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Several years ago, while doing research for a school project, a group of MIT students realized that, for a few days every three months or so, the most reliably lucrative lottery game in the country was Massachusetts' Cash WinFall, because of a quirk in the way a jackpot was broken down into smaller prizes if there was no big winner. The math whizzes quickly discovered that buying about $100,000 in Cash WinFall tickets on those days would virtually guarantee success. Buying $600,000 worth of tickets would bring a 15%–20% return on investment, according to the New York Daily News.
When the jackpot rose to $2 million, the students bought in, dividing the prize money among group members. But they didn't stop there; they were so successful in their caper that they were eventually able to quit their day jobs and bring in investors to front the money they needed to purchase the requisite number of lottery tickets.
Original Submission
(Score: 2, Insightful) by istartedi on Tuesday June 09 2015, @08:04AM
That's interesting. IPOs in their current form are probably one of the things I like least about markets. They're just exit strategies for the real winners, dumping crap on the public. I'd like to see rule changes that require them to IPO earlier. I'll give you this though--the reverse IPO is often worse. That's when private equity buys a public company and forces holders of common to accept a tender offer. A lot of times those shares are weak and won't come back for a long time; but still--you're being forced to realize a loss by PEs who circle like vultures. That's one reason to stick with large caps and indexes, although it's still possible for these things to dissolve and force you to take your cash back at inopportune times, it's far less likely than with individual small/mid cap stocks.
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