Lets play a game -- "I wish I knew then what I know now"

In My Humble Opinion
1

Ive been having this fantasy lately of wanting to live my live over from a particular spot. I wanted to do over my live knowing what I know now and use my knowledge to get ahead in life. That is my maturity, my positive outlook on life, my experiences and mostly my knowledge of stock market trends and certain key moments in the stock market (such as the day Microsoft became public). But then what if I wake up tomorrow and its (again) October 1976. History will not be significantly altered (i dont think) such that you will adversely affect the world. You have $1,000 and your goal is to be rich and/or happy (or content)

Now in this game there should be 2 sides. A player which will test his/her knowledge of the past and use it as a guide to his future (back from 1976)

The other side is the googler. Anyone can look up what the player thinks is going to happen and help determine their outcome. For example, I know that if I invest in Microsoft when they first became public, Id be filty rich now. I recently realized that I dont know exactly when they did go public and how rich will I really be with just a thousand dollars invested? Googlers can help there because the players who went back to 1976 wont have the internet to help them …well not for another 8 or 9 years.

so here goes:

Player

October 1976, I’m a frikken pimply faced skinny teenager with a thousand dollars. Disco hasnt even taken root yet, and I have recollections of the future up to about 2003. Gotta buy stock. Do they let teenagers buy stock in 1976? Cant gamble and I need more than this thousand. I invest it all on gold. In about 2 years the gold market will triple but i dont recall when or why. I just know that it went up to $800 an ounce up from its usual $250. I tell my broker to sell at $750. Gotta go to high school now. I wonder if what I really know can get me laid…? Confidence is the key but looks do count. I start exercising and I try to look up my old Sensei. He would be just getting started in his training. Might be nice to train with him.

2

If you only have $1,000, buying Microsoft stock is not the best way to get rich. Yes, you could make a lot of money by buying it at its lowest point and selling at its highest point, but there are many years between those two points. You wouldn’t be filthy rich until the year 2000 or so. Plus, you’d have to hold onto that $1,000 for 10 years until Microsoft went public in 1986. Do you want to relive 24 years waiting for that windfall?

You could tell the girls in 1976 that you’re going to be really rich in July 2000. I’m sure they’ll strip naked when you tell them that.

If you apply what you’ve learned up to 2003 to your life in 1976, you would just blow the $1,000 on some chick. Isn’t that what you’ve learned in the intervening years? You always pay for sex, one way or the other.

3

Googler

I hope you were a supremely patient investor. Gold didn’t hit that high until the mid '80s, then crashed in 1987. But if you were, by the time you finish college, you’ll be pretty well off.
Player
Apple goes public in 1976. I put all my money in IBM stock, and wait patiently for the IBM PC to show up in 1983. I make up my mind to go to the smaller UC Santa Cruz campus unstead of the way too large and anonymous UCLA. I also ask my sister to teach me how to jog and weight train properly, thereby years of back problems. And I stay the hell away from the crystal meth this time around.

4

Damn… Im glad I didnt wake up in 1976 this morning, I wouldve blown a thousand bucks on gold that wont go up for another 10 years. Thanks Mojave66.

BTW, my goal is not to be instantaneously rich. I wanna be rich but theres a ton of fun things to do in between then and now that can be done. Its the knowledge that I wont have need to work for money early in life that gives me the warm fuzzies. I can get chicks without resorting to bribery …I think. :dubious:
Player

Gold trend not working like I thought it would. Waited 4 years to 1980 and no radical upward spike. Money stagnant. Need lotsa money soon, investment opportunities abound in the 80s.

Meanwhile, I aced all the subjects in High School, except calculus. Gawd, I hated that one. Still dont know what a Forrier series is… Got mostly A’s and some B’s and the cool thing is I can do it with little studying so I dont seem like the school nerd. Martial arts did my body good. Not so skinny and my face cleared up. Got into UCLA on scholarship and affirmative action. Studying
business and marketing. Bored. Went in for the chicks anyway.

I subscribed to Wall Street Journal. Asked broker to look for a small company up north called Apple and to invest as much as I could. Key companies to look for were Genentech, Microsoft, Oracle, Compaq. Im trying to buy swampland in Kissimee Florida.

I wish I paid more attention to sports stats. I am old enuf to gamble and I dont remember which team won which championship at what year. GRRR!! I am looking out for a horse named Seatle Slew. I am hoping the names will become familiar as history unfolds.

5

I am glad I am not the only one who does this! (how many times have I written that on the SDMB?)

Player

October 1976. I am seven years old. I improve my whole family’s life because I’m not a whiny crybaby like I used to be. I stop hitting my brother. I’ve got $1000. Do they let 7 year olds invest? If they do, I’m sticking with names I’m familiar with, still around in 2003, sure to appreciate with everything else in the boom of the 80s–IBM, Coke, Gen Electric, and Microsoft of course.

I stop wasting time watching TV and beg my mother for ballet lessons. With my adult’s focus and concentration, I can really take advantage, perhaps I’ll even be a prodigy. I start reading the auditions classifieds in the Washington Post and try to be a child actor. I am a cute kid and have the advantage of an adult’s maturity.

For Christmas the next year all I want is Star Wars stuff. Hopefully no one notices when I don’t open any packages and hide them away in tissue paper in shoe boxes under my bed.

School: In elementary school, obviously I am a whiz kid. I skip as many grades as I can get away with, as social adjustment is not a problem. If I can get outside classes in languages I’m going for Spanish, French, Italian and German

Hopefully I am earning money in the child actor/model vein, but if not I am busting my butt raking leaves, cleaning litter boxes, walking dogs etc. You know how they always show you how you’d have $60,000 more if you start saving at 25 rather than 29? Imagine if you start when you’re 8?

As time goes by I’m waiting for New Coke to debut. Coke shares were sure to take a huge dive then. I think that’s the only bargin I have enough foreknowledge to take advantage of.

I’m probably able to graduate high school early, but I’m not going to college early, so I might take a year or two as a foreign exchange student. Keep learning those languages.

I cash out of the stock market right before college starts, thus neatly avoiding Black Monday (Oct. 1987). I go to the same college and find some subtle way to meet a certain freshman guy. I’m assuming that even though I am mentally older than him now the soulmate thing will still work.

This time I major in something useful like Computer Science or Business. Or one of the languages.

End result? Same husband, same kids, still a stay at home mom, but have lots more money and know 4 or more languages. And can show my kids a few video tapes of mom onstage or on TV as a kid.

6

October of 1976, huh? Well, I suppose I could become the first five-month-old to talk in complete sentences. That’s gotta be worth something.

7

You think that’s funny, I wouldn’t exist yet. But I’d eventually freak out my mom by tapping out Morse code on the uterine walls. :smiley:

8

Bugger off the stock market. If I could go back to my preteen years, circa 1983, I’d advise my younger self – and my parents – to get me into as much therapy to develop good social skills as humanly possible, and I’d warn myself – and my parents – that being intellectually gifted includes some side elements that will be made easier with good social skills. And then, once my younger self had developed those skills, I’d persuade my younger self to ask out that cute girl from the afternoon religious classes.

Changing history to get rich never works. I’d change history to improve myself.

(hijack)
BTW, Tyler, as long as you’re learning Morse code in utero, why not try to earn your Amateur Extra license before you learn to read? This would make for some interesting radio exchanges:

dahdahdidah dah didididit - dahdah dahdahdah dahdah dahdah dahdidahdah dididit – didahdah dahdahdah dahdah dahdididit.

(You know you’ve done too much Morse code when you write it out as an audible language, the way it’s supposed to be.)
(/hijack)

9

Googler

From a purely financial point of view, much quicker and easier than checking on investments would be looking for something to gamble on, in the proper sense. Superbowl winners, World Series, horse races, etc., etc.

For example, the following teams won their respective torunaments in 1976:

NFL: Oakland
MLB: Cincinatti
NBA: Portland (1976-77)
NHL: Montreal

I reckon that if you put a bet on that ALL those teams were going to win, you’d get pretty good odds–probably in the hundreds or thousands to one.

Or, if you found only four horse races that were won by a 10/1 shot, you could turn that $1000 into $10,000,000 in few weeks, or even days, just by reinvesting your winnings each time.

(all this, of course, assumes that you could find someone to take large bets on these events)

10

PLAYER

Let’s see. Surely I can find someone to place a bet with at 13 years old… and get some kind of good odds at the beginning of the football season for Pittsburgh to repeat as Super Bowl champions.

I think I’d try to keep winning money on sports book for the next couple of years… I can name every Super Bowl winner from Super Bowl I onwards. And while I don’t know all the World Series winners, I do remember when the Orioles lost to the Pirates in 1979 and the Phillies in 1983. I have to believe that making those bets at the beginning of seasons would let me win more money than I could make in the stock market, at least initially.

By the early 1980s, I’d get into the stock market, remembering to sell short to take advantage of October 1987. And I’d grab Dell 1988 IPO at around $8 per share. And by the end of 1999, I’d start selling my tech stocks short.

I’m reasonably happy with the way my personal life went… no major changes there.

  • Rick
11

All those guys who wanted to buy me stuff when I was 19-mid-thirties, I would have let them. All those bastard lawyers and other rich scumballs who wanted to go out with me, I would have.

Then I could sit at home with my money and call up… well, I guess I wouldn’t have any friends or fond memories to share with them.

12

Player

In 1976, start with the horse betting thing with $1000 - I am only looking forward to doubling my holding each time. When I have a few million dollars, invest into Apple stock until 14 October 1987. On the afternoon of 15 October 1987, sell future indexes like there’s no tomorrow - get bank leverage if possible. Wait for Black Monday to make you filthy rich. Then scoop up MSFT stocks and fast forward to October 1997. With a few billion dollars (probably a lot more by then), you can make a massive killing in the freefalling markets during the Asian Financial Crisis.

13

In 1976, at eight years old, I would spend the $1,000 on baseball cards. This time, I would hold onto them instead of letting my mother throw them away.

I would have sex with the girl who invited me to her school’s dance in 1985 and took me to a motel afterwards. I would have sex with the older woman who flirted with me in the supermarket I worked at in 1987. I would have sex with that girl in 1991 who said, “There’s nothing on TV. Can you think of anything fun to do?” I would not say “You sure eat a lot of red meat” on that date in 1997. I would have sex with the woman who told me “I want to have sex with you” in 1998. I would have sex with my friend who was drunk off her ass in 1999 and took me back to her hotel room.

Somewhere in there I would sell the baseball cards, if I could be bothered to stop having sex.

14

Thanks for playing! To all who posted here, I appreciate it very much!

**Googler/b]

Unfortunately, while a single person may not adversely affect the history of the world as we know it (without actual intent to do so) The first casualty of going back in our lives would be our children. Even if you were to get the same spouse, the time of conception can affect genetics and their sex. You might get a daughter instead of a son, their personality would be dependent on so many variables that it would be impossible to match the one(s) you left behind. Every fantasy has its price.

15

I worked with Wizards of the Coast on their first publication (The Primal Order). I’d have worked really hard to have bought stock back when it could be had.

16

Gosh I suppose if I kept track of current events (as it happened then) I might be able to “remember” the significant events happeneing in the world and somehow profit from them. I have every confidence that I would remember enuf facts about which dates to take advantange and end up far richer than I was before. That part of my goal would be easily be achieved in the later nineties and sell off or speculate right before the 2000 elections.

However, what will all the players do about

9-11
the Waco Shootings or Ruby Ridge
The Unibomber
The Oklahoma Bombing
Princess Dianes “accident”
Shuttles Columbia and Challenger
Whitewater, Monica Lewinski
Iran-Contra
Worldcom, Enron

keep in mind that tampering with these significant events may alter the progress of history as you know them, maybe slightly or significantly. For example, what would the world be like if John lenon is still alive and you had a hand in saving him?