People Are Making Money Betting on Pretaped ‘Survivor’ Episodes

You can buy fractional shares and start an account with basically nothing. When I got into trading stocks you had to have a brokerage account and the minimum was usually something like 1000$ in an account. Making a trade, of any size, was 75$ back then. Adjust that for inflation and think about it.

One of my favourite examples of "insider trading" (on the commodities futures markets) is at the end of *Trading Places*. The wealthy Duke brothers (Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche) pay one of their associates to covertly obtain a Florida orange crop report from the Department of Agriculture. They will then use this crop report to try to corner the market on the trading of orange juice contracts - if the crop is smaller than usual, the Dukes know the price of orange juice will rise (less supply = higher demand); if the crop is bigger than usual, the Dukes know the price of orange juice will fall (more supply = less demand). The end of the movie features Billy Ray (Eddie Murphy) and Louis (Dan Aykroyd) intercepting the orange crop report, before it can reach the Dukes. The real crop report shows that everything is fine, and there is going to be a surplus of orange juice. Billy Ray and Louis then create a fake crop report, to say the opposite (that unexpectedly cold weather has created a shortage of oranges), and pass the fake report along to the Dukes. The Dukes then see the fake crop report, and tell their trader to buy as much orange juice contracts as possible, the moment trading opens, because they expect to be able to sell all these orange juice contracts they have in their possession, for highly inflated prices, once the crop report is revealed (because they believe the orange crop is going to be lower than usual, so they can take advantage of the shortage of orange juice). So, the Dukes' plan is pretty much... buy low at first, then sell high later. The trading day begins, and the Dukes' trader immediately starts buying as much orange juice contracts as he can. Once the other traders realize what the Dukes are doing, they all join in and try to buy a bunch of orange juice contracts too (figuring the Dukes have inside information). This pushes the price of orange juice contracts to sky-high levels. As this going on, Billy Ray and Louis are standing on the trading floor, being silent, and making no trades. Eventually, the price gets to a high enough point where Billy Ray and Louis announce that they will be **selling** orange juice contracts. Crucially, Billy Ray and Louis **do not have** any orange juice contracts in their possession at that moment. They are short selling (selling contracts that they don't have yet - they will need to buy enough orange juice contracts later to make sure they have enough to actually fulfill the sales they have committed to). This works fine for Billy Ray and Louis, because they know the real crop report says there will be a surplus of orange juice, so they know prices will drastically fall once the crop report is revealed, so they can purchase a bunch of c**** orange juice contracts then (so, Billy Ray and Louis are pretty much doing the opposite of the Dukes - they are selling high first, and then buying low later). Billy Ray and Lewis sell a bunch of orange juice contracts (which they do not own, yet), at very high prices. The real crop report is revealed, and all the traders on the floor are in a panic, because they all realize that all the orange juice contracts they have purchased are VASTLY inflated in price as compared to what they should be, and they need to dump them. The big price board above the floor shows the price for orange juice contracts begins dropping drastically. Which works fine for Billy Ray and Louis, because they need to purchase as much (soon to be cheaply priced) OJ contracts as possible, to fulill their short selling (as noted above). The price for orange juice bottoms out, and Billy Ray and Louis start buying c**** orange juice contracts from all the traders on the floor, with one notable exception: They refuse to buy from the Dukes' trader (because they purposefully want to stick the Dukes with as much orange juice contracts as possible by the time the end of the day arrives). Also of note, Billy Ray and Louis are the **only people buying** after the crop report comes out (because everyone else is trying to sell). The trading day ends. Billy Ray and Lewis have bought enough orange juice contracts to fulfill their short selling, and have made a profit of about $400 million from doing so. Meanwhile, the trading floor commissioners head over to the Dukes, and initiate a margin call on them for $400 million. The $400 million owing to Billy Ray and Lewis needs to come from somewhere, after all, and the Dukes are the only one still holding any orange juice contracts at the end of the day (since Billy Ray and Valentine refused to buy from the Dukes' trader). The Duke brothers plainly point out they don't have $400 million in cash just sitting in their bank account, so the commissioners order all the Duke's assets (houses, vehicles, etc...) be seized and sold to settle everything, since the orange juice contracts that the Dukes have in their possession at the end of the day are obviously worth nowhere near $400 million. The Duke brothers go broke, and Billy Ray and Louis are seen happily vacationing on a tropical island. Of note, what Billy Ray and Lewis did was **perfectly legal** at the time, because using insider information on the commodities future trading market was not illegal until 2010 (considering Trading Places came out in 1983, and was one of the most popular movies of the 1980s, it seems kind of silly that it took the government 27 years to ban this kind of behaviour). The rule banning insider information use on the futures trading market is often informally called the Eddie Murphy Rule (as a reference to the movie). https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/9mrire/til_the_law_making_it_illegal_to_profit_from/?sort=top

Every other form of gambling has some form of regulation, weirdo.

That season is the worst of the entire show imo. Incredibly unlikable cast, boring w*****, boring gameplay, stupid twist, and of course all the SA stuff. Idk that there is any possible way to have a worse season.