You can also buy "future" stocks, where you predict the price of the stocks, say 3 months in advance, buy them at your predicted price, and the in 3 months time your brokerage will either give you the difference in your prediction to what the price really is, or you pay the brokerage the diff. This is what they are saying bin laden might have done. Put it this way, if I were him, I would have done the same ;) (2b || !2b)