After 35 years of stockbroking for some of the biggest houses and investors in Australia and the UK, the Secret Broker is regaling Stockhead readers with his colourful war stories — from the trading floor to the dealer’s desk.

Woke up yesterday morning to the news headline that a crypto-related company was spending US$700m on the naming rights to a sports stadium in the USA, and locked in over the next 20 years.

It kind of took me back to the dot com days, when outlandish things were being announced and stock prices were only going one way. Up!

You may remember in 1998, when William Shatner (aka Captain Kirk), was given some shares to promote a dot com company which became worth over US$200m before they hurtled back down to Earth in 2000.

As we all know, being an actor can be hard, as your income can be very lumpy. Maybe that’s why he once sold one of his kidney stones, to raise some readies.

That’s right, not a kidney via a dodgy Indian doctor but a stone which had passed not only through his kidney, but through something else before clinking onto a plate and being dispatched to his local auction house.

It sold for U$25,000, though my mate tells me the pain in passing a kidney stone is akin to the pain when giving birth, and it’s worth way more than that.

Luckily for me, I have never suffered from this medical ailment and as I explained to him, when you constantly consume enough quality single malts, everything is naturally dissolved, prior to hitting the kidneys.

Just ask Dr Broker, he should know, I tell him.

The other thing that you may or may not know, is that our Captain Kirk also released a few albums, including a live double album.

I found this in the archives and thought that it represents one of the finest renditions of Elton John’s ‘Rocket Man’ by a B grade actor.

Keep an eye out for the bowties and the look of relief on his face as he knows that he is no longer stuck in a ‘no smoking allowed’ spaceship.

Tissues at the ready:

Someone left the comment that the Elton John cover of Rocket Man is not as good as this Shatner original.

I must admit, that this time it is different from the dot com days, as this time real revenues are being produced and the aforementioned crypto exchange can easily afford to take the naming rights of the previously named ‘Staples Center’.

‘Staples’ is the US equivalent of OfficeWorks over here and they stumped up $100m a long, long time ago, to get the stadium named after them. It has 20,000 seats and is based in LA.

If you go to their site, the first thing you will see is Matt Damon in their homepage video. This is because he not only promotes them – he also is a shareholder in them.

I couldn’t find out how much he has invested into them and luckily for all of us I couldn’t find his rendition of anything by Elton John. But I did find this though and I now remember Mrs.B sobbing her eyes out at this at the movies.

Yet more tissues required:

Was she crying because of the touching storyline?

No. No. No.

She was crying because she didn’t think that Michael Douglas and Matt Damon made a very good couple together. “What a waste,” she blubbed.

Ironically, the company that gave Shat his shares actually did not only recover, but became a resounding success. They were called www.priceline.com and below is their chart.

Source: Yahoo Finance

They are now called Booking Holdings and they own things like Booking.com. As you will have observed there were a few lean years before the good times came back.

The time lag between equities coming good and crypto coming good is like years for one and days for the other.

Between you and me though, I think Matt is onto a much bigger winner.

Crypto.com employs over 2,600 people, manages over 10m accounts and their live crypto exchange is available in over 90 countries.

I’m sure that Matt will do better than our Captain Kirk has done and the rumours are that ‘The Captain’ is worth between U$100m and U$600m, depending on which gossip column you read.

After reading all of this, I am sitting back and waiting for a few of our most loved actors’ agents to cotton on and make a land grab for their 10%.

I feel an ‘Alf Stewart’ crypto coin play coming on called ‘Strewth’ and being promoted by Ray Meagher himself. He already does ads for GoDaddy and Revitive, so this would just be a natural progression.

But if Matt was to release and promote a Bourne Identity coin, you know what I’ll do?

I’ll be in, like Flynn.

Errol Flynn!

The Secret Broker can be found on Twitter here @SecretBrokerAU or on email at [email protected].

Feel free to contact him with your best stock tips and ideas.