Word: bets
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Weather gets a bad rap for a lot of reasons. For one thing, it's difficult to say anything novel on the subject, and it tends to run itself out pretty quickly. You hear about people who really like to watch the Weather Channel, but I bet these people are not actually into weather so much as natural disaster; note the tornado and flood videos being advertised for $19.99 (plus shipping and handling), and the comparative dearth of mail-order movies about, say, humidity...
...capitalism where I toil, one of these high-explosive blow-ups hits me monthly, obliterating any hope of a quick profit, or perhaps producing a staggering unrealized loss. IBM, Xerox, Unisys and Lexmark have all detonated recently. First, take heart. You aren't the only one dumb enough to bet on a great company during a period of unsettling sales growth and a Fed turned hostile to higher stock prices. If you haven't taken a hit in your personal portfolio, you can bet that your mutual-fund managers have their own shrapnel collection...
BLUE-SKY INVESTING Your mutual-fund manager may start betting on the weather, literally. This month two energy firms are expected to issue some $100 million in "weather bonds," whose returns are based solely on average temperatures. These new bonds, rated in the BB range, allow weather-sensitive businesses--utilities, ski resorts--to hedge against losses caused by extreme temperatures. If Mother Nature behaves, holders can expect 10% to 30% returns; but a mild winter or scorching summer could melt profits and principal. On another front, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange started trading weather futures in September. Along with pork bellies...
Dartmouth, despite its 1-6 record was supposed to be deceptively tough. Brown, on the other hand, is a sure-fire bet to give the Crimson defense a headache all day long...
...play takes ten years and three writers to make it to the stage, you can bet that it shouldn't have made it there at all. But such ominous artistic omens didn't prevent Producing Director Peter Altman of the Huntington Theatre Company from adapting Nobel-prize winning author Edwin O'Connor's 1956 novel, The Last Hurrah, into a theatrical event. Speckled with scheming politicos, snooty aristocrats and down-to-earth Irish-American folk, O'Connor's novel, a sweeping panorama of '50s Boston political scene, seemed a perfect recipe for dramatic success, right? Wrong...