Your boss is going on a trip. He calls three of his most trusted staff into his office. To John he hands five crisp one thousand dollar bills. To Hector he gives two thousand and to Mike a thousand. “Now you’re the guardians of these funds until I return,” says the boss as he leaves the TransMedia Group office in the holy city of Boca Raton.
John is the gutsy one. He sees Trump’s tax reform bill revving up the economy. He’s watching the stock market climbing a wall of worry to new highs despite a looming tariff war provoked by the President’s pugnaciousness.
When the boss leaves, John takes his five grand to TDAmeritrade and plunks down the whole amount on a hot stock he heard Mad Money’s Jim Cramer talk about. And in an amazingly short time, the stock’s up sharply and John nets a nearly 40 percent profit. Whoopee! Wait till the boss hears this.
Hector goes to his trustworthy broker at Charles Schwab and places his two thousand bet right on the nose of AT&T. When its deal to acquire Time Warner is approved by the court, the stock price begins creeping upward despite the ruling on appeal and Hector hooks a nice little $60 profit. Not too shabby.
Mike plays it safe. He invests his thousand bucks safely in a money market fund and it winds up making a grand total of $1.20 in interest. “But the important thing is I didn’t risk losing it like the others did,” Mike tells his wife proudly.
Now the boss returns and settles accounts with them.
When John tells him he made 40 percent on the money, the boss says, ”Well done, John. You’ve made me happy and in your next pay check I’ll show you my appreciation.”
When Hector tells him he had turned the $2,000 into $2,060, the boss tells him ‘You’re a good and faithful employee. You haven’t made as much as John here, but you’ve made me happy too and I’ll show you my appreciation.
Then the boss turns to Mike. “Well,” he said, “what have you done with the money?”
Mike says “Boss, I know you’re a hard man, making profits left and right on jobs others do and you keep bringing in business with minimal marketing and mostly PR. You’re awesome, so I was afraid of losing your money that you’re so clever and productive with. What I did was protect it. I invested it safely in a money market earning a buck twenty interest. “It’s all here, every cent, plus interest!”
Now the bosses face turns beat red. “You scoundrel!” he says. “If you know how clever I am at making money and bringing in business with little or no marketing, then you ought to have invested my money on better terms, so when I returned I’d receive my money back with more interest than a puny $1.20. So hand over your $1,001.20 to John here who knows what I want.” Then the boss said to the three of them something that sounded almost Biblical:
“For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” (Parable of the Talents: Matthew 25:14-30)