The Art of the Hustle

  ***

  We entered the elevator and Steve swiped his key fob against a sensor and pressed PP1.

  “What did you just do?” I asked inquisitively. I lived in the same building, but I did not have to scan my key to use the elevator.

  “Oh, I have a private parking garage. You need to swipe this thing to gain access.”

  The elevator took us down one level below the main parking garage. The doors opened and we stepped off the elevator. I was shocked at what I saw. In front of us was an assortment of beautiful exotic cars.

  “Dang,” I said under my breath.

  “Nice, right?”

  I was speechless. Who is this guy? For a young guy in university, he sure had a nice car collection. The first vehicle to grab my attention was a polished black H1 Hummer. It was by far the largest vehicle in the fleet, but certainly not the most extravagant. The cherry red Ferrari 599 GTO won that title. He also had a Mercedes E class, a Lexus RX Hybrid, and an equally impressive collection of street bikes.

  Steve extended his hand, pressed a button on his key chain, and the Lexus came to life.

  “Come on, we’ll take this one, we can put some small stuff in it. I’ll get my uncle to deliver all the larger things.”

  On the way to his uncle’s furniture store, we talked a lot more about trading stocks.

  “My strategy is simple really, I find ‘diamond-in-the-rough’ companies and bet large on them.”

  “Are you successful most of the time?”

  “Usually. Sometimes I take losses, but my gains far outweigh my losses. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, if you don’t know what you’re doing you can go broke very quickly. In fact, a buddy of mine lost a half million dollars playing my strategy. I can teach you everything I know, but you must have the right kind of personality for trading. I trade mostly on instincts, and I can’t teach you that.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” I said, remembering my sales seminar.

  “If you want to invest a little bit of money to get your feet wet, look into XNR.”

  “XNR? What does that mean?”

  “Oh, sorry, XNR is the ticker symbol for Xaner Pharmaceuticals.”

  “Okay, what do they do?”

  “This company is about to introduce a drug that will revolutionize the way people treat diabetes. It’s still undergoing trials, but they are in their phase 3 of testing.”

  “Sounds interesting.”

  “Yeah, this thing is going to be huge, I have a couple hundred grand invested in it.”