Planet Money had a recent podcast titled "The Onion King", where someone took physical control of onion futures, and why that is the one type of future outlawed by congress.
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/10/14/448718171/episo...
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/10/14/448718171/episo...
I was intrigued enough to follow this up, although I didn't listen to the podcast. From wikipedia:
During the hearings, the Commodity Exchange Authority stated that it was the perishable nature of onion which made them vulnerable to price swings. Then-congressman Gerald Ford of Michigan sponsored a bill, known as the Onion Futures Act, which banned futures trading on onions. The bill was unpopular among traders, some of whom argued that onion shortages were not a crucial issue since they were used as a condiment rather than a staple food. The president of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, E.B. Harris, lobbied hard against the bill. Harris described it as "Burning down the barn to find a suspected rat". The measure was passed, however, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill in August 1958. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Kosuga#Regulatory_acti...
such an unstaple food that The Times of India has a page dedicated to track the price of onions
But yes, they do (sort of): http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Beef-prices
But then I wondered if those pages were auto-generated, so I tried other things: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Taco-prices
Ok, how about non-food: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Obama-prices
Yeah, it's kind of free form: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Why-Am-I-A-Pickle
The first time you specify something unique, it takes a little bit to load, but then it's caching it.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/Petrol-cheaper-t...
"7 U.S. Code § 13–1 - Violations, prohibition against dealings in motion picture box office receipts or onion futures; punishment
(a) No contract for the sale of motion picture box office receipts (or any index, measure, value, or data related to such receipts) or onions for future delivery shall be made on or subject to the rules of any board of trade in the United States. The terms used in this section shall have the same meaning as when used in this chapter. (b) Any person who shall violate the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction thereof be fined not more than $5,000."
The book is a mixture of fiction and real life and it's just great! One of my favorites
Its interesting to read up on why its thinly disguised. Its widely believed the author both got, and planted, stock tips for Livermore, but the author wanted no written legal document connecting them in case things went wrong and he ended up in court discussing his documented long financial relationship w/ Mr Livermore. Legally on paper he can say he has never had anything to do with the guy, etc. Everyone knew exactly what was going on, of course.
Fred Schwed's "where are the customers yachts?" is another investment classic.
Another classic comedy was Ben Graham's Security Analysis; its a comedy in the sense that market prices currently have no relationship to fundamentals from a Graham perspective. When I was young and dumb I thought I'd spend my life making wise investment decisions based on fundamentals using Mr Graham's techniques. Instead, my entire adult life has been spend in central bank bubbles. In that sense the book is useless today. But in your grandpa's day, or great grandpa's day, this is how investment decisions were calculated, and its kinda interesting historically.
It would be amusing some slow day to have a HN article along the lines of "books recognized as cool, that have nothing to do with computers". I think we've had them in the distant past, years ago.
That would be very cool, I love reading how the world works outside computers but there is so much of everything and it's hard to filter in fields I know nothing about, have you considered suggesting it to dang, it would fit in well still I think.
You missed the whole point of Security Analysis and Intelligent Investor(another Graham book). The market is irrational from time to time, so you patiently wait on the side when prices are overvalued and invest in fundamentally good companies when prices are undervalued.
Really, it never happens?
Forget about me, if the worlds greatest value investor Warren Buffett and his managers are buying. What more do you want.
As I said you missed the whole point of those books. You should read the books again, it takes multiple readings to understand them.