Billy popped his laptop open, “See?” he pointed to a candlestick graph inside Poloniex, that indicated a huge uptrend in steem, the crypto currency he’d pegged as their first investment. Their money had already grown by 30% over night.
Need to catch up?
“So, when do we get our money?” Wendel asked.
“Well, I could have it as soon as Wednesday, but, the word is, this is just going to keep going up for the foreseeable future. In fact, I’d be surprised if it even slows down before it doubles again,” Billy explained, changing the view to show the Wendel the history.
“Wheeeeww,” Howard whistled. He wrestled a bite from a white bread and ham sandwich. “That’s pretty impressive. See how it rode at the last high for nearly two weeks, Wendel? And this shows the trading volume, which is rising steadily. I’d say Billy’s right.”
Wendel shot a side glance at Howard, and pursed his lips, “Well, it’s not all up to me. We’ll take a vote at our next meeting on Wednesday if Howard says it makes sense. You sure Howard? I like being president and you know what happened to Bob.”
Bob Stephens had run the lottery pool before Wendel. That had been seven years ago, and when his numbers came up losers the third time in a row, across the board, things had gotten ugly. He’d woken up with a dead chicken nailed to his front door, quit his job and moved three states away.
“I mean, really, this and being lead deacon down at the church is all I got,” Wendel said, studying the chart.
“So, if I login on this website here, it shows me what’s going on?”
Howard walked away as Billy launched into a tutorial on using the Poloniex site. “Well, you just have to build a profile, which basically means, you enter your information, like an email and your name, and then, yeah, you can find out how it’s doing.”
“Okay, so it’s like Facebook?” Wendel asked.
“Uh, sure,” Billy looked like he was wrestling with the idea of challenging the older man’s perception, then realized it didn’t really matter.
“So, what’s the news?” Alex asked Howard as he entered the break room. The two men stood watching Billy as they talked.
“Well, it seems to be going okay so far,” Howard said.
“That’s good, I need this to work,” Alex replied. He grabbed a Styrofoam cup and filled it with luke warm coffee, three creamers and five packets of sugar.
“How much did you sink into this?” Howard asked, watching Alex carefully.
Alex sighed, patted Howard on the shoulder, “Don’t worry, they won’t let you cash in your whole 401K, so I’ll be all right.”
Howard’s shoulders dropped as Alex left the breakroom. He felt responsible. Maybe he should have said something.
“Holy crap!” This from Tito, who now stood over Billy’s shoulder, watching the laptop screen. “Did you see that? It just jumped like, I don’t know a lot! Green’s good, right?”
Billy tapped a couple of keys, Howard moved closer to get a better look, “Uh, yeah, it’s very good. Seems it just jumped another 30% over yesterday.”
“Great!” Jonesy, a night foreman who was covering a shift on the day team said. “I want in!”
Wendel smiled, “Sorry, we have to keep this simple.”
“Uh, sorry, Jonesy, but I can show you what to do, if you want,” Billy offered.
“Nah, I don’t even have a computer. Well, my kid’s got one, but I can never get her off it for five minutes. It’s all good. If this takeover don’t work out, I’m heading over to Virginia, my brother’s a foreman at a mine there,” Jonesy grinned, and slapped Billy on the back. “Way to go, little buddy. I hope you make all these greedy bastards filthy rich, maybe one or two will remember me in their wills!”
“Whoa, what was that red spike right there?” Tito roared.
“Just a slight downturn. It happens. After a big jump, there’s going to be a correction,” Billy explained.
“You mean you just lost some of my money, that’s what you mean, huh?” Tito said, menacingly.
“Cool your jets, Tito, what happens when the lottery numbers don’t pay?” Wendel asked, smiling.
Tito thought for a second, It looked like hard work, “We get nothing. But this was up a second ago, how can someone just take part of it?”
Howard stepped in. He pulled pencil from his pocket. “It’s like this, Tito. If you bought ten apples at ten cents a piece, you’d spend how much?”
“That’s easy, I’m not stupid, a dollar,” Tito said.
“Okay,” Howard drew ten circles, then wrote “$1” at the top of the paper.
“Suppose someone offers to buy the apples at twenty-five cents each.”
“Why? I’d just tell them not to be dumb, go buy them at the store for ten cents,” Tito laughed, Sid snickered from across the room.
Howard sighed, “Okay, but suppose the store raises their price to twenty five and you take the apples back, how much are they worth?”
Tito furrowed his brow, “Uh, two fifty, right?”
“Right. So, the price of your apples went up, they are worth more, but how many apples do you have?”
“None, I sold them all for twenty-five cents each. Man, you really think I’m dumb, huh?”
“Okay, but the number of apples, did it change?” Howard asked.
“No, why would it?”
“Exactly. This stuff we’re investing in is like that. We buy a specific amount of “shares” or percentages of shares. As the price goes up, or down, we make money, or we take a loss. But, we still have the same amount of shares. Get it?”
“Yeah, okay. That makes sense. So, the store changed the price?” Tito asked.
“Not ex….” Billy started to answer. Howard laid a hand on Billy’s shoulder.
“Sure, Tito, the store changed the price,” Howard said. Billy nodded, it was much easier this way.
“Cool. I get it. So, we hope they raise the price, so our apples, or, “shares” are worth more,” Tito walked away seemingly satisfied.
“Don’t piss him off,” Howard whispered to Billy.
“Yeah, I got that.” Billy determined never to discuss the Bullshit Investors Club with Tito alone. If something was going to happen, he wanted backup.
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