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Car Stock Exchange My feedback on CSX
17 messages, Last post on Apr 23, 2009 at 6:11 AM
You are in the Car Stock Exchange Forum.
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Mike & the gang at edmunds: My feedback regarding CSX is below, for what it's are worth. I've spent some time with the interface the last few days and here are my thoughts. You've made a fun game here, unfortunately the incentive provided to play (monthly prize for highest net % gain) has absolutely nothing to do with accurately estimating vehicle sales in the first six months of production. I assume the goal here is to utilize the opinions of several thousand people to determine the perception of certain vehicles and use that as a gauge for upcoming sales activity. I can see how this would be a valuable tool for edmunds to be able to leverage in the marketplace. However, there are a few fundamental issues that I think you may want to consider. 1) If the prizes are monthly, the stocks should correspond to monthly sales, not 6 months worth of sales. You can easily do a statistical extrapolation for a 6-month number if that's what you'd like to use as a quotable stat. 2) The price should also be capped at 125% of the current average monthly production volume for said vehicle. While it's good to have a little overrun to show that demand for a certain vehicle may exceed supply, having too high of a ceiling leads to trading shenanigans and inflated prices, which don't serve your purpose. 3) You need to limit the number of transactions per day per person. While it's fun to dink around and make short term gains with lots of buying and selling, that's not the point here. A transaction limit will also ensure that people who don't have as much time can still participate and not get buried by people making hundreds of trades a day. I've tried to demonstrate over the last 48 hours how this can happen. 4) You need to change your short calculations. Short calculations should be based upon current stock price, not the difference between the current price cap and the stock price. The current system makes no sense as it doesn't stay grounded in the overall price of the stock. For example: Current system: Car X is at $95 a share after having an IPO at $15. I decide to short it, only having to pay somewhere around $5 a share for 50 shares ($250) and setting myself up for a killing in the long run, both in terms of dollars and percentage. It finally drops to $50 a share, and I cover my short sale for a total of $2500, a 1000% gain and a profit of $2250. While I understand this is intended, it over-represents how profitable that short should be. The stock is at $95, it's a no-brainer that it's going down eventually, there shouldn't be such a lucrative result from shorting it, this just encourages trading shenanigans and relies on luck and timing instead of thoughtful decision making and strategy. How it should be: Car X is at $95 a share after having an IPO at $15. I know it's going down, so I decide to short it. However instead of only paying $5 a share, I pay $95 a share. So for 50 shares that costs me $4,750 instead of the paltry $250 in the example above. When the stock gets to $50, I cover my short sale with an effective share price of $140 and the transaction yields $7,000. Now I still made $2250, but it's only a 47% gain instead of a 1000% gain. This would dramatically improve the risk/reward balance of shorting and fix some of the volatile trading problems that currently exist. 5) You need to provide the following information for each stock: Current total production, total 6-month Production Capacity, IPO price, and transaction volume. 6) Format should be modified to have a profile summary at the top of every page so you can always see your net worth and available cash, that will clear up room in various trading menus so that you only see the information pertinent to the transaction. 7) Make the Estimated Price Per Share text larger and easier to see. Also, having a specific color/bolded text for short/cover prices would be ideal as that is going to remain very confusing for people. 8) The charts are not very helpful, they should have options for a 30 day display, which would make sense if you converted the prices to monthly sales anyway. Overall though, good first crack at this thing, the trading mechanisms work surprisingly well. To be honest I'm surprised it didn't break down when more traffic started to hit. Let me know if you have any questions. Good luck, dl |
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Replying to: doctorlove (Mar 05, 2008 12:32 pm)
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Replying to: doctorlove (Mar 05, 2008 1:00 pm) Great suggestions. I'm impressed with the amount of thought and detail that went into your post. In reviewing the game this month, and feedback from various players including yourself, we will consider several of your points. In the end, the messaging on the site and the game play should be as intuitive as possible, so your ideas are right in line with where we want to take the game from here. Keep in mind, that we needed to see how the action went before we could even consider any changes. We needed to see how players used the trading mechanisms and what sticking points (such as Shorting) they would encounter. I have compiled feedback from the last week and will update everyone on the changes we intend on making going forward. Please stay tuned for more details. Thanks again for your thoughts. Mike CSX Game Supervisor
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Replying to: mikedrud (Mar 05, 2008 1:42 pm)
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Replying to: vq356mt (Mar 05, 2008 1:59 pm)
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Replying to: vq356mt (Mar 05, 2008 2:07 pm) We want to continue to enhance the game, but some of the changes are more challenging to make (in terms of building site functions) than you might think. Having said that, I don't want our players to limit their suggestions to low hanging fruit (easier amendments), so thanks for this. Other players have made similar suggestions to help everyone track daily activity better. Best, Mike CSX Game Supervisor
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Replying to: mikedrud (Mar 05, 2008 2:11 pm) |
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I'd like to see my breakeven price as well. I'm pretty good at doing quick calculations in my head but I get exhausted after 15 mins of that. It would also be really cool if the quotes were listed in real time (instead of refreshing the page constantly). I understand that would be one helluva undertaking, though. |
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Showing last 60 days transition is too long that it is taking more time to load my portfolio page as I make trades more and more. Showing only 1 day or 2-3 days of trades would be sufficient for almost all users.
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Replying to: chung (Mar 05, 2008 4:52 pm) Good suggestion. Mike CSX Game Supervisor |
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Car Stock Exchange My feedback on CSX
