WHEN Newt Gingrich told a Republican audience recently that his lucrative book deal paled in comparison with Hillary Clinton’s cattle-trading profits, the Speaker’s comments were greeted with wild applause and raucous laughter. Opened to public scrutiny less than a year ago, Mrs. Clinton’s onehundred-fold return from trading futures has already become part of popular lore. Whenever anyone is suspected of making a fast buck nowadays, the First Lady’s adventure in commodities trading is bound to come to mind.
On October 11, 1978, the future First Lady, a neophyte investor with an annual income of $25,000, opened a commodity-futures account with a deposit of $1,000. Her first trade was the short sale of ten live-cattle contracts at a price of 57.55 cents a pound: a commitment to deliver in December of that year 400,000 pounds of cattle with a market value of $230,200. One day later, she bought the contracts back at a price of 56.10 cents, just 0.15 cent above the low of the day, pocketing $5,300 for a return of 530 per cent.
Comments