few trading sessions. The really broad swings take weeks or months to develop. Still and all I figured I could make out all right with the data I had. For one thing there evidently was going to be a pretty healthy rally over the next few days. According to the afternoon edition of the Post that I brought home with me the market had been off seven on the 22nd, closing with the Dow at 803.15, the lowest all year. But the December 1 Times mentioned “`a stunning two-day advance” and the average finished at 831.34 on the 30th. Not bad. Then too I could work on margin and other kinds of leverage to boost my return. We’re going to make a pile out of this I told my wife.

If you can trust that newspaper she said.

I told her not to worry. When we got home from Jerry’s I spread out the Post and the Times in the den and started hunting for stocks that moved up at least ten percent between November 22 and November 30. This is the chart I made up:

Stock — Nov 22 close — Nov 30 high

Levitz Furniture — 89½ —103¾

Bausch & Lomb —133 —149

Natomas —45¼ — 57

Disney —99 —116¾

EG&G — 19¼ —23¾

Spread your risk Bill I told myself. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Even if the newspaper was phony I couldn’t get hurt too badly if I bought all five. So at half past nine the next morning I phoned my broker and told him I wanted to do some buying in the margin account at the opening. He said don’t be in a hurry Bill the market’s in lousy shape. Look at yesterday there were 201 new lows this market’s going to be under 750 by Christmas. You can see from this that he’s an unusual kind of broker since most of them will never try to discourage you from placing an order that’ll bring them a commission. But I said no I’m playing a hunch I want to go all out on this and I put in buys on Levitz Bausch Natomas Disney and EG&G. I used the margin right up to the hilt and then some. Okay I told myself if this works out the way you hope it will you’ve just bought yourself a vacation in Europe and a new Chrysler and a mink for the wife and a lot of other goodies. And if not? If not you just lost yourself a hell of a lot of money Billy boy.

Also I made some use out of the sports pages.

At the office I looked around for bets on the Knicks vs. the SuperSonics next Tuesday at the Garden. A couple of guys wondered why I was interested in action so far ahead but I didn’t bother to answer and finally I got Eddie Martin to take the Knicks by eleven points. Also I got Marty Felks to take Milwaukee by eight over the Warriors that same night. Felks thinks Abdul-Jabbar is the best center the game ever had and he’ll always bet the Bucks but my paper had it that the Warriors would cop it, 106-103. At lunch with the boys from Leclair & Anderson I put down $250 with Butch Hunter on St Louis over the Giants on Sunday. Next I stopped off at the friendly neighborhood Off-track Betting Office and entered a few wagers on the races at Aqueduct. My handy guide to the future told me that the Double paid $52.40 and the third Exacta paid $62.20, so I spread a little cash on each. Too bad there were no $2,500 payoffs that day but you can’t be picky about your miracles can you?

Tuesday night when I got home I had a drink and asked my wife what’s new and she said everybody on the block had been talking about the newspaper all day and some of the girls had been placing bets and phoning their brokers. A lot of the women here play the market and even the horses though my wife is not like that, she leaves the male stuff strictly to me.

What stocks were they buying I asked?

Well she didn’t know the names. But a little while later Joni Bruce called up for a recipe and my wife asked her about the market and Joni said she had bought Winnebago Xerox and Transamerica. I was relieved at that because I figured it might look really suspicious if everybody on Redbud Crescent suddenly phoned in orders the same day for Levitz Bausch Disney Natomas and EG&G. On the other hand what was I worrying about nobody would draw any conclusions and if anybody did we could always say we had organized a neighborhood investment club. In any case I don’t think there’s any law against people making stock market decisions on the basis of a peek at next week’s newspaper. Still and all who needs publicity and I was glad we were all buying different stocks.

I got the paper out after dinner to check out Joni’s stocks. Sure enough Winnebago moved up from 33¼ to 38 1⁄ 8, Xerox from 105¾ to 111 7⁄ 8, and Transamerica from 14 7⁄ 8to 17. I thought it was dumb of Joni to bother with Xerox getting only a six percent rise since it’s the percentages where you pay off but Winnebago was up better than ten percent and Transamerica close to twenty percent. I wished I had noticed Transamerica at least although no sense being greedy, my own choices would make out all right.

Something about the paper puzzled me. The print looked a little blurry in places and on some pages I could hardly read the words. I didn’t remember any blurry pages. Also the paper it’s printed on seemed a different color, darker grey, older-looking. I compared it with the newspaper that came this morning and the December I issue was definitely darker. A paper shouldn’t get old-looking that fast, not in two days.