“My dad owns a shop where he buys and sells gold. He has dual...

“My dad owns a shop where he buys and sells gold. He has dual citizenship in the US and Ecuador, so sometimes he’s able to buy gold straight from the mines in Ecuador for cheaper than he can get in New York. A few years ago he was given a very good opportunity to buy cheap gold, so he put all his savings into a bar that weighed over 2.5 kilograms. It was worth about $200,000. Not long after he bought it, the price of gold took a sharp fall. My father called me from the store one day, and told me that he’d found a man who was going to buy the gold for last week’s price. He wanted me to get the bar from his bedroom and bring it to him. I was just twenty years old at the time, but I told my dad that it didn’t sound right, and I didn’t think we should be greedy for a few more thousand dollars. But he told me that he’d been talking to the guy for a few weeks now, and that there was nothing to worry about.” (1/3)