Am I reading correctly that Harry has 7 (well, 6 and a quarter) years to turn 40000 galleons into 100000 galleons? Because if so, he should have no trouble at all.
I think he has six and a quarter years to turn zero galleons into sixty thousand—I interpreted it as him having to pay what he could immediately.
Personally, I’d be inclined to just Imperius Lucius into cancelling the rest of the debt, then obliviate him and memory charm him into remembering doing it of his own free will, but perhaps I’m a little more Dark Harry than Light Harry.
He’s got a time machine and the stock market exists.
Give him a few days a month outside of Hogwarts (or just a telephone/television) and he could own every gold mine, hell, own everything in the muggle world. I could pull that off with just a time machine.
Why on earth did this not immediately occur to me? This is usually my first thought in time-travel stories. Clearly my dislike of Lucius is clouding my judgement.
What happens if multiple wizards try to Time Turner the stock market? Information can’t travel back more than six hours in time. So if Wizard #1 sees a stock price falling, and goes back in time to sell, and Wizard #2 sees effects of that, and goes back in time to sell, weird things happen.
I’m not sure what the six-hour limitation on information actually does, though. We see Bones asking Dumbledore, “I have information which I learned four hours into the future, Albus. Do you still want it?” Dumbledore weighs the value of the information against the value of going back in time more than 2 hours. However, if he rejects that information, and goes back in time 3 hours, he still brings back the knowledge that Bones will have information to share. How exactly does that work?
The impression I got was that the Time Turner would fail to work. Thus, if Bones tells D, then D uses his Time Turner, he only goes back 2 hours.
That’s an interesting thought, actually. Can you prevent a person from going back in time by essentially giving them information from the future, even if they don’t know it is information from the future?
Actually, everything they try to do with time in that movie leads to complications, but almost never in the straightforward way you’d expect. For example, it’s not the stock market manipulation itself that causes problems.
He’s got a time machine and the stock market exists.
And naturally he’d start off with seed money from a single lottery win. More than one would start getting suspicious but if he picks the largest paying lottery out there when it has rolled over to jackpot a few times that gives him enough to start the ball rolling.
If he picked the right lottery he’d only need to do that once, period. There are many lotteries paying out well over two million pounds… But I suspect Locke is right on this count.
The National Lottery didn’t start until 1994. I’m reasonably sure there were such things you could win big on, but I don’t think there were any you could win that big on.
I don’t think that’s how time-travel works in this story.
Aka DO NOT MESS WITH TIME.
It’s already been stated to be impossible to change your test scores in Hogwards, I think that rules out making fortunes with time travel too, which many people would be highly motivated to do if it were possible; that’s not what the world looks like in the story.
I sure hope Harry gets out of this mess somehow, though. The last few chapters have been painful.
EDIT: how do you use strike-out formatting around here? Is it even possible?
I don’t think that’s how time-travel works in this story.
It is. Winning on the stockmarket with this time-travel system is barely any different (in terms of mere physics) than using it as a sleep aid.
that’s not what the world looks like in the story.
In a fantasy world this ad hoc most of the wizarding population has to be holding the idiot ball most of the time for things to be as they look in the story.
If using time travel in this way is possible (I maintain it already has been explained it isn’t), that opens up a million plot holes and so I predict EY won’t go there.
In the “DO NOT MESS WITH TIME” case, he tried to manipulate time-loop paradoxes in his favour.
In what Xachariah suggests, he’d just be manipulating the stock markets, not deliberately attempting to construct time paradoxe. Therefore I don’t think it qualifies as “messing with time”.
Now, the Sickle-Galleon ratio is 17:1. But a Galleon is larger than a Sickle, by a significant amount, as can be seen here; , and gold is denser than silver, by a significant amount. Assuming the coins are similar thickness, the Galleon is about 1.7 times larger than the Sickle, and about 3.1 times heavier. So the ratio by weight is around 5.4:1 silver-to-gold.
That means each cycle of arbitrage is a multiplication by, well, we’ll round down to 16 for various transaction costs in our Fermi estimate. 100 Galleons becomes 1,600 after one cycle, and 1,600 becomes 25,600 after cycle 2.
Okay, that “couple times” didn’t quite get us all the way there from 100. Harry needs to manage to get his hands on (considering the uncertainties on transaction costs) more than 234 but almost certainly less than 300 Galleons and run through the arbitrage cycle twice to get the 60,000 galleons.
It’s easy to do an arbitrage chain a couple times, but people will start to get suspicious fast.
Suspicious? Sure, but will they care? He is dealing with Gringotts, or more specifically with specific goblins at Gringotts. They will be following their job specifications, probably their legal obligation, giving their company a profit and adhering to tradition. Gringotts wins, Harry wins, law is followed.
The people who lose are anyone who has invested in wizard cash (which is being inflated). But they aren’t involved in the transaction and don’t lose enough or rapidly enough that they would object before he has finished farming. In fact they only start experiencing negative effects once Harry starts spending.
In the early 1990s, gold was around $400/oz and silver was around $5/oz. Which is an 80:1 price difference. Considering that in the wizarding world, it is only 17:1, he can make about 4.5:1 each time. 5 times of doing that with 100 galleons will yield 180000 galleons, which he needs 60k of. Shouldn’t be too much trouble.
It might be even better, considering the possibility that there might be more bounties he can collect.
What I’m more worried about are the implications on the Muggle side, and the fact it could endanger (even if lightly) the Statute of Secrecy. That is likely to draw political troubles from the wizarding world, and may be very well ruled illegal.
With heavily leveraged trading on forex ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_exchange_market ) , he can make 100 galleons into 100 000 galleons in one hour (with leverage of 0.2% you earn profits from trading of X, but you only need to really have 0.002 of X). And you can do this over internet, by a few back and forth trades that lasts for a few minutes.
For all those wandering WHY wizards don’t use their powers to get money from the Muggle economy...
Canon!Lucius does, according to Rowling (from her website Pottermore):
The Malfoy name comes from old French and translates as ‘bad faith’. Like many other progenitors of noble English families, the wizard Armand Malfoy arrived in Britain with William the Conqueror as part of the invading Norman army. Having rendered unknown, shady (and almost certainly magical) services to King William I, Malfoy was given a prime piece of land in Wiltshire, seized from local landowners, upon which his descendants have lived for ten consecutive centuries.
Their wily ancestor Armand encapsulated many of the qualities that have distinguished the Malfoy family to the present day. The Malfoys have always had the reputation, hinted at by their not altogether complimentary surname, of being a slippery bunch, to be found courting power and riches wherever they might be found. In spite of their espousal of pure-blood values and their undoubtedly genuine belief in wizards’ superiority over Muggles, the Malfoys have never been above ingratiating themselves with the non-magical community when it suits them. The result is that they are one of the richest wizarding families in Britain, and [b]it has been rumoured for many years (though never proven) that over the centuries the family has dabbled successfully in Muggle currency and assets[/b]. Over hundreds of years, they have managed to add to their lands in Wiltshire by annexing those of neighbouring Muggles, and the favour they curried with royalty added Muggle treasures and works of art to an ever-expanding collection.
Am I reading correctly that Harry has 7 (well, 6 and a quarter) years to turn 40000 galleons into 100000 galleons? Because if so, he should have no trouble at all.
I think he has six and a quarter years to turn zero galleons into sixty thousand—I interpreted it as him having to pay what he could immediately.
Personally, I’d be inclined to just Imperius Lucius into cancelling the rest of the debt, then obliviate him and memory charm him into remembering doing it of his own free will, but perhaps I’m a little more Dark Harry than Light Harry.
He’s got a time machine and the stock market exists.
Give him a few days a month outside of Hogwarts (or just a telephone/television) and he could own every gold mine, hell, own everything in the muggle world. I could pull that off with just a time machine.
Why on earth did this not immediately occur to me? This is usually my first thought in time-travel stories. Clearly my dislike of Lucius is clouding my judgement.
What happens if multiple wizards try to Time Turner the stock market? Information can’t travel back more than six hours in time. So if Wizard #1 sees a stock price falling, and goes back in time to sell, and Wizard #2 sees effects of that, and goes back in time to sell, weird things happen.
I’m not sure what the six-hour limitation on information actually does, though. We see Bones asking Dumbledore, “I have information which I learned four hours into the future, Albus. Do you still want it?” Dumbledore weighs the value of the information against the value of going back in time more than 2 hours. However, if he rejects that information, and goes back in time 3 hours, he still brings back the knowledge that Bones will have information to share. How exactly does that work?
The impression I got was that the Time Turner would fail to work. Thus, if Bones tells D, then D uses his Time Turner, he only goes back 2 hours.
That’s an interesting thought, actually. Can you prevent a person from going back in time by essentially giving them information from the future, even if they don’t know it is information from the future?
Unrelated: They did that in a movie called Primer, which I recommend to people who like MOR and deciphering probably-correct engineering-speak.
They do stock market stuff in Primer?
Yes. And it leads to… complications.
Actually, everything they try to do with time in that movie leads to complications, but almost never in the straightforward way you’d expect. For example, it’s not the stock market manipulation itself that causes problems.
And naturally he’d start off with seed money from a single lottery win. More than one would start getting suspicious but if he picks the largest paying lottery out there when it has rolled over to jackpot a few times that gives him enough to start the ball rolling.
Most muggleborns may not be able to do calculus, but they know about lotteries. The ministry would keep tabs on this stuff.
Which is why he wouldn’t win top prize − 5⁄6 numbers is usually a couple hundred grand, that’s tons of seed money.
If he picked the right lottery he’d only need to do that once, period. There are many lotteries paying out well over two million pounds… But I suspect Locke is right on this count.
By a couple of orders of magnitude (highest in the UK was 150m or so pounds, US has gone up to $390M).
The National Lottery didn’t start until 1994. I’m reasonably sure there were such things you could win big on, but I don’t think there were any you could win that big on.
’91 pounds?
I don’t think that’s how time-travel works in this story.
Aka DO NOT MESS WITH TIME.
It’s already been stated to be impossible to change your test scores in Hogwards, I think that rules out making fortunes with time travel too, which many people would be highly motivated to do if it were possible; that’s not what the world looks like in the story.
I sure hope Harry gets out of this mess somehow, though. The last few chapters have been painful.
EDIT: how do you use strike-out formatting around here? Is it even possible?
It is. Winning on the stockmarket with this time-travel system is barely any different (in terms of mere physics) than using it as a sleep aid.
In a fantasy world this ad hoc most of the wizarding population has to be holding the idiot ball most of the time for things to be as they look in the story.
We’re talking about Eliezer!HP, not Rowling!HP.
If using time travel in this way is possible (I maintain it already has been explained it isn’t), that opens up a million plot holes and so I predict EY won’t go there.
You are wrong. We’ve already seen more complicated information exploitation scenarios than this.
Narrative necessity dictates that he probably won’t.
In the “DO NOT MESS WITH TIME” case, he tried to manipulate time-loop paradoxes in his favour.
In what Xachariah suggests, he’d just be manipulating the stock markets, not deliberately attempting to construct time paradoxe. Therefore I don’t think it qualifies as “messing with time”.
Right. Silly me.
He has a hundred in his back yard. Worst comes to worst, he arbitrages that up to 60k.
Edit: or time machine+stock market. In retrospect, that’s a much better solution.
Yes, I rather doubt that he will have trouble for lack of clever plans.
It’s easy to do an arbitrage chain a couple times, but people will start to get suspicious fast. I doubt he can go x600 as trivially as that.
April 1991 price of silver was $3.9707/oz troy, gold was $358.38/oz troy. That’s a 90:1 silver-gold ratio, ounce to ounce.
Now, the Sickle-Galleon ratio is 17:1. But a Galleon is larger than a Sickle, by a significant amount, as can be seen here; , and gold is denser than silver, by a significant amount. Assuming the coins are similar thickness, the Galleon is about 1.7 times larger than the Sickle, and about 3.1 times heavier. So the ratio by weight is around 5.4:1 silver-to-gold.
That means each cycle of arbitrage is a multiplication by, well, we’ll round down to 16 for various transaction costs in our Fermi estimate. 100 Galleons becomes 1,600 after one cycle, and 1,600 becomes 25,600 after cycle 2.
Okay, that “couple times” didn’t quite get us all the way there from 100. Harry needs to manage to get his hands on (considering the uncertainties on transaction costs) more than 234 but almost certainly less than 300 Galleons and run through the arbitrage cycle twice to get the 60,000 galleons.
Suspicious? Sure, but will they care? He is dealing with Gringotts, or more specifically with specific goblins at Gringotts. They will be following their job specifications, probably their legal obligation, giving their company a profit and adhering to tradition. Gringotts wins, Harry wins, law is followed.
The people who lose are anyone who has invested in wizard cash (which is being inflated). But they aren’t involved in the transaction and don’t lose enough or rapidly enough that they would object before he has finished farming. In fact they only start experiencing negative effects once Harry starts spending.
In the early 1990s, gold was around $400/oz and silver was around $5/oz. Which is an 80:1 price difference. Considering that in the wizarding world, it is only 17:1, he can make about 4.5:1 each time. 5 times of doing that with 100 galleons will yield 180000 galleons, which he needs 60k of. Shouldn’t be too much trouble.
It might be even better, considering the possibility that there might be more bounties he can collect.
What I’m more worried about are the implications on the Muggle side, and the fact it could endanger (even if lightly) the Statute of Secrecy. That is likely to draw political troubles from the wizarding world, and may be very well ruled illegal.
With heavily leveraged trading on forex ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_exchange_market ) , he can make 100 galleons into 100 000 galleons in one hour (with leverage of 0.2% you earn profits from trading of X, but you only need to really have 0.002 of X). And you can do this over internet, by a few back and forth trades that lasts for a few minutes.
But you probably can’t do it over the Internet in 1991.
Oh, right.
It’s funny how we(I) take some things for granted.
Also, I think you need some credentials to be allowed even much less leverage. Of course, magic can help a lot with that.
He also has a father who teaches at Oxford. I suspect he could run stuff through Dad if that was the biggest stumbling block.
For all those wandering WHY wizards don’t use their powers to get money from the Muggle economy...
Canon!Lucius does, according to Rowling (from her website Pottermore): The Malfoy name comes from old French and translates as ‘bad faith’. Like many other progenitors of noble English families, the wizard Armand Malfoy arrived in Britain with William the Conqueror as part of the invading Norman army. Having rendered unknown, shady (and almost certainly magical) services to King William I, Malfoy was given a prime piece of land in Wiltshire, seized from local landowners, upon which his descendants have lived for ten consecutive centuries.
Their wily ancestor Armand encapsulated many of the qualities that have distinguished the Malfoy family to the present day. The Malfoys have always had the reputation, hinted at by their not altogether complimentary surname, of being a slippery bunch, to be found courting power and riches wherever they might be found. In spite of their espousal of pure-blood values and their undoubtedly genuine belief in wizards’ superiority over Muggles, the Malfoys have never been above ingratiating themselves with the non-magical community when it suits them. The result is that they are one of the richest wizarding families in Britain, and [b]it has been rumoured for many years (though never proven) that over the centuries the family has dabbled successfully in Muggle currency and assets[/b]. Over hundreds of years, they have managed to add to their lands in Wiltshire by annexing those of neighbouring Muggles, and the favour they curried with royalty added Muggle treasures and works of art to an ever-expanding collection.