I haven't got the patience to watch all of the Oscars, but I did pop in and out to catch the opening montage, the Cirque de Soleil performance, and most of the big awards. Most years, I don't even do that much, but I have some fake money on the results through Hollywood Stock Exchange. The idea was that you could "buy" various possible Oscar winners, and if you held them until today, any of the ones that you get correct are de-listed at HSX 25, while all the ones you got wrong de-list at zero.
That means by guessing three correctly, Best Picture (The Artist), Director (The Artist again), and Best Original Screenplay (Midnight in Paris), and since I had the maximum of 20,000 shares in each, I'll get HSX 500,000. Since I bought all my shares for all nine categories for less than HSX 100,000, it represents a very nice return on investment, but I can't help but regret that I could have done much better with better guessing.
Granted, I only saw one of the Best Picture nominees this year, the aforementioned Midnight in Paris, and even that one I only saw last night and my picks for the HSX had been made weeks before, but even so I could have done better.
Much like with sports betting, I end up following my heart to much. I know that the Bears aren't all that good, but I want to bet on them anyway. Of the films with Best Actor nods, I've only seen Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, so I bank on Gary Oldman winning, when I should pick the guy from The Artist, based on the hype.
I guess I'm just nostalgic like that.
Anyway, having not seen many of the movies being rewarded tonight, I can't really comment on whether anyone actually got robbed tonight, but I can say that having The Artist, a silent film win the 84th Oscars would be pretty ironic in a "going full circle" kind of way that if the world really does end in 2012*, for the last Oscars to honor the kind of films that won in the first one.
* = World will not end. Do not quit job or unload long term stocks unless that was what you were going to do anyway.
I didn't realize HSX was still around...
ReplyDeleteYeah, I keep being surprised by that too. I got started with it back in the '90s, and have grown my initial 2 million into 42 million and change. Which sounds impressive, but since mostly I just pick long term investments and let 'em ride, I haven't got that much over all. After all, the guy who's highest on the HSX leader board started in 2001 and has over 17 billion HSX now.
DeleteStill, they have spruced the site up a bit, with little mini-games you can play to earn cash daily, not to mention "derivatives" like the Academy Award ones making things interesting as you go along.
If you haven't been in a while, it might be worth your time to poke your head in and have a look around.