market_roulette | Recent Entries

This is the Monday post for the week of January 31st to Sunday 6th of February.

Reminders

1.) January is still no-transaction fee month. You have ONE DAY (well. Three hours or so if you're in Australia) to sell if you want to do so without fees. After that, from midnight in your timezone, fees will apply to selling.

2.) February will be a no-transaction fee except for selling month. Selling fees are the same as real-time fees.

3.) March will see the introduction of the ETF and mutual fund.

Transaction Format

We'll probably just keep posting this in every Monday post for easy reference.

Buying - Real Time

Format of Declaration to Buy:
Subject Line: "Buy: {Ticker}"
Name: Your Name
Company: Company Name
Ticker: Ticker
Time: In Your Time Zone or in GMT (say which one you're using)
Price: In Your Country's Currency
Shares: 5
Country: Your Country

Buying - Automatic

Format of Declaration to Buy, Automatic:
Subject Line: "Automatic Buy: {Ticker}"
Name: Your Name
Company: Company Name
Ticker: Ticker
Time: In Your Time Zone or in GMT (say which one you're using)
Amount: Amount you wish to invest in this stock
Country: Your Country

Selling

Format of Declaration to Sell:
Subject Line: "Sell: {Ticker}"
Name: Your Name
Company: Company Name
Ticker: Ticker
Time: In Your Time Zone or in GMT (say which one you're using)
Price: In Your Country's Currency
Shares: How many shares.
Country: Your Country

Markets

Also will now be listed on every Monday post:

Eligible Exchanges:

1.) NYSE, any version.
2.) Euronext, any version
3.) ASX - Australian Stock Exchange
4.) LSE - London Stock Exchange
5.) TSE - Tokyo Stock Exchange
6.) Hong Kong Stock Exchange
7.) Shanghai Stock Exchange
8.) Toronto Stock Exchange
9.) Deutsche Börse
10.) NASDAQ
11.) Any stock listed in your local market.
These are the exchanges anyone can buy from. As well as these, you can buy from any that are your local markets.

Transaction Alpha Test

Once again, here is the link to the transaction form. If people could please use it? and for this week, it'd be great if you'd mention in your comment whether you've used it as well.

Transaction Form

This page is where you can see what you posted.

Once again, any questions or concerns, please contact your mods.

I'm leaving comments on the other post open until tomorrow just because I have some stuff to do there but I'm melting so I'm going to do it tomorrow when it's cooler and I'm less likely to make mistakes because my brain has shorted out. Please, if you want to buy or sell a stock, comment to this post.

Current Mood: chipper
Current Location: at home

seperis

1.) Please comment with what publicly available webpage you are using to get stock quotes or any you found that you like. I have some, but if this part works, I'll expand it.

2.) If anyone has some time this weekend, I need some volunteers to test a stock search engine....sort of. Mostly, I need to see how it can be broken.

jamethiel took first crack last night and broke it like, ten times. Non-native English speakers would also be appreciated; I haven't integrated Hong Kong, Japan, Germany, or China, partially because I don't have a compatible keyboard, but mostly because I've been reading websites via dictionary and google translation (even more terrifying than you can imagine). I'm also not sure how to set the language properly, as in, I can't tell if I get it right or wrong.

You don't need to know how to use googledocs at all, promise. You'll be entering text and calmly telling me how it's messing up for you.

It's veeeerrry limited right now (and slow) because I want this part working perfectly before I start adding things. It's also indexing a total of thirteen separate sites, so not surprising. Any help would be appreciated like, forever.

Answer here or email me at seperis at gmail.com.

Current Mood: awake

seperis

Note: This is late and I apologize; for some reason, work was randomly blocking sites or not connecting to them.

This is the Monday post for the week of January 24 through January 30, 2011.

Reminders

1.) January is still no-transaction fee month.

There is no fee for buying or selling. Go nuts!

2.) February will be a no-transaction fee except for selling month. Selling fees are the same as real-time fees.

3.) March will see the introduction of the ETF and mutual fund.

Transaction Format

We'll probably just keep posting this in every Monday post for easy reference.

Buying - Real Time

Format of Declaration to Buy:
Subject Line: "Buy: {Ticker}"
Name: Your Name
Company: Company Name
Ticker: Ticker
Time: In Your Time Zone or in GMT (say which one you're using)
Price: In Your Country's Currency
Shares: 5
Country: Your Country

Buying - Automatic

Format of Declaration to Buy, Automatic:
Subject Line: "Automatic Buy: {Ticker}"
Name: Your Name
Company: Company Name
Ticker: Ticker
Time: In Your Time Zone or in GMT (say which one you're using)
Amount: Amount you wish to invest in this stock
Country: Your Country

Selling

Format of Declaration to Sell:
Subject Line: "Sell: {Ticker}"
Name: Your Name
Company: Company Name
Ticker: Ticker
Time: In Your Time Zone or in GMT (say which one you're using)
Price: In Your Country's Currency
Shares: How many shares.
Country: Your Country

Current Mood: awake

seperis

I'm about once a month going to be crushed by work.

jamethiel has been unbelievably understanding about this, and you and the community have been too, and I thank you for it. In my defense, I didn't know when they said monthly builds, they meant that each build would be the same size as the builds we did when they were every two to three months and we had a staff cut. So. For the foreseeable future, God help me, I'll be absentish a week or so. That doesn't mean not to email me directly or I'm out of contact. It just means for about five to seven days, I don't even look at LJ or DW or write really tl;dr essays.

Recap for those playing the home game:

Stock Exchange - a company or entity that facilitates the buying and trading of securities (such as stock). It is located in a place, but it is not a place. It is a company.

Listing - companies that can sell securities on an exchange. They do not do this themselves as a rule. They get a member of the exchange to do it.

Membership - companies that do the buying and the selling. Sometimes, they cause the Great Depression. Sometimes, they don't.

Most stocks do not list in multiple exchanges; they do a primary listing and a secondary listing. There are exceptions to this, and they are legion, but they are the exception not the rule.

Now the challenge:

Challenge

First answer wins for the value of $25 (convert to your currency) added to this month. That's a lot of shares of South Sea Pearls:

China Telecom

HKEX: HK$ 4.14
NYSE: USD$52.98
Buenos Aires: PhP100.90

Does anyone know why it's this expensive at NYSE? This is findable on Yahoo Financial, all versions that I checked.

for everyone who responded, USD$10 is added to your total for this month.

lebannen, however, gets the full USD$25, for both getting the answer even though I think she's not sure why, but also for picking up the concept of the ISIN and the fact that every one of these has a different ticker. Very, very good job, seriously. I'm totally raising the challenge amount next time I give one.

Her answer:

They are all different [things]. CHA is the expensive one, 0728.HK is the same one trading as ZCH.x where x is various European countries, and then there's the Argentine one. As a bonus, it's also a different [thing] in Pakistan.

My comprehension of this subject does not yet reach an way of working out what and why these [things] are different. But now I know that ISINs exist, yay?

And we transition to a combination of things that are going to be confusing, but just go with it. It will get clearer the more you trade; that's why I'm encouraging as much trading as possible this month and hopefully next month.

And now your explanation: they're different, even though they're the same company. In the recap, we talked about how companies don't multilist often. And yet, I can still buy China Telecom in the US. This is the beauty of an ADR, an SDR, and a GDR.

( your grocery store has import fees )

( your grocery store sometimes renames things like tickers )

( so how does this relate to the challenge anyway? )

lebannen pretty much nailed it. While it's the same company, the stocks were different. In Hong Kong, you can just buy bits of the company. In the US, you have to buy it through an ADR.

Gameplay

On April 1, 2011, if your home stock exchange has the DR version of a stock (but not the company itself listed), or it lists the stock but at a higher price, and you want that stock, you have to buy it there, even if it's cheaper in Hong Kong. If your country has no version of this stock, then you can be a smart shopper and buy from any of the exchanges listed as open to everyone.

To be honest, this won't come up much, and the price difference will rarely be this dramatic.

jamethiel and I won't penalize if we have to make that kind of change.

Potential Stock Exchange Changes

Currently, Deutsche Borsch is negotiating with the Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX) to add it to Xetra. If that goes through, then some if not all stock listed only on the Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX) will be available to all players via Xetra.

Also currently, the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) is negotiating with Singapore. If that goes through before Xetra, Singapore and Australian players will be able to buy freely in each other's markets.

Xetra will be another entry entirely because it's what could be called a revolution in stock trading.

And that's it. Feel free to post questions, corrections, additions, or if you have specific questions about how any of this pertains to your stock exchange. I have google translations, babelfish, several dictionaries, and I no longer fear sites written entirely in Chinese. Mostly. We have several months before any market rules go into effect and I want everyone completely comfortable with the change before it starts.

This is a lot of information and if you understand it all on the first go, I'm deeply impressed. Familiarity is going to be what works for you here; the more you buy and sell and read tickers and company names, the easier this will be to internalize. Trust me when I say this, there's a reason I was religious investing the first six months I was trading, and I traded a lot in that period of time. For these two months, the more you examine the stocks you want to buy, the more you buy, the more you just trade, the easier it will be to absorb.

Transaction Log, Alpha Version is where you can do all your stock additions. It even timestamps it on the spreadsheet. After you complete the form, you can verify your results here. You can also still use reply to the monday posts. If you do both, please say so in the comment; me and my comod will eventually either add those by hand to the transaction log or use the form.

I'm getting ambitious with googledocs.

Recommended Sites

Businessweek is one of my current favorites now with the drop down that lets you look at the stock on otehr exchanges.

Example: For Aluminum Company of China go to the line below (ACH: New York); at the very end of that line is ACH on Other Exchanges.

Currently for stock quotes, I'm pulling from Google, Yahoo, and Businessweek for the spreadsheets to get around the 1,000 function rule.

Suggestions

If anyone has any suggestions or requests on what you'd like to see posted for information or breakdowns, please suggest; leaving me to my own devices ends up with cheese metaphors.

Finally

Happy trading! I'll be making the next Monday post and part four of 'you and the stock exchanges of the world'. Hopefully it will be much less of an infodump than this one.

Happy trading!

ETA: Transaction Log Questions

A few questions from the Transaction log:

Question:
Is it easier if I write down the number of stocks that I want to buy, or is it fine if I just mention the amount I want to invest?

Answer:
Amount to invest is easier on your math. You can't be sure how much it will go for during the date and time. It could plummet or go up very high.

Question:
I'm not ever quite sure what to put on the international y/n question.

Answer:
See, I really like making forms, and I like being really anal about it, and the way the forms are set up is very--linear. Make a form and then go back adn add questions, you'll see what I mean. It got to my aesthetics big time.

Eventually, this question will come into gameplay for certain types of stocks, and you will be given a full explanation. For now, it's just tossed in for future use. Kind of like the mod area where eventually, mods will do something. Maybe.

I'm going to try and shorten the log eventually so there's not quite so many pages. It will look pretty much like it does now, however, no matter how form-happy I get. Though God do I love forms.

Now you can go back to trading.

Current Mood: awake

jamethiel

Hi there!
This is the Monday post for the week of January 17-23. All transactions and questions should go here. The last one is closed; if you have anything you want to change in that one, or previous ones, you need to reply to a comment post here with a link to it.

Announcements

Once again, we're still searching for people to do posts. If you've got a subject related to the stock market you'd like to talk on, please contact the mods!

Reminders

1.) January is still no-transaction fee month.

There is no fee for buying or selling. Go nuts!

2.) February will be a no-transaction fee except for selling month. Selling fees are the same as real-time fees.

3.) As

seperis announced, March will see the introduction of the ETF and mutual fund.

Transaction Format

We'll probably just keep posting this in every Monday post for easy reference.
Format

Buying - Real Time

Format of Declaration to Buy:
Subject Line: "Buy: {Ticker}"
Name: Your Name
Company: Company Name
Ticker: Ticker
Time: In Your Time Zone or in GMT (say which one you're using)
Price: In Your Country's Currency
Shares: 5
Country: Your Country

Buying - Automatic

Format of Declaration to Buy, Automatic:
Subject Line: "Automatic Buy: {Ticker}"
Name: Your Name
Company: Company Name
Ticker: Ticker
Time: In Your Time Zone or in GMT (say which one you're using)
Amount: Amount you wish to invest in this stock
Country: Your Country

Selling

Format of Declaration to Sell:
Subject Line: "Sell: {Ticker}"
Name: Your Name
Company: Company Name
Ticker: Ticker
Time: In Your Time Zone or in GMT (say which one you're using)
Price: In Your Country's Currency
Shares: How many shares.
Country: Your Country

Markets

Also will now be listed on every Monday post:

Eligible Exchanges:

1.) NYSE, any version.
2.) Euronext, any version
3.) ASX - Australian Stock Exchange
4.) LSE - London Stock Exchange
5.) TSE - Tokyo Stock Exchange
6.) Hong Kong Stock Exchange
7.) Shanghai Stock Exchange
8.) Toronto Stock Exchange
9.) Deutsche Börse
10.) NASDAQ
11.) Any stock listed in your local market.

These are the exchanges anyone can buy from. As well as these, you can buy from any that are your local markets.

Transaction Alpha Test

Once again, here is the link to the transaction form. If people could please use it? and for this week, it'd be great if you'd mention in your comment whether you've used it as well.

Transaction Form

This page is where you can see what you posted.

Once again, any questions or concerns, please contact your mods.

Finally, did anyone buy any stocks in Redif? I know a few of you did. WOW! That's gone up around 60%!

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Location: at home

jamethiel

So how are you all doing? Come and give me an update! I'd also like to encourage those of you who haven't used your $150 of imaginary money to buy something! Invest! It's not real money and you can always take it back during January anyway!

(This next bit is a total abuse of my modly powers)
[abuse modly powers]
Also, who invested in Boral along with me? OH YEAH! *gleeful dance*

[/abuse of modly powers]

Come and tell me about your stocks! And your greatest wins and losses and why you think it happened! I'll tell you why Boral went up--they make bricks, and about half of Queensland has been severely damaged by floods. Lots of opportunity for rebuilding.

seperis is going to be busy until next week, so I'll be the one who's around. As always, if you've any questions or comments, feel free to comment or email.

Current Mood: chipper

seperis

I worked way too much yesterday and perhaps a little this morning and so. Time for one of very few things that isn't making me grumpy. Or like, homicidal.

This is you and the stock market.

From earlier:

Stock Exchange - a company or entity that facilitates the buying and trading of securities (such as stock). It is located in a place, but it is not a place. It is a company.

Listing - companies that can sell securities on an exchange. They do not do this themselves as a rule. They get a member of the exchange to do it.

Membership - companies that do the buying and the selling. Sometimes, they cause the Great Depression. Sometimes, they don't.

( this is like your grocery store )

HKEX has their site in both English and Chinese; they also have a glossary. The site is split up categorically; if you know what you're looking for, it's not too hard to find what you need. Then again, even when you know, have downloaded, and highlighting bits, you can be surprised.

List of Stock Codes was where I ended up looking for listed companies. "Equity Securities" looked right, so there I went, which is the listed companies of Hong Kong that sell stock in the exchange.

Equity Securities

I missed these:

Under GEM: Equity Securities (for more information)

Under Pilot Program Securities: Equity Securities

Which explained why Cisco and Dell had shown up on my cross-referencing of stock codes.

Companies listed on GEM do not fulfill, for whatever reason, the listing requirements for the HKEX. A fuller explanation is here, but you could think of it as a starter list for companies; they aren't qualified to be in the main listings, but this gives them a chance to be seen and hopefully raise capital as well as their profile.

The Pilot Program explanation is here. Yes, that's eleven years old; if there's a more recent version, I can't find it in English.

Convenient link to the Shanghai and Shenzhen Exchanges for searching.

So that gives you an idea, when looking up stocks to buy, where you should look for a full listing. Look at everything. You don't have to understand what you're reading; just be familiar with your exchange's site and where everything is.

And Now

So you may wonder why, when we're not using market rules, when everyone can buy from the top exchanges or their own local exchanges, why on earth they should care if Cisco is listed in Hong Kong. You can buy anywhere! Well, mostly. So why verify this sort of thing?

China Telecom:

HKEX: HK$4.14
NYSE: USD$52.98
Buenos Aires: PhP100.90

Banco Santander Central Hispano SA:

NYSE: USD$9.68
LSE: 621.50p
Amsterdam: €7.43 (Euronext)
Mexico: PhP119.00

The exchange makes a difference. Come April, it will be vital; you will still be able to buy from any of the top markets:

1.) NYSE, any version.
2.) Euronext, any version
3.) ASX - Australian Stock Exchange
4.) LSE - London Stock Exchange
5.) TSE - Tokyo Stock Exchange
6.) Hong Kong Stock Exchange
7.) Shanghai Stock Exchange
8.) Toronto Stock Exchange
9.) Deutsche Börse
10.) NASDAQ
11.) Any stock listed in your local market.

But you have to verify it's not available in your home market first. If it's there but you want to buy from Singapore anyway, there will be a fee for it. But it may be worth it. That's how a lot of people got really rich on the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Challenge

First answer wins for the value of $25 (convert to your currency) added to this month. That's a lot of shares of South Sea Pearls:

China Telecom

HKEX: HK$ 4.14
NYSE: USD$52.98
Buenos Aires: PhP100.90

Does anyone know why it's this expensive at NYSE? This is findable on Yahoo Financial, all versions that I checked.

Update

New link to stock list. You may not know this, but google has a 1,000 formula limit per spreadsheet. The stock list tipped us way over that. I have a yahoo import that will also do it, but it will only work when the moon is full or on a single page I'm not using for this, so go figure. Currently, only the US stocks have prices; the rest are being added as soon as yahoo financial stops screwing with me on importing prices.

Note: Anything for Germany should be double checked. I couldn't find relaible translations for some of what I was reading. That's why it's not complete on this page and if the price seems too dramatically different, that's why.

Note 2: Japan is a work in progress. This is mostly because I didn't realize when I started that there was an English version to the Tokyo stock market and was doing this with a dictionary and a sense I was going to die. Singapore, Hong Kong, and Dubai all benefited from me working out how to find the link enabling English or I'd seriously have my Arabic to English dictionary out and

scy on the phone with me. She like, ran away last time I suggested it, but it's not like I don't have her phone number and address.

Dubai has no crossover I can find wtih any other market outside the Middle East. I'm still reading on them.

Note 3: Other Tickers are markets I was using as a baseline, and because Mexico and Buenos Aires were in Spanish and I can get through Spanish, and because I was familiar with their currency so I could convert it in my head quickly when checking markets.

Right. Done now. Use this as your link to the stock page.

Current Mood: awake

seperis

I forgot to email

jamethiel to tell her it's her turn. Sorry!

This is the Monday post for the week of January 10-16. All transactions and questions should go here. The last one will be closed; if you have anything you want to change in that one, post here with a link to it.

Announcements

Er, none. Second part of the market tutorial goes up this week. I'm working on my grocery store metaphors. If anyone wants to contribute a post about anything, contact one of the mods. We like posts!

Reminders

1.) January is still no-transaction fee month.

There is no fee for buying or selling. If anyone wants to sell as well as buy, this would be a good time to do it. I'd suggest any day when a major announcement is scheduled to come out and you can watch stock prices rise and fall. We haven't talked about short selling yet, but I'm wondering now if I should set a month later in the year as transaction-free and see what everyone does with it when they know how to do it.

2.) February will be a no-transaction fee except for selling month. Selling fees are the same as real-time fees.

3.) March will see the introduction of the ETF and mutual fund. One of the drawbacks of mutual funds usually is that they require a starter amount from $1000 to $10,000 dollars to even begin. Most self-service brokers, however, have ways around this, so we'll be introducing both items for trade after there's been a short tutorial over them and what they do.

Conversion Data

All future currency conversion data is on the sheet labeled ConversionData here. I checked against yahoo and msn and googlefinancial's historical conversion data is accurate to three to five decimal places, which for our purposes is perfect, so it updates automatically for everyone.

Transaction Format

We'll probably just keep posting this in every Monday post for easy reference.
Format

Buying - Real Time

Format of Declaration to Buy:
Subject Line: "Buy: {Ticker}"
Name: Your Name
Company: Company Name
Ticker: Ticker
Time: In Your Time Zone or in GMT (say which one you're using)
Price: In Your Country's Currency
Shares: 5
Country: Your Country

Buying - Automatic

Format of Declaration to Buy, Automatic:
Subject Line: "Automatic Buy: {Ticker}"
Name: Your Name
Company: Company Name
Ticker: Ticker
Time: In Your Time Zone or in GMT (say which one you're using)
Amount: Amount you wish to invest in this stock
Country: Your Country

Selling

Format of Declaration to Sell:
Subject Line: "Sell: {Ticker}"
Name: Your Name
Company: Company Name
Ticker: Ticker
Time: In Your Time Zone or in GMT (say which one you're using)
Price: In Your Country's Currency
Shares: How many shares.
Country: Your Country

Markets

Also will now be listed on every Monday post:

Eligible Exchanges:

1.) NYSE, any version.
2.) Euronext, any version
3.) ASX - Australian Stock Exchange
4.) LSE - London Stock Exchange
5.) TSE - Tokyo Stock Exchange
6.) Hong Kong Stock Exchange
7.) Shanghai Stock Exchange
8.) Toronto Stock Exchange
9.) Deutsche Börse
10.) NASDAQ
11.) Any stock listed in your local market.

You may buy from any of these exchanges no matter where you are or what country you are in, as well as your home country exchanges and any they are allied/list.

Transaction Alpha Test

To make things easier, I'm trying out a googledocs form to record transactions. It also automatically timestamps.

Transaction Form

If anyone can tell me how to make it imbed, please do so, because it totally will not.

This page should show you your transaction afterward.

Tell me if this works or not. I hope it will be slightly more convenient than posting here, though you're welcome to do both. Eventually, anything recorded here will automatically update your individual spreadsheet. I got that working on one set, but I also got import data working on one set and not on anything else, so go googledocs.

Final

Happy buying!

Current Mood: awake

seperis

Okay, so googledocs isn't always evil.

Alpha testing of googledoc's form for transactions. You're encouraged to play with it as much as you like. If you want to use it for actual transactions, please answer the final question with Actual and verify on the spreadsheet that it went through correctly. If it didn't, leave a comment so we can make the correction.

( the form )

Any problmes, list below.

Current Mood: awake

seperis

This is a short, very simplified (because holy shit, let me say, complex), and easy to follow tutorial on markets and exchanges, part 1

Over the next year,

jamethiel and I will be adding options on as googledocs allows, among them ETF's, mutual funds, and my personal favorites of complexity, IPOs. Each will be announced ahead of time, explained as thoroughly as we can, and a solid date for when trading can begin on them given. Any major updates or changes to gameplay will occur in April, July, or October, since quarters are easy ways to split the year. So everyone has plenty of time.

Current Gameplay for January

1.) There are no transaction fees for anything.

This was announced in an earlier post, but there's been a lot of information, so it was probably easy to miss. There are no transaction fees this month. This is to get used to buying and selling, reading about your companies, and knowing what to look for, and getting adapted to tickers and recognizing them. This is also to encourage you to try out new things.

2.) There are unlimited takebacks.

You can kill a buy at any time in the month of January and redo. In the same thread as you originally bought something, add a Takeback to the subject line, and we'll remove it. All trades that are still not in Takeback stand when January ends.

By the end of January, provided you go a little crazy, which I encourage highly, you should be able to look up a company, find the ticker, ID the price and time, and post it without worry. You should be able to calculate the total cost.

And you should be able to tell us what exchange it trades on.

That part, that's new.

( welcome to thunderdome; no, really, have you seen the movie Wall Street? Yeah. )

So here's what we know:

Stock Exchange - a company or entity that facilitates the buying and trading of securities (such as stock). It is located in a place, but it is not a place. It is a company.
Listing - companies that can sell securities on an exchange. They do not do this themselves as a rule. They get a member of the exchange to do it.
Membership - companies that do the buying and the selling. Sometimes, they cause the Great Depression. Sometimes, they don't.

On the MasterList spreadsheet, the last sheet named Copy of Participants has a short list of your markets. This list will be expanded.

On the sheet labeled AllMarkets (second one), that's a running list of all stock exchanges in the world. It is a work in progress and is not complete.

Your Market shows up here as well.

Final Note

Questions, corrections, changes, for the love of God, please do so. This will go into more detail and complexity in following entries, so this needs to make sense first. And come April, it will come into gameplay.

Current Mood: awake

jamethiel

So. Google is making your mods crazy.

I spent all last evening modifying formulas and trying to make the spreadsheets less buggy. *long rant about google spreadsheets deleted* Google actually made both

seperis and I nurse thoughts of bitter vengeance in our hearts last night.

Anyrate. We've got something with converters and things that work. I'd like to give you a copy to work off of. I'll transfer all the data over and share it with you--delete any references to the old one, kay?

Also, I forgot about there being no transaction fees in January, so I'm going through and deleting any ones that I've recorded.

In summary, mods=running on caffeine, google=buggy, you=awesome + getting new spreadsheets and

market_roulette = SO MUCH FUN!!!

Current Mood: caffeinated!
Current Location: at work

seperis

Argh, one more today before I go underground with work--Christ, it's five sixteen AM here, what the hell.

Buying Rules

jamethiel and I have been studying market rules and market indices and blah blah blah. Here's what we came up with.

The NYSE seems to be the most accurate listing of stocks that are available worldwide. This is not a foolproof system, and it's painfully Americancentric, but in our defense, it's not like America doesn't do that like, a lot. In general, this method seems to work. I've checked against the ASX, London, and Euronext and I even babelfished Japan yahoo and I'll run through the United Arab Emirates tomorrow just to be safe, and in general, they all follow NYSE pretty closely. If a stock is listed as NYSE or NasdaqGs, it's listed in your country. That will be the final ruling on whether a stock is added to the master list, which is about to get a huge update since this makes it a little easier to sort them out.

[This system will have to ignore certain trading embargos and blacklisting in certain countries. Honestly, I will remove it if it comes up, but I'm working from American and babelfish translations and without being a national of that country, it's hard to be sure if a company is actually not offered at all or it's being offered but no one wants to really admit it, or its' only offered to really rich people. I apologize in advance; any international players who want to correct me on their country and a stock's availability, please do so.]

So anyone who wants a stock added to the list, name it and it's symbol, I'll do a check against NYSE and NasdaqGs and it will be added. Yu can also do it yourself as well; enter the ticker number and it should say something like (NasdaqGs: Ticker) or (NYSE: Ticker). If it doesn't, send it anyway; it may show up under another ticker internationally.

calligrafiti - I'm checking against the emerging market you linked to and verifying membership on the major indices. This will speed that up immensely, but if there's any one specific that you liked and want to add, leave it in comments and I'll do that one tomorrow.

Market Rules

You can buy/sell at any time in any market in your country. Some of you have two to four to six to eight to a lot. So a quick reference:

Market Clocks, which show all the markets in your country. You may use any of these.

Go look at it right now. Minor as well as major indices are located here, so ones I didn't have listed show up here and you can use them.

The following market times added:

UK - You can use the London Stock Exchange and Euronext. Euronext is not listed in the above, but I researched and they operate a subsidary out of UK.

Germany - You can use your six markets, but not Euronext. They do not operate out of Germany.

Hong Kong - both the Hong Kong exchange and any Chinese market.

US - you have to use only the markets listed at that website. Euronext/NYSE went worldwide, but they still operate by local market times.

In closing, Euronext/NYSE is taking over the world and ASX is trying to expand, and I'm feeling really wary about some of the international negotiations going on. Updates will be added here.

International Companies

When adding, one thing that comes up is that many countries register in multiple countries (see CRNT). I'm trying to make the list less American-centric, but if you see a country listed under Israel with a Delaware address, yeah, that's why. Ask

svmadelyn about Delaware.

Master List

Master List - this spreadsheet is the new common reference for everything, so discard all other links. The participant list, currency converters and market lists are all in here. See tabs for more information.

Clarification

Above regarding NYSE:

This does not mean the stock is listed worldwide. It may not be listed at all in your market. However, under your-market-only rules, it would be impossible to list stocks available everywhere, because none are, and several of you are in markets that are intensely local or region-oriented.

However, if you were registered with a full service broker, it wouldn't matter; they'd handle the transaction for a stock not listed in your market. There are a lot of options to getting international stocks.

I meant to add to the list, but it was six in the morning and I was really tired. So here is the complete list:

1.) NYSE, any version.
2.) Euronext, any version
3.) ASX - Australian Stock Exchange
4.) LSE - London Stock Exchange
5.) TSE - Tokyo Stock Exchange
6.) Hong Kong Stock Exchange
7.) Shanghai Stock Exchange
8.) Toronto Stock Exchange
9.) Deutsche Börse
10.) NASDAQ
11.) Any stock listed in your local market.

Reasoning:

To get listed, there is a vetting process. It's not always great, but it's there. For January, you can buy any stock that is below $30 USD listed on those markets while I continue to update the stock list, since I'm vetting that a little stricter.

Suffixes:

This is complicated and has to do with markets and pink listing. Not hugely important in terms of buying, but ADD is not the same as ADD.PK, so to speak, so check your suffixes when you buy.

I'll add more to this either tonight or tomorrow. There's total of two hundred stocks I'll be adding to our stock list in the next week or two. If you find one you want listed, comment. As of February 1,2011, you can only buy stock from that list, along with whatever you purchased in January; anything anyone purchased in January will go on that list as well. The stock list will be updated fairly frequently after that, and we'll take requests if you find one you like.

Okay, that should cover it.

Current Mood: awake

seperis

Just in case anyone forgot, January is basically everyone's Mistakes Month and adaptation month. All mistakes with transactions, stock, money will be fixed with no penalty. If you make a mistake, if we make a mistake, it'll be reversed and fixed. I kind of saw this coming when I was working in googledocs and it kept converting everything to euros for like, two days.

So again, this month, you can do it wrong, and you can reverse anything you do. Just comment in the same thread that whatever you did that needs changing/fixing. This month, there is no limit to this, so you won't be bothering us. By the end of the month, I want everyone comfortable with the procedure.

Conversions

We're still working on accurate conversions; googledocs formulas seem to be off. So don't worry if you see the numbers changing; nothing will be finalized until the end of January on your buy/sells, and we should have google working then, or I'll see if I can write up a script with static tables to do it myself.

Tips

1.) Double check your stock price against a major website if you're using the spreadsheet numbers. They are almost always accurate, then sometimes they're off by a factor of one hundred or something. Use one of the major international websites or a major financial one. Recommended: Wall Street's website if you're not sure. I will be checking against my Sharebuilder account's ticker as well.

2.) Conversions will, in general, round to two decimal places for best practices. Google is--doing that but not always in line with international standards. Don't worry if you see changes when you go and look at the numbers; I'm trying to make a macro that won't fight me on this.

3.) Individual converter page; this is undergoing a revision. The one I wrote is working, so as soon as I'm done testing it, I'll give the code here for you to cut and paste. If Google did mass copy, I'd just copy to everyone's pages, but lo, they do not do that. They do mass export, however, and as soon as I'm done testing that, we'll be using that for mass data updates.

Format

Buying - Real Time

Format of Declaration to Buy:
Subject Line: "Buy: {Ticker}"
Name: Your Name
Company: Company Name
Ticker: Ticker
Time: In Your Time Zone or in GMT (say which one you're using)
Price: In Your Country's Currency
Shares: 5
Country: Your Country

Buying - Automatic

Format of Declaration to Buy, Automatic:
Subject Line: "Automatic Buy: {Ticker}"
Name: Your Name
Company: Company Name
Ticker: Ticker
Time: In Your Time Zone or in GMT (say which one you're using)
Amount: Amount you wish to invest in this stock
Country: Your Country

Selling

Format of Declaration to Sell:
Subject Line: "Sell: {Ticker}"
Name: Your Name
Company: Company Name
Ticker: Ticker
Time: In Your Time Zone or in GMT (say which one you're using)
Price: In Your Country's Currency
Shares: How many shares.
Country: Your Country

Final Notes

Again, this month is shakedown and getting used to procedure. Do not worry if two days from now you realize GE was overpriced; just tell us to kill it (in the same thread you bought in) and it will be erased.

At the end of the month, we'll check everything for accuracy before starting February. February will limit you to three (3) takebacks, but the mods are both understanding and fighting googledocs, so we're not going to be draconian on this until everythign is working.

If you have Excel, there's a special financial toolbar that is no longer available from Microsoft (I think), but I have and can upload for anyone to use. It works like google's financial functions, but okay, I think the Excel one is neater and I use it to calculate stuff in my private portfolio. I'll upload it by Friday and put a link here for anyone to grab if they want to use it.

My Note: Due to overtime at work, I may not be online as much this week until the weekend.

jamethiel is keeping up with everything gorgeously and we're checking in with each other regularly, ie, every night, since my job doesn't like me sleeping anyway when I could be, y'know, running more tests. I'll be reading, just probably not interacting as much.

Happy playing!

Current Mood: awake

seperis

ETA: All new transactions should be recorded in the new Monday post for this week.

( monday, january 3, 2011 )

ETA:

All new transactions should be recorded in the new Monday post here. Do not record any further transactions in this post.

Current Mood: awake

seperis

Stock List

The current stock list is available here. This is not the total that will be available as of January 3, 2011; it's the total I've finished researching and clearing, which is why it went a lot slower than I expected, since I had to start eliminating several that started acting wanky and made me nervous (google Allied Irish Banks for context).

About the Stock List

The master list I'm using went through three revisions due to a.) American-centrism b.) technology-centrism, and c.) prices. The biggest problem came with prices; my favorite companies are also above the $30 US Dollar limit and as an American, it's not easy to get information on non-major companies outside the US that was also written for a layman.

All companies that are included in the list have been reviewed on at least two to four websites. Some of the companies are old and stable; some are not. Some have dividends, some don't. Some are really volatile, some aren't. My original determination to choose stable companies ended up being possibly the most boring game in the world; you make money with a certain amount of risk. None of these companies, as far as I can tell, is going to crash in the next year, but let's all remember Enron, Lehman Brothers, and the economic death spiral of 2008; it's not guaranteed. But I'd risk actual money on most of these. In fact, if it was below $30 Dollars American, anything I have or am investing in I added to the list.

There is, at least right now, a hard tilt toward American or American-dominated companies, mostly because they were the easiest to clear quickly. More will be added, but we are limited by a.) me being for all intents and purposes monolingual and b.) currency conversion. Now that's next.

( conversions - how to do it profitably and well )

Before you answer this, read about conversions above. This poll is limited to non-American participants. Yes, you don't get to have fun with this. I'll find you something fun to do to make up for it.

Conversion Poll

Poll #5472 Conversion Methods

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 16

View Respondents

Which Conversion Method would you like to use?

View Answers

Fixed Rate
0 (0.0%)

Monthly Conversion
13 (81.2%)

Daily Conversion
3 (18.8%)

Hourly Conversion
0 (0.0%)

If anyone has Excel and is comfortable using it, I can send you my data and you can build a copy of the conversion tables to verify. Since I'm using live data from the internet through Excel, google is not making it easy to upload this.

Right now, this is overwhelming data, so skip to the next section.

( gameplay rules for january and february )

We're getting close to start time, so this is the time that any kind of clarification or questioning should be done. Work is in a slump, thank God, which means I have this week and probably next week unlimited time to work on anything you need help with.

Interesting Sites

Investing For Dummies Cheat Sheet

Business Week

Main Street

Gameplay Links

Your Individual Spreadsheet

Market Timezones

Stock List

A conversion spreadsheet will be posted when I can figure out how to get it up dynamically instead of with static information. I am almost tempted to write a Perl script for this.

Deadlines

December 31, 2011 midnight - answer poll with your choice of conversion method

January 3, 2011 midnight - Gameplay begins.

Final Notes

Please remember to verify we have you in your correct country and timezone if you haven't already; you don't need to post unless you need to make corrections. Me and my comod both keep copies on our computers as well as googledocs (and I keep one at work as well) but redundancy is everyone's friend.

Instructions on how to create an Excel spreadsheet for stock tracking as well as conversions goes up probably Sunday. I know not everyone uses Excel and I downloaded the open source alternative so I could give more generic instructions, but some features of Excel do not translate well and I'm looking for substitutions.

Any questions? Just remember, yes, this is a lot of data, but there's time to absorb it and it won't seem quite so overwhelming once you're actually doing things that make it relevant and useful. Especially with conversions, if you have any questions on how I'm getting my numbers or how it's done, please reach me in chat where we can go over it individually. I'm under seperis on yahoo and available 9:00 PM CST every night. And I get bored easily, so really, it'd be nice to have someone to talk to.

If anyone, like me, will be home New Year's Eve and would be interested in group chat, email me at seperis at gmail and we'll set it up.

And don't forget; have fun!

Current Mood: awake

jamethiel

Now. First, have a link. THIS is a glossary. It is amazingly useful and concise.

So, you've all got your heads around the fact that buying shares is essentially buying part of the ownership of a company.

Now let's talk about a couple of other criteria I use when selecting stock.
( Cut for length: Blue chip versus growth )
( Other criteria I use to assess a company )

Comments and discussion are welcome! I'll be posting my analysis of some companies by my criteria later.

jamethiel

OK people. Due to modly-places-of-work being super-busy, and said mods being partly unavailable, we've decided to extend sign-ups to Friday.

Please check the list below. It goes by country first, then region/timezone second. If you are not included in the list below, please leave a comment in the following format

Username:
Country:
City/Region:
Timezone: (eg. GMT +11)

( Giant list o' DOOOOM! )

If you are included in this list, but you're in the wrong section please also leave a comment in the above format.

If you're not included on this list and you just want to follow but not play, please drop us a comment telling us so.

Anyone who hasn't given us their details or let us know they're not playing will be removed from the community by Friday. You're still welcome to watch the comm, and most posts will be unlocked. The only posts that won't will be statistical adminny things.

I was going to say something profound and mod-like here, but I'm honestly too excited! *jitters*

Current Mood: chipper

jamethiel

New mod email address!
First things first! Your mods now have an exciting new mod contact address! That's right--your one contact stop for all your mod-contact needs is:
market.roulette@gmail.com

You can still see both of us on chat under our individual names, but if you've got a query, please drop us a line!

Have you checked in and let us know your timezone?
Secondly, we've had an amazing upsurge in the numbers recently. If you've just joined and you haven't already let us know your country and timezone, please drop us a comment on this post. If you've already given us the information, please go to our Market Timezones spreadsheet to verify that you're listed and it's correct. If it's not right, please let us know.

Prizes!
Thirdly, you have homework! Oh, don't groan at me like that. It's totally optional and there are PRIZES.

Over the next month, I want you to identify three companies you're interested in and tell us why. The first three people to get their research in to us will get a free trade in the next month!

As always, any questions or comments, please let us know!

Current Mood: chipper

seperis

And we're at four days and counting from the final list of players and I have a timezone chart and three spreadsheets. Which now I will share.

Part A: Gameplay Revision.

This is a clarification on gameplay rules, since several people asked about it and I wanted to speadsheet it before I posted a clarification and change.

Timezones

( clarification of times in automatic investments )

Currency

I'm still working out how to convert currency and not have everyone start out with an amount of money with five decimal places. I have a spreadsheet and I think I have a solution, but it looks like alien writing right now. As soon as it's readable, I'll post it.

Part B: Participant Tracking in Timezones

I put up a spreadsheet that lists everything but currency. There are three sheets, only one of which you actually need to verify, the rest is for my reference or for general information. It's open to everyone who clicks the link.

( the spreadsheet: explanation )

Part C: Your Individual Spreadsheet

A sample spreadsheet will go up tonight or tomorrow; I'll post a link in the next entry to it and what it all means if I can't get it up tonight and post the link here. It's very, very simple, so it will be very easy to follow.

ETA: Your Individual Spreadsheet, rough draft.

Part D: The Site Finding Challenge

So this is the first challenge of the game and has two purposes. One, to familiarize you with researching, and two, to make sure I didn't miss anything in my research.

( your first challenge )

Okay, the site-finding speed here is unreal. Check below the cut for challenge results!

( results so far )

Part E: Upcoming Deadlines

a. December 14th Midnight PST (GMT-8) - if you plan to participate, you need to join the community and post in the post that will be titled admin: final list of participants that will be posted on Tuesday. That is the only post that will count for final sign-ups. In your comment, please provide the following information:

Handle/Name:
Country:
City/Region:
Timezone (in GMT):

b. December 19th Midnight PST (GMT-8) - The Site Finding Challenge ends.

Part F: That's it!

That's it for now. Remember to post any questions and one of us will get back to you ASAP. There's a fair to good chance this week is going to suck horribly for work, but I'll talk to my comod and make sure there's coverage.

ETA 10:46 PM CST: Added link to Individual Spreadsheet rough draft.

Current Mood: awake

seperis

So we're about ten days away from the beginning of Somewhat Serious Business and getting a final count of participants. This will be a beginner tutorial on what you're about to do. It will probably sound condescending, but this is from my notes to myself when I started out. Anything that's unclear, ask in comments, seriously. Ask ask ask.

( terminology )

Links

For a very basic explanation, I like eHow's short version. Go there first.

Investopedia is a good resource but can get a little needlessly complex. If you get confused, stop reading. I came back to that one two months into trading and understood a lot better what they were saying. Experience does help; once you're doing it, some things will make a lot more sense.

The Motley Fool is a site for the normal investor who is not a multimillionare. It's also funny. They recommend stocks in themes, are kind of snarky, and generally give explanations as to why they do and don't like it. Also, the forums have hilarious flamewars. So not kidding.

Game Play

I'm almost done with a short explanation of how the game will be played, so below the cut is the rough draft. It will not change in rules, just in wording, for the final version.

( gameplay )

All right, now is a good time for questions. If anything above is unclear, please feel free to ask. Again, there are no stupid questions; I mean, there are none. And remember to have fun!

Please add the country you are playing in and your timezone here. If you are American, I need your timezone only. This is to create a reference chart for everyone that states their market and market hours as well as have a list up to track for currency.

1.) United States GMT-6 (CST) - 7
2.) Australia - Melbourne GMT+11 - 2
3.) Canada (Manitoba) GMT-6 (CST) - 2
4.) Canada (Toronto) GMT-5 (EST) - 2
5.) Hong Kong GMT+8 - 1
6.) United States GMT-8 (PST) - 2
7.) United States GMT-5 (EST) - 4
8.) Japan GMT+9 - 1
9.) Ireland GMT+0 - 1
10.) UK GMT+0 - 1
11.) Canada GMT-7(MST) - 1

Okay, I think I got the time conversions right. This will be factored in for all time limits in trading; when I have the full list of participants, a chart will be put up for double checking.

For reference:

World Stock Market Times - if you feel like it, find your market! A list with corresponding country and/or zone will be posted as well when we have all the participants.

...oh, they have everything in GMT, too!