How To Play

[anthony]

What Is Stock Trader?

It is a fantasy stock trading game. It uses real-time stock exchange data with virtual cash (pretend money).

The whole idea is to become the winner. To be the best you can be in the game, without risk of any personal financial loss. It is purely to have a little competition between members, something outside the ordinary.

You'll be surprised just how simple and easy the game is. It all comes down to risk versus reward. Just like the stock market, you could invest daily or leave it sit and ride the market. You can diversify across a lot of companies or pick your favourite. You could follow others, pick randomly from the top companies, or research each companies trends on NASDAQ or available stock exchange site, and make more precise investments. It's only a game, so if you stuck all your points in McDonalds (MCD) and let it sit, you could do that if you wanted.

How Do I See Stocktrader?

Read: [DLMURL]https://www.ptsdforum.org/c/threads/games-access.32228/[/DLMURL]

How Real Is The Stock Exchange Interaction?

This is real-time data with a 15 minute delay, which means, when stock exchanges are open, stock data fluctuates on you in near real-time as posted by the exchanges. When they close, your stock stops.

That means you can trade on one while the other is closed, then swap, all because of time zones.

How Much Cash Do I Get & Can I Buy It?

Cash is accumulated through the Credit system, based on what actions you take upon the forum. Due to laws differing across the world in relation to the use of real money to buy virtual monies, depicting a gambling service or a game, you cannot buy virtual currency. The only way to obtain it is to participate in the community which awards live ongoing values for participation.

What Limits Are Imposed?

There is a minimum stock price of $2 per share, which removes penny stocks. The system is not built to function for penny stock trading / low monetary trading.

There is a minimum 10 day holding period before you can sell.

Does It Cost Anything?

As a member, no. If you don't go broke, no. There is no real cash being traded.

Buying and selling brokerage costs are currently removed, though once implemented again, they will be updated here.

What Exchanges Are Being Used?

Stock Trader is using US, London, German, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, France, Austria and Netherlands stock exchanges, all in real-time. Specifically:

NYSE | NASDAQ| NasdaqNM | NasdaqGS | NGM | AMEX | London .L | London .IL | London | LSE | Berlin .BE | Bremen .BM | Dusseldorf .DU | Frankfurt .F | Hamburg .HM | Hanover .HA | Munich .MU | Stuttgart .SG | XETRA .DE | Toronto | Toronto.TO | ASX | ASX.AX | NZSE | NZSE.NZ | Osio | Osi:confused:L | Paris | Paris.PA | FCHI | Vienna | Vienna.VI | ATX | Amsterdam | Amsterdam.AS | AEX

In other words, any public company that is being traded through one of those exchanges, can be used in the game.

How Do I Buy Stock?

Whilst this is more complicated that I will describe, this is about how to buy stock in the game itself, not any strategies beyond buying good or bad stock.

First you find the stock symbol for the company you want to trade, then enter that into the quote field and obtain a real-time quote on buying that stock. You then choose how much stock you want to buy, the purchase.

Lets use NASDAQ to find a company. Link Removed

Let me use the 52 week high/low to find a company that I want to invest in: Link Removed

There is a company called Tree.com listed using the symbol: TREE

Now I go into Stock Trader and enter TREE into the quote field, which will show any matching companies using something similar for me to choose from:

Hit the 'Get Quote' button to see the companies data:

You can now see further data on the company. You're best bet for research is not on the above, but on the companies page at the stock exchange.

Click on the big blue button in the bottom left if you want to buy that stock. You will then see:

You can then enter how many shares you want, it tells you how much money you have, how much each share is at that exact minute, how many shares you can buy maximum based on share price and your bank, then you either purchase or cancel.

How Do I Sell Shares?

View your portfolio from: [DLMURL]https://www.ptsdforum.org/c/stocktrader/[/DLMURL]

Beside the share you want to sell all, or part, thereof, click on the 'sell shares' link.

From the popup, select how many shares you want to sell, and read how much the shares are, et cetera, then sell.

That deposits the money back into your bank for use in buying more shares.

Understanding Technical Aspects

This basic how-to is about using the stock trader. This is not an in-depth analysis on how to read markets and trends. Members should raise all such discussions in a new thread within the stock trader forum, for discussion.

No doubt there are many people around here who have depth of knowledge about such aspects.

 

[BlueKitty]

Question: Are we only buying and selling shares of the company shares?
What about trading options and ETFs? Also, can we short??

Sorry for so many Qs, finding out about this stock trading game had been the high point of my past few weeks.

 

[anthony]

Buy and sell public shares... don't know about options, ETF's or what short is. Please tell me.

 

[BlueKitty]

ETF stands for Exchange Traded Funds.
You know how the investment advisors always say "diversify your portfolio"?
In a way, ETF is a diversified portfolio in itself.

Simply put, ETF has characteristics of mutual fund, but is publicly traded like any other public equity in the stock exchange. It is a basket/bundle of commodity, assets, or stocks and is tracks indexes.
By investing in ETFs, you are hedging against the risk which stocks from individual companies face.

An example is SPDR (trade symbol SPY in NASDAQ), which is indexed to S&P 500.


Options are right to buy and sell things at a certain price.
Call option is the right to buy the quantity of underlying asset at a strike price (=your predetermined price).
Put options are right to sell the underlying asset, again, at your predetermined price, on or before a certain date.
Options are trickier to trade, so maybe we should leave this out.

Short selling is an investment technique.
The investor who short sells (= shorts) certain shares is essentially betting that the price of the shares will fall.
An investor short sells, then later 'covers' the shares to enjoy the profit or loss.

Let's say Company A is being traded at $40/share and the investor decides to short sell it at $40.
If the price of the share indeed falls to $30 and the investor 'covers' his share at that price, he enjoys $10 (=$40 - $30) profit. However, if the price of the share rises to $60 and the investor covers it at that price, he just lost $20.

Here's a real life example:
Facebook's IPO price was $45. Even before the IPO, I felt that the hype surrounding the FB price was getting too high and thought that Morgan Stanley(they were underwriting for FB) was almost purposefully overvaluing FB share prices. So, I thought it would be wise to short it. and Boom! Those people who actually bought FB shares? well,, it sucks for them because the price had been falling for FB since the first day and had been being traded around mid-high $20s in the U.S.

So, by short selling, you can still make money even in the bear market.

There is one thing to be careful: since there is no limit on how high the stock prices can go, short selling can be risky in that there is no limit on how much the investor can lose. So you want to have a little more sophisticated knowledge about the market before jumping in to short sell something.


It does not seem like the features I just talked about in this post are available at the stock game here atm?
If we do get these,, they are going to make take the game a step up and make it more interesting XD!

 

[anthony]

Well, I just learnt a whole lot more today. Thanks blue kitty... much appreciated for the schooling in this, as I've no idea about it, though do understand what you just said, funnily enough... well, for the most part. Options seem a bit tricky, but shorting I understand and diversification through indices.

 

[Lady of Longbourn]

Video was very helpful. Thanks. :tup:

 

[anthony]

I have updated the buying of virtual cash... it has changed.

 

[anthony]

Updated the available exchanges. Huge additions to available exchanges you can now use.

 

[anthony]

Updated with a found limitation, being a member can only own 200 unique symbols at once. Hopefully the next version will fix this issue.

 

[anthony]

Updated... fixed above issue with 200 symbols, so that is no longer an issue and you can buy as many symbols as you desire.

There is a $1 minimum share price introduced though to remove penny stock trading, which the system simply isn't built for penny stock trading.

 

[anthony]

I have updated the system to now use a 15 day hold of purchased stocks, before being able to sell them.

As being around for the first time for opening trade, I found it simply too easy to manipulate based on prior open settings, thus I have imposed settings to make it more difficult. The buy and sell costs are not yet functional, though once completed, they will also be imposed to implement a minimal gain to cover brokerage fees.

 

[anthony]

Updated above posts, as the 1000 stock limit was useless because that applied to per block purchase. In other words, you could buy as many blocks of 1000 of a symbol as you wanted. So I increased the hold time to 15 days and removed the purchase limit.

I also increase the minimum share price to $2, just to remove large gains on smaller stocks.