Time Travel Thought

[ffutures]

I have an odd idea which has probably been used in SF at one time or another, but I can't think of a good example.

A time traveller wants to get rich, so invests heavily in shares that were cheap in a time period he can reach, but he knows are going to get seriously profitable over the next few years. A typical example might be Apple circa 1995 - the price was usually around $1 to $2 from 1986 to 2004, then took off exponentially and is currently just under $350

Then he goes back to his own time, and discovers that the big rise never happened. Why? Because the investment caused a big enough blip in the share price that Steve Jobs decided to sell out, and the new owners never put the money into R&D that made Apple the giant that it is.

The idea here is that investment has always been risky, and there's a butterfly effect where pumping money into a company might change the conditions that made it successful.

Can anyone think of a story where this happens? And I'm not looking for the one where someone buys a few rare stamps and they suddenly aren't rare any more because the sudden demand means that more are printed!

Comments

[history_monk]

It's assumed in one of Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius stories, I think it's "The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius". Frank Cornelius makes money as a time traveller, not by investments, but from old comics. They're cheap to buy when they are new, and the market in them is much less visible.

[legionseagle]

There's a story not by Moorcock where the lead character acquires a first edition Superman on precisely that thinking.

[ffutures]

Don't think I remember that one, but the problem there is showing that it's original, not a fake, so you would have to store it somewhere for nearly a century without it disintegrating or getting eaten by somthing - if it was brought from the past to the future it would be way too new. The same applies to art, stamps, etc. of course.

[ffutures]

Yes, I remember it - a much safer idea provided you diversify a bit.

[dormouse1953]

There was an episode of Goodnight Sweetheart where Gary invests in a company he knows is going to do well, but when he goes to collect in the present day, he finds that the company split in the mid-fifties and the investment manager had picked the wrong half. (The big joke, as I recall, in that episode is the the bank manager was called Mainwaring and his assistant Wilson.)

[ffutures]

Like it!

[eledonecirrhosa]

Not stocks & shares, but in the Odyssey 5 TV series, Kurt is betting on sports and winning big, then suddenly loses it all. Because the big bets have changed the odds, and various knock on butterfly effects have caused one vital player to crack under pressure. Or something along those lines - it's a long time since I re-watched the series.

[ffutures]

Plausible - see also David Gerrold's The Man Who Folded Himself, where betting on too many races turns out to be a very bad idea.

[dormouse1953]

Just been thinking about that because the actor who played him has been playing the plastic surgeon in Batwoman.

[daveg_rs]

You would need to invest a lot of money to move the market for a stock like Apple. Hedge funds make bets like that all the time.

[ffutures]

It doesn't have to be Apple - there are plenty of companies that started small then suddenly took off, and might be a victim of too much success.