Stock Market Novice Nails E-Trade’s $1-Million Prize

Robert Tokarchek was out shopping for a washing machine hose when he joined the ranks of Internet whiz kids as an instant millionaire.

Tokarchek, 61, a retired engineer who lives in Westlake Village, learned Tuesday that he won $1 million in a contest sponsored by Menlo Park-based online brokerage E-Trade by guessing that the Dow Jones industrial average would finish out the 1990s at 11,497.12. He hit it on the nose.

After Ellen Tokarchek was notified by E-Trade, she and her daughters jumped in the car and raced to the Home Depot store where her husband had gone.

“They caught me standing in the aisle,” he said. “I see my wife and daughter coming down the aisle, yelling ‘We got the call! We got the call!’ ”

And now, the first question everyone asks him is: Where did that perfect number come from?

“Heaven,” he answers.

And the hunch of a novice investor.

“When you have money in the stock market, you get really interested in where you think it’s going,” said Tokarchek, who has been trading online for only eight months.

He guessed 11,500. Then he worried that was a little too clean, and “backed up a few bucks.”

Tokarchek, who will receive $50,000 a year--before taxes--for 20 years, had the contest’s only perfect guess.

Times staff writer Jeffrey Gettleman contributed to this report.