The FoH Stock Market Game

[Millie]

Originally Posted by Gahid

The secret to the stock market is to pick the most evil or trendy companies you can think of and sinking your money into them.

Hence why I was heavily invested in Altria from day one. :P

[prescient63]

Originally Posted by Burkex

Just curious could I make a 2nd account just to have fun with or 1 per person? Would anyone really care?

I would take this as a personal affront to the integrity of the game! IS NOTHING HOLY MAN!?!?

[Kindnugs]

So I want to Short Crox.. I am a little confused on how to do this.

Is the order type "Sell Short" and then the Pricing Type "Stop" to which I would put the number that I want to sell the stocks back at?

[Millie]

Yeah, it's kind of confusing on that site. I interpret "Stop" to mean "Cancel / do not proceed with the transaction at X price specified."

So in terms of shorting stocks, this would mean "Do not sell if the price dips to X." At least that's my understanding of it. I could be totally wrong, and if so, I may have just fucked up a big transaction...

[Kindnugs]

So do I put it as a "Limit" then and not a stop.. So if I buy Crox now at 45 or whatever and then set the Limit at 35 and when it hits 35 it sells it back?

oh fuck it. I'll just do some china trades or something.

[Burkex]

Lotta companies are releasing their earnings now you can gamble and invest all your money if you think they will have a good or bad year profitwise. Sell short or buy.

[tjac]

Can anyone fill me in on capital gains tax? Like if I walked away with my virtual earnings right now, about $7,000, what portion would I need to give to the gov't? Does the tax scale up with my returns?

[Morb]

A stop order means "stop loss." It means you'll sell if the stock falls below a certain price (or in the case of a short sale, you'll cover if it goes above a certain price). There are many arguments for and against stop loss orders -- on one hand, if your stock craters, a stop loss order can get you out before it gets bad. On the other hand, typical price fluctuations throughout the day could cause you to drop a stock when you don't really want to. Personally, I only use stop loss orders for short term, high risk investments.

A limit order is basically the opposite of a stop loss. For buy orders you specify a lower price than the current, and for short sales you specify a higher price. For example, "buy 100 shares of Google if the price falls to 650" (or "sell [short] 100 shares of Google if it reaches $750").

Both types of orders change into market orders at that price, so the price isn't necessarily guaranteed to be the one you specify.

Anyway, thanks for setting this up. In rl I avoid super high risk stocks like the plague, and I very rarely short anything, so this gives me an opportunity to play around. I'm "DalerMehndi" btw.

[Morb]

Originally Posted by tjac

Can anyone fill me in on capital gains tax? Like if I walked away with my virtual earnings right now, about $7,000, what portion would I need to give to the gov't? Does the tax scale up with my returns?

If you hold an investment for a year or more, you get charged the reduced "long term" capital gains tax, which is 15% (or 5% if your normal income tax is less than 15%, which is just the two lowest brackets I think). If you hold it less than a year, you get taxed as normal income (which is obviously significantly higher). If you buy back a "long term" sale within 30 days, you get charged the "short term" rate instead.

Generally when you sell profitable investments, you also sell some losers that you don't expect to recover anytime soon. That way you mitigate the taxes because your net gains aren't as high. You only get taxed on profits.

[Lowk]

Is there somewhere i can find a good online version of "Stock market for dummies"?

I am looking for solid explanation of terms. Typical market trends in conjuncture with season. Just a good resource for beginners knowledge. I tried googleing a few things and it was like i just googled pr0n.

[Kindnugs]

I'm reading Jim Cramers books. Still on the first one now, and is pretty good stuff. He's the guy who does the Mad Money show on cnbc.

[prescient63]

Originally Posted by Lowk

Is there somewhere i can find a good online version of "Stock market for dummies"?

I am looking for solid explanation of terms. Typical market trends in conjuncture with season. Just a good resource for beginners knowledge. I tried googleing a few things and it was like i just googled pr0n.

investopedia

[Hatorade]

Put in an order to buy and sell things yesterday at like noonish...still hasn't gone through.

[Millie]

Yeah, there's a crazy fucking delay on transactions. It's supposed to take 20 minutes in realtime, but mine usually take 3 or 4 hours.

All the more reason why I would make long investments on this thing and try to avoid day trading. I think the delays are purposely drawn out to deter trading.

[tjac]

Originally Posted by Millie

Yeah, there's a crazy fucking delay on transactions. It's supposed to take 20 minutes in realtime, but mine usually take 3 or 4 hours.

All the more reason why I would make long investments on this thing and try to avoid day trading. I think the delays are purposely drawn out to deter trading.

RCH has gone from 9.6 to 13.87 because of this news. I put in an order to sell 1350 of 3800 shares at 13.50. I'm not really in it for day trading, but it would be nice to be able to execute trades when sharp spikes are going on.

I was also thinking that maybe the program prohibits trades from happening if there are no similar transactions taking place on the real stockmarket? For example, if I try to sell, without a limit, but no sells are occuring at all, maybe it won't let the order complete? That might explain the longer than 20 minute delays.