ERD50
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
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From a "realistic" perspective, 1979 is just a few years after the oil embargo/oil price spikes. Back then, oil might seem like a more natural choice to pick for holding for 30 years, rather than some random IPO that no one heard of and would have almost no reason to buy.
Agreed. Picking AAPL, MSFT, or WMT seems too 'set up' and phony to me. Any of those could have been very likely to become 'wallpaper stocks' as well.
Hasn't our character heard of diversification? All their eggs in one basket? They are depending on this stash, and they put it all in a single stock? That's crazy. How about buy all the stocks in the 1979 DOW 30? That seems like a far more realistic plan to me. Easy to back-test that I would think.
Now, if you want to throw something more interesting in there, maybe he picks one stock at random to add to the DOW 30? Throws a dart and hits one of those winners mentioned? Or picks one because of the name, or some other trivial lucky guess?
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He'll be out of luck regarding splits also, so BRKA is looking good (never split).
Why? The certificate has the issue date on it, I'm very certain that the agent will adjust for any splits.
But what about the lack of ID. Those certificates have names on them. So if this person is considered dead, they would go to the estate, right? Do they issue stock certificates to be paid to "the bearer"?
-ERD50
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