With mid-terms exams coming up in two weeks, visiting Len’s mom would have to wait. The first order of business was to bring Eva and James up to date on my recommendations and to see what they had. The second order of business was to study. I’ve never been an eager student, but I work hard at my studies and that usually paid off in decent grades. With only a few years left till I was done with my schooling, I wanted to do well. Once those tasks were completed, I’d visit with Mrs. Johnson.
As expected, James wasn’t happy with my recommendations.
“For a few of the companies, your research shows the company going in one direction and your recommendations are saying to bet in the opposite direction, Abby. You’ve walked us through your reasoning, with a lone article hinting at support for your position and several clues from internet comments and rumors, but there just isn’t enough to base your conclusions on.”
“James, I told you at the start of all this that sometimes I was going to go based on hunches or intuition. That’s what I’m doing. Of the eight companies that I’m following now, I’m only going with my gut on two. The rest mostly fall in line within the range of expectations or close enough, even if they are sometimes at the extremes of those expectations. If you don’t want to trade based on the two that don’t make sense to you, you still have six others to choose from. I won’t be insulted.” I wasn’t upset with James at all. In his place, I’d be even more skeptical of my findings. He was taking all of this very calmly and trying to understand recommendations that didn’t really make any sense, unless you happened to have more information. Which I did.
“James, Abby was spot on last time and we made some killer trades based on her recommendations. I’m going to bet on her instincts again.”, Eva interjected. “If you’ll recall, she bet more heavily on her own recommendations and ended up beating us both.”
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“I know, Ev, and I’ll make trades based on her information. I just wish that it made more sense. I can’t replicate something that I don’t understand. Part of the reason that I’m taking this competition so seriously is that I need to be able to raise money to fund my Justice Foundation and learning about the whole process will make me better at it. How do Abby’s feelings fit into that?”, James asked.
“Come on James! You’ve never heard of hot tip?”, Eva replied back to him with a big smile on her face. “If you’re investing, you’re going to get stock tips from all over. Everyone’s got a sure thing to tell you about or a company that’s about to pop and be the next Apple. The most important thing that you need to learn is who to trust. You’ve known Abby for years, she’s done a lot of work on this, she’s putting her own and her fathers’, real money into her trades, and she’s been right before. On top of all that, she’s bigly into Superman, so you know that she has an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. She wouldn’t ever want to let you down. You’ll never have such an easy decision in your investing life than this.”
Did I mention that Eva was wonderful? After an endorsement like that, James had no choice but to give in. James gave us a rundown of his own recommendations and Eva updated us on the industries that she was following. At the end of our meeting, we each made our choices of the stocks that we’d be investing in and James said that he’d go over those choices and present us with the best way to invest in those companies. In a few days, we’d enter our trades into the competition software and make them in real life as well.
With that out of the way, we got to studying for mid-terms and for the next two weeks my life consisted of study groups for Chemistry, Algebra II, and History. I handled English, Spanish, Economics, and Digital Arts on own. Sometimes Bobby joined our study group and sometimes he brought along a few of his football friends as well. Some of those times we even got some studying done.
The time passed quickly and soon exams were over. I felt that I had done well in most of my exams, with the possible exception of English. I wasn’t sure if Mrs. Swenson would appreciate my views on Macbeth.