Don't Lose Grandma's Money!

Don't Lose Grandma's Money!: "Humor me while I tell a little story.

You're walking to work one day when you spot a dollar bill lying on the sidewalk. You pick it up and, feeling a little superstitious, spend it on a lottery ticket. The next day, you find you've won $5,000. Great news! You take the winnings and buy a long-shot biotech stock -- Dendreon, for instance. Let's say this day was in late March, and you were able to buy 1,000 shares of Dendreon at $5 each.

The stock pops the next day on rumors of an imminent FDA approval, and you sell out a few days later at $22. $22,000! You're really feeling your luck now, and you decide to push it -- by taking that money to a casino. You hit the roulette wheel and put it all on number 22, a 35-to-1 bet, and win $770,000. You let it ride -- keep all the money on the same number -- and win again. Now you're up to a whopping $26,950,000. You feel that nothing can stop you now and let it ride again -- but the little ball drops in 23 instead.

Oops. You're wiped out.

Now here's the question: How much did you really lose? A dollar? $22,000? Almost $27 million? Nothing?"