Eva and James were finally coming back. I can’t believe that they’ve been gone for over a month. They were driving in early this afternoon, and I was going to meet them at Eva’s house. I got there a bit early, locked up my bike to their backyard fence and came around to sit down to wait on their front porch swing.
While I waited, Eva texted to say that they’re almost there. I was so excited. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed having them around. Sure, we’d texted and chatted some while they were away, but it wasn’t the same as having someone to hang around with. I’d spent the summer mostly working or learning to use my field and although that was good, it still felt kind of lonely.
Sitting on the swing, I wasn’t very visible from the street, so I figured that I’d get some practice time in. I shifted to R1 and immediately fell trough the swing. Ahhh! Was I ever going to get used to this? I picked myself up and looked around to make sure no one was looking before shifting back and sitting down again. At least I was shifting back and forth between reality and R1 without having to consciously think about the backpack that I was always wearing. Sometimes I even had two backpacks on at the same time. One in R1 and one in reality. As long as I didn’t travel into R1 with the second backpack, I was fine. I even wore the backpack in R1 while I was sleeping. It seemed like the only way to shut off the backpack field was to either turn it off on purpose or to run out of enough strength to hold it.
I heard a car coming down the street and stood up to see if it was Eva. It was and I walked down the porch steps to wait for them to pull in and greet them. We hugged and laughed, and I helped her unpack the car and bring her things to her room. James and his family had stopped for lunch and were running a half hour behind. He'd catch up with us soon and in the meantime Eva sat me down in her room and I got a play by play of her summer in the traveling RV caravan. She showed me pictures and videos that they took all over the country, including state fairs, scenic wonders, malls, campgrounds. It really is a great country.
When she was done, I gave her a quick rundown of my summer, most of which she already knew about, but this time I told her about Tyler and dad’s epic takedown of the jerk. She literally cheered when I told her how he ended up with a zero for the assignment.
“Is he behaving himself now?”, she asked.
“He’s ok, I guess. He listens when I give him advice and he’s unfailingly polite, calling me Ms. Smith instead of Abby, but he never says more than he has to and I can see that he’s trying to stay away from me. I think he feels bad about how he treated me, but if he can’t bring himself to apologize and move on, then there’s nothing much I can do. I won’t pretend it didn’t happen.”
“A cute coward? Oh well. They can’t all be like James!”
I rolled my eyes. “So, you still like each other? Even after spending so much time together traveling?”
“Yup! We’re special that way.” Eva made googly eyes at me as she said this.
“Well you guys are special, and I’ve missed you both. I’m glad that you’re back. Now, what classes have you signed us up for? You remembered to only sign me up for classes in the afternoon?”
“Of course. I got us into a one o’clock hot yoga class on Mondays and Wednesdays and a Zumba class at three o’clock on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Friday is some sort of bootcamp class that’s supposed to be really challenging.”
“And James is ok with all this?”
“Absolutely.”
“Really?”, I asked with raised eyebrows.
“Well…kinda ok with it. Maybe more like he’s resigned to it. He said not to sign him up, but that he’d try one class of each. I used you as guilt. I told him that you were working extra this summer to prepare for the competition that’s so important to him and that he should do something nice for you.”
“That’s sweet of him.”
“Not really. That argument didn’t work. I had to tell him that the alternative was going to your Kung Fu class. Then he was on board to try the other classes.”
“You’ve come to the classes a bunch of times. You seem to enjoy it. Why won’t he even try? It’d be great to have you both there.”
“I’m not sure why, but he just says that it’s not for him. Anyways, I’ll be coming to some Kung Fu classes. Which ones are best for me this week and next?”
I gave her a rundown of the class times and then I told her about Uncle Magnum’s new girlfriend. We gossiped for a bit until James showed up. I got the summer rundown from his perspective, along with a few stories that Eva left out because they didn’t cast her in a flattering light. She had mentioned their time at the state fair in Montana, but failed to tell me how she had insisted on going on the Flying Cars ride after eating one of those giant fried drumstick dipped in honey and ended up throwing up behind the ride seconds after she got off. I’d also seen pictures of them at the Grand Canyon, but she forgot to tell me about her almost going over the edge because she was being chased by a bee.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
James and I laughed at her expense, while she pretend pouted. She tried to give James a stern look, but it just made him laugh even harder. Once we all calmed down, I gave them a rundown of what I’d learned from my stock market studies in the library and then I told them that I had investigated five local public companies. I didn’t mention my actual snooping inside those companies. I still didn’t want to share my secret ability with anyone, and I also wasn’t sure if they would approve. Actually, I knew that Eva would wholeheartedly approve, and I was also sure that James wouldn’t. He’s a boyscout type, like dad. They tend to follow the rules. My view runs more along the lines that rules can be bent sometimes.
“Anyways guys, I think that I’m ready to have my dad open up a trading account for me. That $4 a trade company that you told me about looks good, James. Dad also looked into it and he says we can set it up tonight. In the next few days I’m going to put together my findings on the five companies and then I’m going to need your help James. I have two sets of information that I want you to look at. One set is what I found from reputable sources; magazine articles about the company, previous financial statements, the free analyses that I’ve found online. The other set is rumors and speculation and my assessment as to how believable those sources are. I’ll give you fair warning though, I intend on using both sets of information to make my picks and I won’t be able to give you a good reason why. Anything that I do, I’ll tell you guys about and you can decide if you want to make the same trades. I’ll understand completely if you choose to ignore my choices.”
“Ok Abby, that sounds good. I’m happy to see that you’re taking this so seriously. And don’t worry about using hunches or gut feelings to make your decisions. In the end, no matter how much information you have, it all boils down to that. I’ll have my parents open an account for me too. There’s no point in waiting for the competition to start. If we’re going to be putting in real money, now’s as good a time as any to start.” James turned to Eva and asked, “What about you? Did you talk to your parents about opening an account for you?”
“I’m all set. Mom’s has her own account and she said that she could set me up anytime I’m ready”, Eva answered.
Later on that night, Dad and I set up the trading account and I transferred five thousand dollars from my account into it. Between working for the university and for Uncle Magnum, I’d made some decent money so far this summer. I put all of that into the account, as well as money I’d saved from babysitting and a little of the money that mom left me in her will. Dad suggested putting in $50,000 from his money into the account as well, but I freaked out and told him that I wasn’t ready for that level of responsibility yet. We agreed on him putting in $20,000 for now and if things went well, he’d add in more. He took the time to explain that the money was what he’d been paid from the university when they sold his last few art pieces. Even if I lost it, we’d be fine. He also reminded me that it was unlikely that I’d lose the entire amount. If I made bad picks, then we could talk about it and decide to cut our loses at any time, unless the company I invested in went bankrupt.
I knew that dad made good money from selling his art, but it was still a bit of a shock. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised really. Dad’s art had always been well received and his job at the university included a good salary, as well as our house. Between the two of us, we spent very little, so most of what dad made got invested.
With the quarterly reports coming out in just a few weeks, I spent an hour organizing my findings for dad and for James. I set up five file folders, one for each company that I’d investigated, and put all the relevant public information into them. Each had printouts from magazine articles about the companies, as well as summaries of their previous quarterly reports, a quick summary page regarding the state of the industry they were in and an analysis of their place in it. I also added a SWOT analysis for each company. That refers to the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats that the company had or was facing in the future. Most of this I found using dad’s university Lexis-Nexis account, the corporate news site I’d talked to Eva about. I’d seen that they also had a big law section, but I’d never looked at it. With the initial investigation work done for each company, I’d only need to update the information before I was ready to make a trade.
To the inside front cover of each folder, I attached my rumor and speculation pages. This page typically started off with the company’s own projection for the upcoming quarter, followed by the wall street ‘consensus’ showing how the financial analysts thought the company would do. After that, I added in pieces of information that I found relevant. It could be bad online reviews for the company’s products, quotes from employees that had left the company, or how often the company or its products were referred to in popular culture references. I put in any rumors about new technology that could affect the industry. While this would usually go in the Threats category, I reserved that section for technology that had already been announced publicly and been shown to work.
Finally, I added in the information from my own personal on-site visits. I labelled that section “Internet Comment Section Speculation”. With a label like that, I wouldn’t have to provide a source and anyone looking at it would discount it. The comment sections were where the crazy, conspiracy creating, basement-dwelling, keyboard warriors hung out.
To avoid being too accurate in my predictions, I made sure to shift the numbers a little form my actual findings, so that they wouldn’t be spot on with the actual company results when they come out. I couldn’t risk making James too suspicious. Being right so often would already be making James question where I was getting my information and if he knew that I was accessing insider information, then he’d probably see it as cheating and refuse to use the information or to help me make my trades.
I had decided that using insider information was ok, but was it fair for me to cheat on James’ behalf? Was I messing with his experiment? I wasn’t sure and the possibility of hurting James made me more nervous than breaking the insider trading law.