Journaling 30-day-trial, Day 14

February 13th, 2008 by Bill Perry in 30-day-trials, Personal Development, journaling

In this journal entry, I was thinking about time travel, Stock Markets and Casinos:

Tuesday, February 12, 2008 10:00 AM

This journaling 30-day trial is really kicking my butt. It’s much more difficult writing every day than I expected. I wonder if maybe it’s because of the nagging thought that I’ve commited myself to posting at least one “public friendly” entry a day to the blog?

I am committed to see this thing through, but it is rather difficult. Perhaps, after the end of this trial, the quality of my entries will change once I know that I won’t be required to post and of them to the blog.

So, I’m sitting here thinking about time travel, casinos and the stock market.
Assume, for a minute, that I built a time machine, and went back armed with knowledge of stock market price moves.

Now, if I start doing stock trades based on the knowledge I have of the future price moves, what would happen? Would the stock prices stay exactly as my future data shows? I don’t think so.
I think that the very action of me introducing stock trades into the market that were not there before would affect all future trade prices. The very act of acting on known future stock prices would actually skew the market one way or another. I suppose one way to profit for sure on this idea would be to do place both put and call options on the stocks, and just make sure that I structured the deal to profit no matter which way it moves. So, even when/if my actions skew the market, I’d still cash in.

I think the same effects would also apply at casinos. Say, if you built up a list of the numbers which got rolled on a roulette wheel, and then took that knowledge back, it would not matter. I say this because there are several factors which likely affect the winning number. Factors might include the force with which the dealer/operator sets the wheel spinning, the actual time when it’s done (i.e., will the wheel land on the same number if it’s set to spinning a second sooner or later…), etc.

So, I assume the same might also apply to slot machines, unless they are truly rigged, which I am unsure of.