Pick up or leave it

Do you want to know how I have become rich? I got lucky. Yes, I know. Every rich person would say that. But, I really got lucky when I stumbled upon this little black book at metro station. You don’t believe me? OK. Just keep reading.

This little book must have come from the future. Why? Because the winning number for Power Ball is written in it? No. But, quite close. It’s actually better than winning one ticket of Power Ball. Because this book is a literally fountain of money. Let me repeat. This book is the tree that grows money. Even if a billionaire offers me to buy this book from me for billions of billions of dollars, I would not sell it.

By the way, this book is so precious I have hidden it in some bank vault where no one except for me has access. What am I going to do with it since I’m already rich? I plan to keep it forever. Yes. Forever. From me to my children to their children and so on. For generations in my family.

That was a long introduction, wasn’t it? Bear with me. I am actually very nervous about what I’m going to tell you about. This anxiety stems from those many zeroes in my bank account.

Here’s my secret. This little black book has many random alphabet letters and numbers. It took me months to figure out what those letters and numbers meant. NO. Actually, it was not that difficult to find out what they meant. The difficult part was to discover the interval between a series of numbers. I’ll give you some example.

OIRE 1.25 1.18 1.20 1.21 1.35 1.38 1.34 1.39 1.50 1.45 1.43 1.38 1.43 1.35 1.40 1.42 1.46 …

ZIZ 40.25 42.44 45.45 48.89 49.90 60.66 60.64 62.46 69.20 65.52 65.50 130.31 138.42 …

Already got it? Yes. These are stock tickers and share prices. This little book was someone’s log of rising stock prices of endless number of companies. It was log written prospectively. By the way, not all companies in the book existed in the stock market. Some were gone and some appeared. This book does not tell you when. Figuring this part out was where I had to work.

Once it became clear to me how I could benefit from it, action time came. First, I borrowed $2,000 from bank. I never borrow money. I must have been under some spell or suffered a lack of sleep the night before. Maybe it was delusion caused by obsessing and deciphering random letters and numbers in that book. Whatever it was, I never felt so sure about anything in my life.

I bought 6,600 shares of NUUA at 30 cents per share with that $2,000 on Feb. 12, 2013. After 2 months of what felt like a crazy (emotional) roller coaster, it soared to $3 per share. On April 14, 2013, I sold all my NUUA shares and cashed in $20,000. With that money, I paid off $2,000 plus interest. The rest was re-invested into other stocks in that little black book. I just repeated this numerous times and never lost a dime. When my asset became larger, I delegated investing to someone. Now I just tell him to what and when to buy and sell.

Does it seem easy money to you? It’s not. I earned it. Endless googling, watching tickers go up and down for months to years, deciding when to sell, and paying taxes was all the hard work. Even though everything was written already and I knew how high the prices would go, it still took me tremendous patience and discipline to keep my money growing. My text neck and poor eyesight attest.

Next time when you see a little black book left unattended at random places, what will you do? Are you going to take it home or bring to lost and found? It might contain something that could change your life.