Like what were the logistics of his investment? How did he come out with $300+ million after having the treasury remove $10 million for hostages? I just don't understand how that works or what it does to the stock market. Could this happen in real life?
shareit is my understanding that the $10 million ransom had nothing to do with his gold investment. the reason for the train hijacking (and $10MM ransom) was only to cause the finanical markets to go down dramatically. the amount of the ransom was arbitrary. history has shown that whenever the overall market goes down, the value of gold increases significantly.
towards the end of the film, there is a shot of travolta checking an account balance of $2MM which i believe was his initial investment in gold (again, separate from the $10MM). i'm not sure exaclty how this turns into $300MM, but having the knowledge that the market will go down dramatically and purchasing a combination of options and other investments before the downturn, could turn a significant profit. maybe he bought some options with the $2MM and then exercised those options with the $10MM.
anyway, that was my take. i could be wrong...
There was a scene after Ryder was identified and the mayor and his aide remembered the case of when Ryder was sent to jail for fraud. He was given 10 years instead of 3 years because they didn't recover all the money Ryder swindled.
They didn't recover 2 Million dollars. The 10 Million was to pay Ryder's three partners in the crime. Ryder gambled that if the Stock market thought it was a terrorist attack the market would drop. Usually when the stock market drops the price of gold goes up. So use your 2 Million dollars to buy gold, cause the price to increase, then sell high. I highly doubt that the price of gold would go up enough in a couple of hours to turn a 2 million dollar investment into a 300 million dollar profit.
I thought his profit margin was $55 million based on what it showed on the screen when he checked his computer at the end.
Hey, 2 million, 55 million, 300 million, after a while your talking about some real money, right?
If I were Obama, I would be investing in gold now. The trouble is though, gold is a commodity. If someone sells big now, gold will plummet to a much lower price!
I don't know but a lot is taken away from this when Ryder is killed and you wonder what was the purpose of it all. I was expecting the money to be revealed in some account that maybe went to his family to parallel his life with Garber's in relation to the bribery being used to pay for college tuition, but no.
Does he do it just to prove that he can? You stage this, you take 10 million from NYC bank, create financial panic on Wall St so that you can turn 2 million into 307 million. All the while you're killing folks. How are you supposed to freely use all that money from prison or running for the rest of your life and being wanted in all the free world. Really there is no plan but chaos. Hard to hide from that.
I thought that whole thing was very confusing and not actually explained at all well. I think one of the problems with this film is they tried to overcome the advances in technology etc. by adapting the story line and modifying it from the original. But instead of accentuating the "how do they get out of the tunnel" stuff (which was almost an afterthought in this film), they came up with confusing stuff about gold reserves and Ryder having some bizarre and totally-unrelated death wish.
If you haven't already, watch the orginal. It makes a lot more sense and consequently is far more enjoyable.
He didn't have a death wish...the entire plan got screwed up when that latino guy died from the sniper.
HE was supposed to be the one driving the train, not Garber.
Ryder originally planned to escape cleanly while the two other guys got rounded up by the cops because they took a predictable route.
The answer was given in the movie: Put options.
shareI'm not a trader. What does that mean?
shareThe suggestion is made that Ryder speculated in put options, probably on stock. A put option is the right to sell something at a fixed price at a certain moment, no matter what the market value. If that fixed price is higher than the market value at any point in time, such an option is worth money, usually close to the difference of the market value and the fixed price of the option.
A call option is the opposite of a put option: it gives the right to buy something at a certain price at a certain moment. When the market price is higher than the call option buying price, the option is worth money.
The initial price (at the moment of entering the market) of options is usually quite low, since the prices of stocks and commodities (such a gold) usually fluctuate marginally only.
Ryder was following the price of gold, the price of which was going up as a reaction to the falling stock prices. Therefore he had probably bought call options for gold. Due to the initial low prices of these options and the quick and significant rise of the gold price, he could make a huge profit on his initial investment. Ain't that grant?
BTW, options are also quite useful in creating financial crises.
Its actually quite possible.
Its common to leverage in FOREX or GOLD trading, spot trading goes to 100:1 leverages. So if 1 dollar can be treated like 100 dollar.. you do the math.
2.000.000 x 100 = 200.000.000
The only fake fake fake thing was the 900% raise in gold on the screen. Hardly realistic but possible I guess..
Even 200:1 and 400:1 leverages. http://www.400fx.com/
Example of senility.http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/2779/paintx.png