Chapter 5

It was the big news in Monday's paper: President Okays Private Ownership of Gold. Gold Market Up. Gold Selling for $78.00 an Ounce.

I remembered the headlines from the first time through. I also remembered it would not take long before gold would soar to $880.00 an ounce. Well, it looked like I was going to have to empty the safety deposit boxes but good, this time. I was going to keep the coins that would appreciate more than gold would, in the next years. The key date gold coins, I wanted for my store. It was too bad I couldn't sell them in the store, myself.

On Monday, I went and picked Helen up at her house to take her to the bank. She was subdued more then I think she ever had been, the first time around. To my surprise, Art was home as well. Annette was in school, and I didn't have class on Monday's, until 2 pm. I took both of them to the bank, then into the safety deposit box viewing room. The bank manager was not happy, as he had to put the box on a cart to push it out of the vault. He knew what was in the box. I had shown him, after all.

If Art had been older, he would have had a heart attack when I opened the box. He whistled 'wow'. Before he could ask, I told them.

"This is mostly my Great-grandfathers collection. He left it to me."

Helen was looking really white in the face.

'Well, good, ' I thought. 'I got her goat in this lifetime. Last lifetime, she died on me, before I married her daughter.'

Art finally asked, "How much does all that weigh?"

I said, "At last count, about a hundred and fifty pounds."

The manager knocked at the door, and announced he had the other box. I opened the door and he came in. He stopped to admire the gold.

He asked, "Are you planning on selling it, with the price of gold up so much?"

I said, "I think it is going to go up a lot more, after the newspaper articles, today."

The bank manager said, "You're right. Too bad you don't have a stock account, you could leverage the current cost against the future cost."

I said, "I agree. I just don't want to mess with the stockbroker house. They demanded a letter of credit, before they would even open up an account for me."

"I see. Do you realize we do that here at the bank, as well."

"Yes, I know you would have given me the letter, but..."

He stopped me, "No, I mean we have a full service brokerage. I know we get a bigger commission than that discount house, but I would have no problem opening an account for you."

Ok, why didn't I remember that? I said, "No margin call?"

He asked, "What do you think Gold will go too in price?"

I replied, "I would not want it sold 'till it got over eight hundred an ounce."

The manager whistled, then said, "Please come into my office when you are done in here."

I nodded and said, "I sure will."

Before we left the bank I not only showed Art and Helen the main resources for my store; but I had opened a stock portfolio and had leveraged a gold option in the amount of 100,000 troy ounces of gold, on a 12-month option. That is to say, I paid for the right to own 100,000 oz of gold at the 'buy price' of $83.57 per ounce, plus bank fees. I could sell them at anytime for the going rate, and pocket the difference. I had spent 80,000 dollars for the privilege of doing that. If gold went back down below $75.00 an ounce the bank could make a margin call on it. For 'some reason', I all ready knew that was not going to happen.

The manager had confided in me that he had done the same thing for himself, but had set his target sell price at $100.00 and figured he would still be making a killing.

Art even got caught up in the fever, and opened an account, though he could only afford to leverage 5000 ounces. Helen was quiet throughout all this, I was starting to get concerned about her.

I returned the two of them to their home. Then I was off to my business ethics class. I really was of the opinion that my ethics were higher then what they were teaching here. Then again was it really ethical to take advantage of knowing the future?

I figured what the heck, I will ask. I raised my hand and without spilling the beans I phrased my question.

"Ethically speaking, and only for the sake of this class, assume a person had a time machine. By using it to travel to the past, he would know what the price of a stock was going to be in... let's say six months forward of the time he had traveled to. Would it be ethical for him to take advantage of that information and use it to his advantage?"

The professor responded, "Only until the FCC found out about the time machine, and made a law against it." The class chuckled, and he continued, "So did the physics department make some breakthrough, or something else I might want to know about?"

The class laughed their heads off at his comment. However, I had the answer I wanted; I was not breaking any laws.

So I responded, "Not that I know of, I was just thinking of leveraging gold options in light of today's newspapers."

The professor laughed for the class, then said "Oh you thinking about going for what looks like a sure thing?"

I said, "Sure? Yes, it's sure. I'm just trying to figure out if anyone has an idea how high it will go in the next 12 months."