Investing by Accident at the Movies

I was recently in America on business, and I had the opportunity to screen several movies during the long flights. I am an intellectually sophisticated elite, so I was naturally attracted to films which would broaden my perspective on life. Several of these films stood out as pertinent to my field of non-expertise (“investing”); so naturally, I thought I would share my reviews with you.

Movies by Accident

One great film for the investment-minded is Moneyball in which Brad Pitt shows that people are really stupid and that geeks will always do a better job. In this case, the geek is Jonah Hill who brings business analytics to baseball. In retrospect, it is quite surprising how long it took for this shift to happen. For years, we have seen that geeks with a computer can figure out much better how to invest your money than the sleek businessman with a touching sales pitch.

Another good movie that I watched by accident was Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit in which a young Captain Kirk goes to work for the CIA. He discovers a sinister plot to destroy the U.S. economy by selling off treasury bonds and the only way to keep everyone safe is to drive an exploding truck off a bridge in New York City. If you have no idea how that makes any sense, you are not alone. Kevin Costner doesn’t understand it either and he is in the movie. The lesson here is clear: do not buy treasury bonds.

The major downside of this movie is that Keira Knightly doesn’t appear anywhere near as much as she should; and also, that she talks funny with an American accent. I recommend that we do this movie over again in England with more Keira and less Kirk. We can keep Kevin Costner, but I don’t see any reason why he needs the stray dog. Also, what have movies come to if the scariest plot we can think of revolves around selling treasury bonds?

Finally, if you have way too much time until the plane lands, you may want to see The Wolf of Wall Street. This is an incredible film with an absolutely stunning performance by Leonardo DiCaprio who teams up with Jonah Hill to teach us that we should never buy any financial products if someone wants to sell them to us. Although, to be honest, we pretty much knew this already.

The only reason to avoid this film is that it is severely challenged in the “family friendly” category. Unless, you are looking for an exploration of some of the essential characteristics of human males that eventually lead to families. In that case, this film is extraordinarily friendly.

Donny Ryan: The Modiin Identity

All this movie watching made me realize that I may be missing the mark by just writing a blog and that I need a movie to really reach people. That is why I started writing my own script for a movie that I call Donny Ryan: The Modiin Identity. It is a semi-fictional semi-auto biographical action-thriller that goes like this:

The movie opens with our hero, Donny Ryan, at an ordinary desk job where we see his Outlook calendar full of meetings. We then see our hero going home from work only to meet his Friend on the train, completely by accident. They engage in a humorous discourse about how Israelis always eat ice cream while waiting for a train. To illustrate the point, the Friend picks up a discarded ice cream wrapper, but inside he finds secret codes. Using free Wi-Fi on the train, our hero and his Friend use the codes to break in to an international super computer system.

Like all super computer systems in movies, it has a really nice user interface which he can control easily with gestures without every encountering a bug. In there, they turn off the air conditioning on the train which is too cold and also find an algorithm that can predict where the next major archeological find will take place. Using the GPS on a touch enabled device provided by a large technology company that paid us for product placement, the dynamic team tracks down the exact location which turns out to be in the center of Modiin. This is very convenient because they are on the train anyway.

Except that when breaking into the super computer system, our heroes accidently triggered a failsafe that was programmed years ago by an off-the-books secret government agency that had been training a pack of wolves to attack their enemies by first pretending to be adorable puppy dogs. The wolves are unleashed, and our heroes have no choice but to start a dangerous high speed chase using a company-leased car that is full of groceries in those wonderful reusable shopping bags that will be provided by any supermarket chain that will pay us for product placement. They drive the car straight into the Mediterranean Sea to save themselves and the world before time runs out.

I think the plot has a lot of potential. I even included a prominent semi-comedic supporting role so that Jonah Hill can have a part. Right now the script is family friendly, but if necessary, we could have all of the female characters take off their clothes at various points in the film if that would help it sell better. 

Contact me if you want to option it.