f13.net

Remember 2007?  A time of champagne wishes and caviar dreams.  Our 401ks were fat and our kids were fatter.  The bling flowed freely.  Astronauts could still afford gasoline to roam the countryside in adult diapers, preying on younger, more attractive pilots.  The looming mortgage crisis was but a naysayer's whisper in the night.  F13's daytraders still had faith in the market and we played the F13 Investment Challenge. (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=11290.0)  But, yesteryear's market had none of the pulse-pounding, dollar-devaluing, rootin'-tootin' volatility of 2008!

So, let's do it again!

Since we tried VSE last time, I setup a game at Investopedia.  Nevermind, let's go with VSE.  There was some discussion about whether or not this simulator sucked, so if anyone has a better game post it before Monday.

Site: Virtual Stock Exchange (http://vse.marketwatch.com)
Game ID:  F132008Q4
Game Name: F13 Investment Challenge 08 - Ride The Lightning
Password: f13stocks

Starting Cash: $100,000

Game begins today and ends 12/31.  Winner is whomever has the greatest gains, or apocalypse allowing, smallest losses.

So doing it this time.

Or not, I keep getting an error trying to join after putting my password in.

Server Error in '/Game' Application.

Yeah, its extremely flaky - worse than last year.  If someone finds a better one, please post it.  I didn't go with Investopedia because it appeared to require personal invites (meh) and be limited to 10 players (bleh.)

Is there a theme, or is it a free-for-all to see who loses the least?

There are some very undervalued stocks out there and it could go either way in the next two months.  If the market gets really dicey, we could always shoot the moon and see who can lose quickest.

I'm trying to decide if socking away the money under the bed or finding a low risk 1% gainer is the best way to come out on top ..

As expected, those who didn't invest in anything yet came out on top.  At one point, three of my four picks were up.    :heartbreak:

Nothing like giving everyone a few days warning.

Is the site still broken or can you join now?

Edit- This game is dumb. You can only buy US stocks. Thats it from what I can tell. No playing treasury offerings, no ivesting in money markets or foreign currency (like the yen which is soaring right now) and no real investing in foreign markets. Its only US stocks, mutual funds and ETF's.

Well I have blown my $100k. I think I will hold what I have till the end and see where I end up.

This game needs a smacktalking feature.

Edit: The stupid game won't let me invest in Fannie Mae or AIG because they're worth less than $2 per share.  Shenanigans!

Ride the Lightning?

12,835 shares of Land America. I'll show you lightning.

Six orders in since last night. SO far it has not executed a single one this morning. This is some pretty slow ass lightning.  :oh_i_see:

Just saw a quick headline that stated financial stocks were making gains this morning in trading. Sure wish it had executed my fucking buy orders!!!!!

Yea, I am pretty fucking pissed that my order is just sitting there.

My two orders executed when the market started this morning.

My order ended up going through twice. LFG is basically in a nice freefall, as expected, and I look forward to owing virtual money to these virtual assholes.

So, um, where's a good listing of the stock names?  I know some of the companies I want, but we used newpapers to look at that sort of thing the last time I tried.  All I've found so far are the larger averages, not individual stocks.

If you type in the name of a large company in google it should give you the option to see the ticker and some stock info. If you type in the name of the company in the VSE 'make a trade' section of the game you should get the correct ticker too.
Here (http://finance.yahoo.com/lookup) is the Yahoo Finance lookup tool for corp tickers.

Thanks.  I fumbled through enough to get my initial picks.

I'm in.

As I thought, investing in banks and coal was foolish.  Who will be the biggest loser?

Not me (right now)!

(http://img.skitch.com/20081028-fy7nqiyku618ttiju5tti2cyur.png)

I'm in.

I just wish I had the real $$ to put in right now. It's a buyers market if you can sit for a while. Short term may not be so good, but before I retire it's got odds on being better.

Schild is crushing us all!

I'm in.  I know nothing at all about stocks or money, so I'm basically clicking buttons at random.  My goal will be to lose more money than Schild.

I couldn't be arsed Googling stuff so I just put all my cash into Google.

In my defense, it was two days before the markets reopened.  I think last week was the second test of the market's bottom, so this is a good week to get in, hence the short warning. 


Jesus, schild, today was the second largest single-day gain in the Dow's history, and you still lost money.


To mimic market conditions, trades are delayed like ten or fifteen minutes.  I'll see if I can change it to something shorter.


I'm no pro, but I like to go to Google News -> Business and read the headlines.  On the right are the stocks that have made news that day along with various stats.  I saw Google itself had good news today, so I grabbed some of it and, sure enough, it did pretty well.  This is called the 'Amarr Strategy':

Fuck!

Had some money in a bear market fund. Should have dumped it at noon today when the market rallied. Had a high of 155 and then bottomed out around 120 or so.

Took all the gains I made in JPM and HUM down with it.

That was basically my strategy last year.  Unfortunately, I failed to take into account the stock tanking days after investment.

Wehee, I'm in as well.

I'm in and have no idea how to play the market. This should be fun!

How is it possible that all four of my stocks have gone up... nonono!

I'm good at this. I submit that most of you all are doing it wrong.

I'm in!

Don't you mean?

Okay, I'm new to this stuff and I don't understand why I lost money  :cry:

I go and buy 1000 shares of AHG for $20.99 per share. Next day, BG acquires AHG. So now I apparently have 1000 shares of BG that are only worth $9.02 and I lost a shitton of money. Is this how it is supposed to work?

Just be thankful it's virtual.

Whoo! Gains baby! Probably from that news about some kind of GDP stuff... WHAT?

I'm in and tempted to sit on my 100k until the end :-D

I like how Schild went from dead last to first place in a day.

obv insider trading

He got the latest stock jewsletter.  I haven't read it yet.

sell sell sell!! That's pretty good turnaround.

No way, I'm gonna ride it, I ain't no pussy.

Tell us your sekrits or we show the rabbi the bacon thread.

Can we adjust the rules to allow stocks under $2?  :uhrr:

Can we adjust the site so it sells stuff when you tell it to sell, not half a day later when that shit has gone way down :ye_gods:
It's like a lagging eve fleet fight, you may hit the shoot button but you can't tell when it will activate.

Also, nerf schild's +50% hax.

Grand Design, you should do a caption contest with you avatar  :why_so_serious:

I looked at the rules and I can't adjust the timeframe - investopedia has many more options.


"This is serious business."

"Yes, serious business indeed."

"I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by committing insurance fraud."

Goddamnit. I am fucking awesome. I should tell my family to get in on this shit. >_>

Do they allow any shorting? I am guessing not on such a small time window.

edit: (yeah they allow shorting!) 

So WTF? CASH OUT!!

(http://img.skitch.com/20081103-jn5rsruw9sdpb7xhqmpg54g1yi.preview.jpg) (http://skitch.com/coreycrawford/4ta5/vse-lantyssa)

:oh_i_see:

I'm calling the SEC.

I'm fairly sure there's a huge math error there.

Also, I'm still the only one riding any sort of lightning.

My LDG bottomed out so far it looks like a UO chart.  I only thought I could lose all my money.  I didn't know it could drop so far I had to pay someone retroactively. :cry:

The real secret to my success is haxxoring the stock market.

It'll be interesting to see how that gets resolved as the company IKN was bought out appears to have been taken private last Friday.   Hopefully they'll give you the buyout price.

Edit: Your shares are priced in YEN now, ha!  Wish my 401K would do that...

There's a new stock market simulator game I want to try. Anyone want to try it out with me? Running a 1 week game with $2000 starting, just to see how it works. If it's better than VSE then we may use it going forward!

Join my free Stock Market Contest! (http://www.howthemarketworks.com/stock-market-game/join-a-contest.php?cid=1070) Starts Wednesday, Nov 5th. (password: f13stocks)

The link is broken. This works. (http://www.howthemarketworks.com/stock-market-game/join-a-contest.php?cid=1070)

Silly board changing my text, thanks. :)

This current stock site isn't so hot for daily managing your stocks, trying to set stops and limits.  I couldn't put safety net sell prices on my stocks last night before the open and now I am taking it in the shorts!  ( literally ! !)

An actual stock question. To fund my terrible addictions and essentially my college life, I've taken a job at the dreaded Wal-Mart (one of the first Superstores in Canada) and they're offering buying stocks. Should I take it in light of the shitty economy?

My virtual Wal-Mart stock's been doing reasonably well so far.  For what that's worth.

Do they give you a discount off of the face value at purchase?  Or is it some kind of option plan?
How long do you have to hold the stock?  How long until your ownership is completely vested?
What kind of (extra) tax reporting will you have?


If you just have the job for spending cash,  you probably don't want stock.

Just in class, so I don't have the pamphlet with me, but I'll take a look at the specifics and let you know.

This starts today - don't forget to make trades! Other than being a little clunky and advertising heavy, it seems alright so far.

Viin, I jumped in this evening.   

Is there anyway to see what others are investing in?  It is always fun to see what people are buying or selling.



So why is everyone so long on their purchases?  Go Short!  It is easier to pick a loser then a winner, right?

Oh thank god, I'm back on the bottom.

I don't see a way to see anyone else's stocks - that is annoying!


I donno, to me it seems like most stocks have gone so far down that they really can only go up from here. Might be easier to pick winners if the market as a whole starts going up - but who knows.

We might be in different contests, but I'm down 40%. In one day, biatch.

Yeah I need to know what you bought that dropped 40% in one day.  Care to share??

Camelot Entertainment Group - http://www.camelotfilms.com/stockquote.htm

Something is fishy though, I bought at .0003, and that chart shows it's been trading at .0005 for months.

You're buying Penny Stocks?

This is the last traded info from today I could find on the stock.  That is one messed up stock! :-)


Last trade                                    Bid                      Ask                     Range                     Volume
0.002     +0.0002 (+11.11%)     0.0019 x100     0.0024 x50     0.0018 - 0.0023     1,385,000

I think they just nuked my IKN shares.  I know it was messing everything up, but I'm not sure I got refunded even what I put into it.

Oh fuck yes. I'm tanking. How awesome.

Sell quick before it goes back up and invest in Sarah Palin endorsed engineering projects!

Up or Down day on friday..  fingers crossed!

Schild is clearly an inside trader.  no questions about it.

CHECK OUT THAT LIGHTNING!

Goddamnit. I'm back to $100k.

Dammit schild, I was shooting for bottom of the ladder.

For some reason I take a great deal of comfort from the fact that Broughden has stayed below $100k.

(http://dl-client.getdropbox.com/u/39720/me/winnar.png)

Damn I think I screw up my closing out my shorts today....  better safe then sorry I guess.

You're playing too seriously, Bstaz. Ride the lightning!

You are just upset that Im riding the lightning down almost as fast as Schild.

In all honesty though I might not be playing the game right. I bought three stocks I thought were very undervalued for the long term. Especially Humana and JP Morgan. But I might not see a return on that investment for a year or three.

-1,400. I win.

I really thought we hit the bottom last week.  8200 was my floor.

New floor?  I'm thinking 6700.

Fucking 401k.  Poof.

Well in the politics forum I predicted 7500 so we are there already. Im not making new predictions cause we are getting into scary territory now.

i think i won.

(http://dl-client.getdropbox.com/u/39720/me/WINNAR%21%21.png)

That's definitely riding the lightning.   :rock_hard:

(http://dl-client.getdropbox.com/u/39720/me/ride_the_lightning_final.png)

Congratulations to all the winners.

I mean winner.

Me.

I'm not sure how you ended up owing the market money, but that is impressive.

Probably the same way I had $500k for a few days.

Someone should find a better simulator for next time.  I tried and gave up.

Margin trading is a bitch.

It's awesome when it isn't your money.

I look forward to that screenshot being trotted out every time Broughden says anything about economics in the Politics forum from now until the end of time.   :why_so_serious:

I'm pretty sure Broughden has been in the "trust with a grain of salt (or less)" category since he arrived.