College Kid Buys Boston Beer Co. for $140K

Bill Gates gifts MS stock to 16,000 lemmings

Parody, May 11, 2010

During the few minutes on May 6 when stock market craziness sent the price of Boston Beer Company shares plunging from $50 to a penny a share, college student Kristopher Hindleg used his mom's credit card to buy the entire company for a total of $140,000. SEC investigations into weird market gyrations that day have resulted in thousands of canceled trades. The Dow plummeted nearly 1,000 points then regained most of the loss within about 16 minutes. But trades in The Boston Beer Company stock were allowed after investigators learned that Hindleg, a Harvard grad student in fluid dynamics, had purchased the maker of Samuel Adams beer with benevolent intent.

"He's just so happy with his frothy acquisition that we didn't have the heart to reverse the trade," said Mary Schapiro, chairman of the SEC. She pegged the current market value of Boston Beer Co. at more than $830 million. "It appears to be an unusual windfall until you compare it to the fortunes of baseball and football players," Schapiro said. "When we interviewed Hindleg, he had foam on his mustache. He's a hottie!"

"Epic win!" Hindleg said from his dorm room littered with physics books, moldy pizza boxes and aromatic underwear. "That was dope. Suddenly I have a lot more friends." Hindleg plans to have Boston Beer Co. use the college basketball court to store cases of Samuel Adams, his favorite brewski made by Boston Beer.

Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan dubbed the market downdraft a sign of "rational despondence."

Another major cause of share price turbulence was traced to an estate planning strategy devised by a former Lehman Bros. consultant working with Microsoft chairman Bill Gates. Over the past year Gates has quietly gifted $13,000 of MSFT stock to each of more than 16,000 lemmings. On May 6, all 16,000 lemmings cashed in their shares within a 16-minute window of stock market fame. The total sale, considered insider fur trading by the SEC, amounted to some $210 million. During that period, the Microsoft stock price went over a cliff.

"Melinda and I have grown fond of lemmings," Gates said. "My wife tries to get her hair color to match, but I think that's a bit excessive. What do lemmings look like? Picture a gerbil, only cuter, with a wallet stuffed with $13K. Lemmings thrive on downside opportunities. Our next operating system will be called Microsoft Lemmings-Out-Windows."

Does Gates play the popular video game called Lemmings? He just smiles enigmatically.

—James Dunn
Click for more parody