Marketing: A Wine Derivative

By Ryan McCarthy

 Crushpad, a San Francisco winemaker, wants to make you feel better about your battered 401(k) -- and sell you some wine. So it's offering a stock market futures contract in a bottle. For $39, you reserve a bottle of Crushpad's 2007 Bailout Napa Cabernet for delivery in late summer. If by the close of the contract on August 14, the stock market rallies above the level it was at on the day of your purchase, you get to drink your bottle and celebrate your improving portfolio.

Should the market sell off, Crushpad will refund you $2 for every 100-point drop in the Dow, all the way to a price per bottle of $9. To get that deal, though, the Dow would need to drop 1,500 points. "If the economy gets worse," says Crushpad founder Michael Brill, "we thought a cheap bottle of wine could be a small comfort."