I can still remember the day when I read this. It is about a trader that gets the tomorrows’ paper with stock prices and sees his death predicted by the same “divine” paper. I did not know if I should freak out or take it a little lighter. Anyway, it’s still the best story ever about Wall Street, Finance and Traders that I heard so far and it still remains there back of my mind and it just comes back from time to time. It is one of those cases where reality melts into fiction, dreams and premonition. The point is that, you just cannot ignore it!

Here we go. I will relate it as I read it myself.

Let’s say that there was an institutional sales guy named Jud. He was about fifty; he worked for a security firm into a research department on Wall Street. His career has never been successful and he changed a few jobs in his time. Let’s just say he has been put on the line by his bosses after while. He really was “an empty suit”. Anyway he got this job in the equity research department and because nobody wanted to take any chances with him he was only paid for production. He had to sell and make trades so that he could cash in his check. Anyway, Jud was simply out of touch. Any stocks that he recommended as “hot” died suddenly a quiet dead. Everything that he recommended that will go up went down and all that he recommended for sale improved miraculously. No wonder his clients gave him a hard time. They were just listening to him out of a compulsive portfolio manager disorder not to lose an event. That was all for Jud! And Jud was exaggerating a little bit with the Martinis and had a constant hangover.

Anyway, everyday Jud was commuting by train from the suburbs to the City. That day, he bought a Wall Street Journal and he only looked for the most active stocks. He sees Intel and the closing price. He folds and throws the paper away. He gets to work, but he finds out that Intel is not even in top three for the day and he thinks he had too many Martinis the night before. At lunch time he bumps up in a colleague and finds out that Intel got on top after they published their results a few minutes ago, but not in the morning.

The next day he does the same with the paper and he remembers Amgen. He places an order for a client and he realizes that he was getting the paper for the day after! The closing prices in the paper were nowhere near for the day in other papers and on his Bloomberg! End of the day, Amgen closes what he saw in the paper.

The third day he sees Motorola and the saga continues. Jud suddenly becomes his clients’ pet and gets considered “hot hand” for short term. Jud gets the paper almost every day and he does his routine – he only peaks on Most Active and throws it away in exactly the same spot as the days before, fearful not to upset the genie.

He is made a partner at his firm and he touches $4 million in bonuses for the year. He starts dressing in Hugo Boss suits and Pink shirts. One day, Jud suddenly makes a heart attack in the train station and one of his acquaintances is called urgently at the hospital. There the doctor warns him that Jud was out of oxygen for quite some time so he might have a brain damage. Jud tells his story about the tomorrows’ paper in the intensive care room. The friend just stands there open-mouthed and eyes wide open. Jud then explains that this time he got the next week paper and that next to the section he was reading his name was in the Obituary. So this is how he got the heart attack.

Next week, Jud dies exactly in the day he said he saw in the newspaper…

What about that? No other comment… If you have similar stories please put them in a comment and I will publish them.

The source of this post is Chapter 20 of the book by Barton Biggs,“Hedgehogging”, “Divine Intervention or Inside Information - A Tale that Will make Your Blood run Cold”

Also a similar version of the above mentioned chapter was printed in the Institutional Investor Magazine of July 1971.

This story was published:

- the 7th of January, on G7 Financial - The Crisis Carnival 01

- on the 30th of December on The Money Gardener - Investing Carnival, New Years edition, thanks to MG

- on the 29th of December on Intelligent Speculator -120th Festival of Stocks - Who Wants to Become a Millionaire? Edition, thanks to Mike

- on the 21st of December on Postcard from the Funny Farm - Inspiration for the Holidays Amazing Vision Blog Carnival Ed.6, thanks to Ed

- on 15th of December 2008 on The Frugal Duchess - The Carnival of Personal Finance, the 183rd edition, thanks to Sharon Harvey Rosenberg

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Tags: 4 million dollars, bloomberg, bonus, finance, hugo boss, inside information, stocks, trader, wall street