Daily Speculations The Web Site of Victor Niederhoffer & Laurel Kenner Dedicated to the scientific method, free markets, deflating ballyhoo, creating value, and laughter;  a forum for us to use our meager abilities to make the world of specinvestments a better place.

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Laurel
Kenner

7/11/2005
3 Vignettes: Young and Old in the American Spirit

If you've ever wondered where that 1.5 million percent-a-century return comes from...

1. I have often peered into the window of a Park Avenue store that sells exquisitely designed shoes, but I've never gone in. Until today. I saw a sign in the window: "60% Off Everything: Store Closing July 30."

   I went in and bought a little something. "Why is the store closing?" I asked.

   "The owner wants to retire," the saleswoman said. "She is 98."

2. I stop by to see Angela Lam, an importer of fine Chinese antiques. She shows me a pair of 100,000-year-old mammoth tusks carved with a flourish of fierce dogs.

   We chat about our lives. I ask if she has children. Yes, she says. Her 17-year-old daughter has already been accepted at Columbia Medical School.

   "You must be so proud," I said, gazing at the passion in the mother's eyes. "She must be really smart."

   "Yes, very smart. She studies all the time. The only time she watches TV is after an exam. Sometimes I get up at night and her light is still on."

   "I'm sure you had everything to do with it."

   "No, she wants to study. She told me, 'I want to give you money, Mom.'"

3. I walk back to my apartment. The Eastern European superintendent is stationed at the steps, acting as a hawker for a small girl and boy selling lemonade in the courtyard. Fifty cents a cup.

   I buy two cups. "Are you making a profit?" I ask. "No," said the little boy. "I'm just making money for myself."

   "That's a profit!" I laughed.

   "It is?"

   "Yes."

   I could have carried that lesson a little further. But I decided to let him stay on the first rung for awhile.