Puzzler

Stock Picker

Question

One day, you get a call from a random stock advisor.

"Next week, ABC stock is going to move up," he tells you. "I'm not asking you to buy any stock from me, but just take a look."

You do. (Why not, it can't hurt...) He was correct.

The following week you get another call from the "Lucky Guesser". His pick? "DEF is going to go down." Guess what! He was right again!

For five weeks, this guy predicts the behavior of stocks. The sixth time he calls, he says, "I've been right the past five times. This time I have a stock for you and I want you to buy some shares through me."

What do you say? Do you buy shares from this guy?

Answer

Heck no! He's playing you like a puppet. The first week, he calls 100 people, says to half that ABC will go up, and to the other fifty claims it will go down. When ABC goes up, he called the fifty he'd correctly predicted to and told half DEF would go up, and half it would go down. By the time he's at week five, he has a few people (2-4) thinking he's a stock market god.