The Chairmen by Robert I Katz

Author:Robert I Katz [Katz, Robert I]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-02-14T22:00:00+00:00

“Amazon, I’m telling you.” John Norris nodded wisely and said it again. “Amazon. It’s the investment of the decade.”

Kurtz listened quietly to the conversation but felt no urge to get involved. Norris was a neurosurgeon. Norris, like all neurosurgeons, made a lot of money. The average neurosurgeon in the United States brought in close to $500,000 per year. The average neurosurgeon in New York City made probably twice that amount. The residency for a neurosurgeon was seven years, the longest of any specialty. Neurosurgeons were highly trained, highly intelligent experts. Experts, unfortunately, have a tendency to regard their expertise as extending to all sorts of fields other than their own. Like investing.

“Amazon,” Chuck Weisberg said, “was the investment of the last decade.” Weisberg was a pediatrician. Pediatricians were at the bottom of the physicianly pecking order, averaging a mere $200,000 or so. Weisberg, however, did not seem to feel cowed by the presence of medical royalty.

John Norris reared his head back and gave him a scathing look. “Baloney,” he snorted.

Kurtz took a bite out of his sandwich and wished they would all shut up.

“If you had put ten thousand dollars into Amazon when the company first went public, you would have over a million today,” Norris said. “Think about it.”

Weisberg shrugged. “That was then. This is now. Amazon is a big company. Big companies can’t grow as fast as small companies. Amazon’s best days are behind it. Sooner or later, Amazon is going to crash. It’s inevitable.”

Over the years, Amazon had already crashed more than once, but the stock had always, sooner or later, stabilized and moved back up, fueled by rosy projections and steadily increasing revenues, if not always a profitable bottom line. About two years ago, Kurtz had put a few thousand into Amazon. Amazon had gone up. Kurtz had sold out with a 40% gain and considered himself lucky. Weisberg, he thought, made sense, but then so did Norris. In Kurtz’ opinion, the stock market was inherently unpredictable. Putting money into the stock market was not so different from betting it on the horses. This didn’t bother Kurtz. Kurtz liked to gamble, now and then, but he tried not to confuse good luck with genius.

He yawned. He hadn’t slept well last night. Somewhere, a lunatic was stalking his next victim. Somewhere, a new atrocity was about to take place. He yawned again, slowly finished the last few bites of his sandwich and rose to his feet. “See you later,” he said. Norris looked at him. Weisberg absently nodded. The others ignored him.

Half an hour later, he was operating on a hernia. The hernia was a tough one, the patient fat, the wound deep. Loops of bowel intermittently popped up into the incision. After stuffing bowel back into the abdomen for the third time, Kurtz turned to the head of the table and said, “Can’t you keep him relaxed?”

The anesthesiologist poked her head up over the drapes. “He is relaxed,” she said. “He’s just fat.”

Kurtz restrained himself from saying anything he might later regret and decided to ignore her.

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