Re: Derren Brown's system Channel 4

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Mike Henry <{$mrtickle$}@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote:
I know you are just using 5, 13 and 10 as an example but you're talking
about sending illegal spam to 12.6 billion people, which is double the
Earth's population. Sorry - "at least" that number of people! Who all
speak English!

There is an old stock market scam. Invite random people to subscribe to a
free stock prediction pamphlet (or these days a web page) until you have 64
subscribers. The subscribers all assume that everybody sees the same
information. Each week half of the subscribers get the prediction, stock X
will go up or remain the same, the other half get the prediction, stock X
will go down. Only the half that got the successful prediction get the next
weeks prediction. After 8 weeks the one remaining punter has seen you
correctly predict stock movement 8 times. The mark is now pursuaded to
"invest" in the big one expecting a huge return and it's the last he ever
sees of his money.

Not necessarily. Presumably your prediction could still be correct,
even if it's based on juju. How many weeks could you go on getting it
wrong before people became disillusioned? I'd say lots. People may be
slightly averse to taking a risk in the first place, but once they've
signed up, I think the psychology would be that they'd defend their
choice tooth and nail, and fear giving up just in case you came back
on form. It's the same psychology that makes people believe in winning
and losing streaks. I reckon once you had them signed up, you could
rely on blind chance giving them enough of a boost from time to time
to keep them on board for quite some time.

Isn't that how all stock tipsters work? Aside from the initial sting
to bring them in, perhaps. It can't be because they're good at
predicting the market, surely.


--
AH
http://grapes2dot0.blogspot.com




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