market roulette - introduction
Nov. 22nd, 2010 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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market_roulettePublic Post:
To start, I've been thinking about it lo these like, what, three hours, and here is a short breakdown on how it works.
Gameplay
This will be a paper game of picking stocks through a year and seeing how you fare against a.) your fellow players and b.) the entire market and indices. You just glazed over. Don't worry about that last part with indices; we'll talk about that later. Just worry about a: everyone in here will be in direct competition with each other using a preselected list of stable, non-crashing, non-bankrupting stocks (we hope) that you'll have plenty of time to either research for or just close your eyes and jump.
Money is not needed to play. This will be on paper for everyone, and some people may or may not invest actual money, but it doesn't matter for gameplay purposes except stress level. For the purposes of this game, everyone will be working this on paper. And trust me when I say, it will be easy.
Markets
This will work internationally, from the first market opening which I think is Britain to the last market closing time, which I do not know but will well before we start. So anyone in the world can play. I'll have the list of markets and their open and closing times by December 15th listed.
Currency
Not your problem; I'll be doing the conversions. Anyone is free to check my work, however, but seriously, don't worry about it. Please do not try to do a yen to dollars for my sake, unless you want to check my work, which I am all for. But you don't have to.
Stocks
We'll be using internationally available stocks only, which trust me, this is not much of a limit. They use different ticker symbols in some places. If you glazed over at the words "ticker symbols", don't. If you don't know, trust me, by January, you will speak in them. I was speaking in them a week after I started.
Period of Play
Gameplay will be first market day in January through last market day in December 2011. That will be January 3, 2011 through December 30, 2011. So we have a month to get all our FAQing and final details finalized.
How This Will Work
I made an individual spreadsheet for anyone who wants to keep a record of their transactions themselves--it is a very easy spreadsheet. But you don't have to do that, because I will be keeping a individual sheet for each player that is available only to the player and moderator (me) as well as a master list of everyone summarized that will be accessible to all players so they can see how they're doing against each other.
What will happen is that each player will have $100 on paper each month to spend on whatever stocks they please from a list of pre-selected stocks, most if not all of which will be below $30 a share (also called unit).
How This Will Work, Part 2
1.) Each month, you will pick a stock or stocks from a pre-created list and buy it. You can spend your monthly allotment one stock or several.
2.) We'll use sharebuilder stock rules since that's what I know best. I'll go over what that means later, but it's only applicable to the fee you pay for buying a stock or selling a stock and may affect the price of the stock. Depending on how you choose to invest, you will either pay $4.00 per buy or sell, or you will pay $7.95 per buy or sale. It will also decide the price you pay for the stock. Seriously, easy, and we have a month to go over it as thoroughly as you like.
3.) When you buy (or sell) you will post to the comm (or email me if you can't access the comm) the stock you bought, at what time, and what price it was when you bought it. You will need to do it within ten minutes of buying it. Trust me when I say, five seconds can make a difference in price. This will be easy to see; I will show you exactly where to look on cnn, google, yahoo, or wherever to get your stock price. You can enter it into your individual spreadsheet as well, or just wait for me to update yours, which will be every night. I'll verify your price/time.
4.) You won't be limited on the number of stocks you can buy. You can buy a new one each month or just invest in the same one each month.
5.) The winner will be decided on the percentage gained over the year. For example, you invested $1200 by the end of the year and you made 120 dollars. That means your gain was 10%.
6.) You are allowed two months during this year that you don't have to buy anything. Your allotment rolls over. So say you skip July, in August, you'll have $200 to spend. If you don't spend all yoru allotment each month, it also rolls over to the next month. In other words, at the end of the year, you will have invested $1200 dollars total. You will need to declare that month you aren't buying anything by the last market day of the month so I can record it.
7.) If you are doing this with actual money, you are not required to disclose that. As far as the comm and players are concerned, this is paper only. However, for those who are doing this with actual money and want to discuss with others that are doing it with money, I can do a separate post for those doing that to discuss it once a month.
How This Will Work, Part 3
I will tell you now, none of us are Warren Buffet or psychic. Therefore, you can make this as easy as simply picking one and going with it or doing market research. This is paper; have fun with it! Choose by astrology, your birthday, or which letters you like best.
I'll have a list up by mid-December of stocks to pick from. Some are ones I've watched for two years, some I've owned, some I haven't and just liked, some I'll pick at random from stable companies. The long list may be as many as 100 stocks, but depending on community thoughts, it can be as short as 25 stocks to pick from.
Each stock will be equal to or less than $30 per share at the time I complete the list. You can go through if you wish and research them and see what they mean, read up on the company. I will link to financial advice sites, I will break down what I've learned, and I'll show you where to look for particular details. This is a no-fault; you will not lose real money when we play paper, but you can treat it like you might.
However--it is not required to do those things. Example, if Verizon (VZ) is on the list and you just love Verizon, that's fine! This game is as simple or as complex as you want to play. The only rule is contacting the comm (or me) with your stock name, the time you bought, the price at the time of buying, and how much you invested.
By December first or before--hey, Thanksgiving is coming up!--I'll have links up to useful places to go to read up and track your stocks. I will also show you how to create a portfolio in yahoo and cnn and possibly google so you don't have to use the spreadsheet if you don't want to. Again, not required; I'll be tracking everyone, so you don't need to do that if you don't want to. Your spreadsheet will always be available to you to look at and moon over.
For January and probably February at least, I'll post at least once a week to open the floor for questions and discussion. Anyone is free to post--I don't see a reason to restrict posting to the comm if you have a discussion topic, such as "How are you picking your stocks?", we'll go over that later. Questions, however, will need to be directed to the weekly post I'll make so I can answer them quickly. I'll create a tag for that, like 'weekly post'.
Discussion, sharing tips, information, whatever, is encouraged highly. There are, literally, no stupid questions. I mean, seriously, if anything at all confuses or needs clarification, ask. I started this by basically going 'Oh, I've always wanted to visit Tel Aviv and this stock is based there!" Yeah. The bar, my friends, is non-existent.
On the first of each month, I'll make a post for check-in and to summarize how everyone is doing. Please respond to this, even if it's just to say "Whee" or "God wtf", post your questions, thoughts on financial yaoi, whatever. Other than telling the comm when you buy/sell, that's the only requirement.
Online chat is also available. We can discuss that later if anyone is interested.
We have a month, in which time I'll post both links to basic financial sites as well as explanations of terminology. Again, this isn't required to read for anyone who is playing. It will be informational. Everyone is welcome to add, correct, or supplement. Before the end of the this month, I'll have a very basic terminology post in case you are 'whee, learning the financial thing" with links to where to look for more.
Again, I am no expert, or even like amateur of some kind of preternatural genius. So basically I'll be sharing my education in stocks and the market as I learned it, in very basic language.
Yes, there will be prizes for first and second place. No, I have no idea what that is. I was thinking we could go monetary or item related--external hard drive maybe?--but that can come later while we all collectively mull the idea.
Right, now you are wondering wtf. The only rule that applies here is the check in and telling the comm (or me) when you buy or sell. Everything else is how you want to play. Keep in mind--first thing is the fun of this. Your interaction can be minimal or deeply daybroker. Knock yourself out.
Opening the floor to questions and answers. I won't have them all yet, but I will get to all of them. There are no stupid questions. This is very flexible and we have over a month to get our kinks straightened out.
Also, if you have some experience in this and want to comod, I swear not to overwork you. Promise.
I'm online most nights, so if you want to chat, just email me and I'll be on.
To start, I've been thinking about it lo these like, what, three hours, and here is a short breakdown on how it works.
Gameplay
This will be a paper game of picking stocks through a year and seeing how you fare against a.) your fellow players and b.) the entire market and indices. You just glazed over. Don't worry about that last part with indices; we'll talk about that later. Just worry about a: everyone in here will be in direct competition with each other using a preselected list of stable, non-crashing, non-bankrupting stocks (we hope) that you'll have plenty of time to either research for or just close your eyes and jump.
Money is not needed to play. This will be on paper for everyone, and some people may or may not invest actual money, but it doesn't matter for gameplay purposes except stress level. For the purposes of this game, everyone will be working this on paper. And trust me when I say, it will be easy.
Markets
This will work internationally, from the first market opening which I think is Britain to the last market closing time, which I do not know but will well before we start. So anyone in the world can play. I'll have the list of markets and their open and closing times by December 15th listed.
Currency
Not your problem; I'll be doing the conversions. Anyone is free to check my work, however, but seriously, don't worry about it. Please do not try to do a yen to dollars for my sake, unless you want to check my work, which I am all for. But you don't have to.
Stocks
We'll be using internationally available stocks only, which trust me, this is not much of a limit. They use different ticker symbols in some places. If you glazed over at the words "ticker symbols", don't. If you don't know, trust me, by January, you will speak in them. I was speaking in them a week after I started.
Period of Play
Gameplay will be first market day in January through last market day in December 2011. That will be January 3, 2011 through December 30, 2011. So we have a month to get all our FAQing and final details finalized.
How This Will Work
I made an individual spreadsheet for anyone who wants to keep a record of their transactions themselves--it is a very easy spreadsheet. But you don't have to do that, because I will be keeping a individual sheet for each player that is available only to the player and moderator (me) as well as a master list of everyone summarized that will be accessible to all players so they can see how they're doing against each other.
What will happen is that each player will have $100 on paper each month to spend on whatever stocks they please from a list of pre-selected stocks, most if not all of which will be below $30 a share (also called unit).
How This Will Work, Part 2
1.) Each month, you will pick a stock or stocks from a pre-created list and buy it. You can spend your monthly allotment one stock or several.
2.) We'll use sharebuilder stock rules since that's what I know best. I'll go over what that means later, but it's only applicable to the fee you pay for buying a stock or selling a stock and may affect the price of the stock. Depending on how you choose to invest, you will either pay $4.00 per buy or sell, or you will pay $7.95 per buy or sale. It will also decide the price you pay for the stock. Seriously, easy, and we have a month to go over it as thoroughly as you like.
3.) When you buy (or sell) you will post to the comm (or email me if you can't access the comm) the stock you bought, at what time, and what price it was when you bought it. You will need to do it within ten minutes of buying it. Trust me when I say, five seconds can make a difference in price. This will be easy to see; I will show you exactly where to look on cnn, google, yahoo, or wherever to get your stock price. You can enter it into your individual spreadsheet as well, or just wait for me to update yours, which will be every night. I'll verify your price/time.
4.) You won't be limited on the number of stocks you can buy. You can buy a new one each month or just invest in the same one each month.
5.) The winner will be decided on the percentage gained over the year. For example, you invested $1200 by the end of the year and you made 120 dollars. That means your gain was 10%.
6.) You are allowed two months during this year that you don't have to buy anything. Your allotment rolls over. So say you skip July, in August, you'll have $200 to spend. If you don't spend all yoru allotment each month, it also rolls over to the next month. In other words, at the end of the year, you will have invested $1200 dollars total. You will need to declare that month you aren't buying anything by the last market day of the month so I can record it.
7.) If you are doing this with actual money, you are not required to disclose that. As far as the comm and players are concerned, this is paper only. However, for those who are doing this with actual money and want to discuss with others that are doing it with money, I can do a separate post for those doing that to discuss it once a month.
How This Will Work, Part 3
I will tell you now, none of us are Warren Buffet or psychic. Therefore, you can make this as easy as simply picking one and going with it or doing market research. This is paper; have fun with it! Choose by astrology, your birthday, or which letters you like best.
I'll have a list up by mid-December of stocks to pick from. Some are ones I've watched for two years, some I've owned, some I haven't and just liked, some I'll pick at random from stable companies. The long list may be as many as 100 stocks, but depending on community thoughts, it can be as short as 25 stocks to pick from.
Each stock will be equal to or less than $30 per share at the time I complete the list. You can go through if you wish and research them and see what they mean, read up on the company. I will link to financial advice sites, I will break down what I've learned, and I'll show you where to look for particular details. This is a no-fault; you will not lose real money when we play paper, but you can treat it like you might.
However--it is not required to do those things. Example, if Verizon (VZ) is on the list and you just love Verizon, that's fine! This game is as simple or as complex as you want to play. The only rule is contacting the comm (or me) with your stock name, the time you bought, the price at the time of buying, and how much you invested.
By December first or before--hey, Thanksgiving is coming up!--I'll have links up to useful places to go to read up and track your stocks. I will also show you how to create a portfolio in yahoo and cnn and possibly google so you don't have to use the spreadsheet if you don't want to. Again, not required; I'll be tracking everyone, so you don't need to do that if you don't want to. Your spreadsheet will always be available to you to look at and moon over.
For January and probably February at least, I'll post at least once a week to open the floor for questions and discussion. Anyone is free to post--I don't see a reason to restrict posting to the comm if you have a discussion topic, such as "How are you picking your stocks?", we'll go over that later. Questions, however, will need to be directed to the weekly post I'll make so I can answer them quickly. I'll create a tag for that, like 'weekly post'.
Discussion, sharing tips, information, whatever, is encouraged highly. There are, literally, no stupid questions. I mean, seriously, if anything at all confuses or needs clarification, ask. I started this by basically going 'Oh, I've always wanted to visit Tel Aviv and this stock is based there!" Yeah. The bar, my friends, is non-existent.
On the first of each month, I'll make a post for check-in and to summarize how everyone is doing. Please respond to this, even if it's just to say "Whee" or "God wtf", post your questions, thoughts on financial yaoi, whatever. Other than telling the comm when you buy/sell, that's the only requirement.
Online chat is also available. We can discuss that later if anyone is interested.
We have a month, in which time I'll post both links to basic financial sites as well as explanations of terminology. Again, this isn't required to read for anyone who is playing. It will be informational. Everyone is welcome to add, correct, or supplement. Before the end of the this month, I'll have a very basic terminology post in case you are 'whee, learning the financial thing" with links to where to look for more.
Again, I am no expert, or even like amateur of some kind of preternatural genius. So basically I'll be sharing my education in stocks and the market as I learned it, in very basic language.
Yes, there will be prizes for first and second place. No, I have no idea what that is. I was thinking we could go monetary or item related--external hard drive maybe?--but that can come later while we all collectively mull the idea.
Right, now you are wondering wtf. The only rule that applies here is the check in and telling the comm (or me) when you buy or sell. Everything else is how you want to play. Keep in mind--first thing is the fun of this. Your interaction can be minimal or deeply daybroker. Knock yourself out.
Opening the floor to questions and answers. I won't have them all yet, but I will get to all of them. There are no stupid questions. This is very flexible and we have over a month to get our kinks straightened out.
Also, if you have some experience in this and want to comod, I swear not to overwork you. Promise.
I'm online most nights, so if you want to chat, just email me and I'll be on.
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no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 05:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 05:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 05:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 05:14 am (UTC)Although, y'know, there's a good chance I'll invest in stocks based on which ones make me think of Sherlock... I think this will be really interesting to see how well people can do on blind luck (and how "knowledge" of stocks doesn't always result in returns).
no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 05:25 am (UTC)Yes. Knowledge is good but a lot of it really is blind luck. For really successful investors, its' balancing between those very carefully.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 06:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 12:42 pm (UTC)Becasue we are working with small figures and if we only buy one share it needs to go up $8 to break even on the brokerage, it seems to me like it would make more sense to use the $100 to buy 3 or 4 of one stock at once so you only pay one brokerage, is that how it works?
And when it rolls over - I think you mean that if say in early Jan I buy 3 of the same $25 shares + $4 brokerage, so I have spent $79, by mid Feb they have gone up to $32 each so I sell and have 96-4 brokerage=$92+the 21 I didn't spend yet, plus the $100 from Feb, so I have $213 that I can use to trade with in Feb, is that right? Basiacally I guess I mean is it going to all roll over like real life, so say whatever I buy in Jan doesn't rise enough to make it worth selling I might still have it in June or even December (unless I decide to cut my losses and sell at a loss so I can use what money I do get back to continue to trade). Or as its a game do we have to sell the shares for whatever they are worth at the end of the month and start with a fresh $100 and a fresh purchase each month?
I think you proably mean that it will all roll over the way it would in real life, but just getting it clear in my head :) I'm used to thinking in terms of month to month as I was just starting to dabble a little bit in options before I got burned when everything came crashing down, and they expire at the end of each month. Shares where you just keep owning them till you decide to sell them with no time pressure for them to have moved in whatever direction you wanted within only a month is a slightly different proposition to wrap my head around, seems like its going to be much less stressfull though ;) I've been avoiding thinking about the market at all for the last year or so waiting for things to settle down a bit before I start throwing around any more real money, so I think this is going to be an actual fun way to ease into things :)
no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 02:02 pm (UTC)Exactly!
I think you proably mean that it will all roll over the way it would in real life, but just getting it clear in my head :)
Yes! It'll be modified real life, or simplified real life. As close as I can get while keeping it simple.
Glad you joined!
no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 01:51 pm (UTC)Why yes, I am a buy and horde investor, why do you ask?
no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 02:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 03:02 pm (UTC)We played a version of this in my high school economics class 20 years ago, but that only lasted 6 weeks. Getting a whole year is so much better!
no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 05:06 pm (UTC)I'm thinking IBM/Apple is the established hate sex couple. Technically foes, their relationship with one another has outlasted every other relationship that either's been in. The Gibbs/Fornell of Wall Street as it were.
Yay, I'm looking forward to it. I won't be playing with real money here, so it's a chance to be a little more adventurous than I can bring myself to be with savings account.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 08:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 07:01 pm (UTC)Here via your LJ post. Short version of previous comment. Your stockmarket posts made me want to try playing on the stockmarket, but to get to the cool stuff required way more work than I was willing to invest. Thus, oh hell yes, to this comm. *g*
Not sure if it's easier for you to invite me or for me to join and wait for you to approve it. Let me know?
no subject
Date: 2010-11-24 11:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 07:18 am (UTC)Otherwise go here and one of us will add you: http://market-roulette.dreamwidth.org/profile
And yay! I'm glad you're playing!
no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 08:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 08:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-23 10:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-24 04:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-24 06:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-26 03:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-24 07:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-24 10:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-27 12:48 am (UTC)No, but honestly this is amazing. I am already so excited for this, and I love stock market games anyhow, we always played a stock market board game with my friends, haha, so I hope this will be as much fun! <3 Thanks so much for organizing this and writing up these post, you are seriously amazing.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-28 12:50 pm (UTC)