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Extremely Confused

30 messages,  Last post on Apr 04, 2008 at 12:13 PM

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#5 of 30
Re: Extremely Confused [comp386] by auditt311
Mar 14, 2008 (6:39 am)
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Replying to: comp386 (Mar 14, 2008 6:34 am)

Basically the high prices are just do to inflation. Every player started with $1,000,000 and it was (and continues to) burn a hole in their pockets. They want to spend it. And with so many players and so few stocks to choose from (for now), the stocks are jacked up to what people will pay for them. There are just too many dollars in the marketplace for this particular number of stocks. I would recommend adding as many stocks (3 per week, preferably) as quickly as possible in order to more evenly distribute eveyone's money.
#6 of 30
Re: Extremely Confused [auditt311] by comp386
Mar 14, 2008 (6:46 am)
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Replying to: auditt311 (Mar 14, 2008 6:39 am)

I don't think it's just that people have too much money. I think the algorithm is broken. In a normal stock market, people would step it with lots of money and short these stocks to death. In 6 months they'll reap huge payoffs on any suckers that decided buying a $72 stock with an estimated $6 value was a good idea.
#7 of 30
Re: Extremely Confused [comp386] by doctorlove
Mar 14, 2008 (7:03 am)
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Replying to: comp386 (Mar 14, 2008 6:46 am)

The point your missing is people aren't trading for a return six months from now, they are trading for a return two weeks from now because that is how the prizes are awarded.
 
Even if you're playing for a 6 month return, throwing a bunch of money into shorts and letting it sit there isn't going to get you very high on the leaderboard. The people who make a high percentage gain are making money off of all the price movement along the way.
#8 of 30
Re: Extremely Confused [mikedrud] by felonious
Mar 14, 2008 (7:37 am)
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Replying to: mikedrud (Mar 14, 2008 6:20 am)

"The prices are way out of line, because traders enthusiastically jumped into the market without considering unit sales projections. They just bought vehicles stocks for cars they were excited about [...]"
 
This is the part that gets me. If I think a certain car is going to sell more than its current stock price reflects, I'm going to buy it, and buy a lot of it. Unfortunately, due to the game mechanics, that will cause the price to skyrocket into a realm of impossibility versus real-life production capabilities. That appears to be a flaw inherent in the system.
 
This kinda brings me back to my previous "was a million too much" post, because a million dollars will buy a LOT of $7 stocks. I think a thousand dollars would have kept prices more reasonable because a given individual would not have the ability to affect the stock price as drastically.
#9 of 30
Re: Extremely Confused [doctorlove] by comp386
Mar 14, 2008 (7:57 am)
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Replying to: doctorlove (Mar 14, 2008 7:03 am)

"The point your missing is people aren't trading for a return six months from now, they are trading for a return two weeks from now because that is how the prizes are awarded."
 
I do a lot of short term investing and that still doesn't mean I'd invest in something this ludacris. That's like going on InTrade and bidding up a single person's chance of winning the presidential election to above 100%. I may not plan to hold that purchase until time expires, but I sure as well will not invest in something stupid. The point of a prediction market is to predict something. This is just random guessing. Something is wrong with the algorithm the exchange is using. Either that or this is Holland tulips all over again.
#10 of 30
Re: Extremely Confused [comp386] by mikedrud
Mar 14, 2008 (8:20 am)
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Replying to: comp386 (Mar 14, 2008 7:57 am)

Interestingly, com386, you are not the first to note that stock prices are not just overvalued generally but also exceed production capabilities, and this is something we'll have to look further at. We capped most stocks at $100 to allow for a lot of play, but we are looking at all aspects of trading and the relationship of production capacity and price caps is a compelling one for the game.
 
Continue to post on these forum pages, because we are listening. A lot of players have already provided us with great feedback, and since the game is still in beta, that feedback is going to help us prioritize changes to the game in the coming weeks/months.
 
Thanks,
 
Mike
CSX Game Supervisor
#11 of 30
Re: Extremely Confused [comp386] by doctorlove
Mar 14, 2008 (9:39 am)
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Replying to: comp386 (Mar 14, 2008 7:57 am)

The way CSX currently differs from the real world is there is a very limited number of options of what you can invest in, and there is a tremendous amount of money in the system that is only of use in purchasing those limited number of investment options.
 
Therefore, regardless of whether a car will be in demand or not, car stocks to invest in are in high demand because they are so scarce, and they are the lifeblood of the game. No one is going to make money in the game by NOT investing, and there aren't a myriad of alternative investment choices like there are in the real world. These car stocks are what you have to make money with, period.
 
This is why all the stocks (except Corolla of course) have settled in the $60-$80 range - currently demand for stocks is occluding any rational appraisal of sales pace for each car.
 
So maybe you are wondering why everyone isn't just shorting and driving the price down down down. The reason is people join the game don't know what they are doing and people who are high-volume traders are engaging in profit taking - people are trying to make a big short term gain, therefore they are trying to take advantage of any movement in the stock. So if you have a short position, the stock goes down because other people short it, instead of just sitting on your investment, you cover your short and wait for another localized peak to short again and keep making a return as the stock price covers the same range over and over again, up and down. If I just have a long term short position, if the stock goes up 5 points today, my net worth loses some value. If I'm trading constantly I might spot the daily low and cover some of my short, wait for it to hit a daily peak and short those shares again.
 
So until some of these stocks get near to the point of retirement, I think the supply of stocks is going to be primarily what determines price. Once we do get nearer to retirement, you'll start seeing people unloading any buy positions in these stocks, and dumping heavily into shorts, and maybe, just maybe, in the last couple days of trading we'll see people start considering whether unit sales will be 500 units above or below the projection. But realistically, any variance from projected unit sales is going to be a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the massive amounts of CSX dollars that will be made between the initial IPO surge and retirement.
 
So yeah, there are some major issues with how the system is currently working, and I'm sure the development team is going to consider their options along the way for how to make it better. But it's a learning process for them, and for us. This is a beta phase, meaning this is not intended to be a finished product as it is, this is experimental, this is new.
#12 of 30
Futures by yuant
Mar 14, 2008 (10:21 am)
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I think the problem is more fundamental. These are not stocks, they are financially settled futures. They have a known "settlement" date when your holdings will be settled to a published price. I think the game should be changed to model these as futures. To battle the problem pointed out by Dr Love and others (that there is no reckoning to reality until the settlement dates which are 6-months out or more), I think you should have monthly contracts in each of these "commodities." March 08 Corolla will settle to the actual sales volume for that month. April 08 Corolla to the April sales volume, etc. That way, those who are way off the mark will pay much sooner and more in line with the way the prizes are awarded.
#13 of 30
Re: Futures [yuant] by doctorlove
Mar 14, 2008 (11:06 am)
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Replying to: yuant (Mar 14, 2008 10:21 am)

And to take that a step further, all investments could be automatically "cashed out" at the end of each month, and only then will the final percentage increase be calculated and the winner determined. The developer's counter-argument to this is that month-to-month sales can fluctuate significantly due to other short term issues such as supply constraints and such, but a 6 month period would allow for a greater period of time for those inconsistencies to smooth out. Unfortunately, the reward isn't based upon a 6 month period, but a 1 month period, so that's one of the major disconnects.
#14 of 30
Re: Futures [yuant] by comp386
Mar 14, 2008 (11:27 am)
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Replying to: yuant (Mar 14, 2008 10:21 am)

The reason these problems don't exist in real life is because of arbitrage. Let's say in real life you have a future that the expected payout in 6 months is $6 but the current price is $72. I would short the stock continuously by borrowing credit with a bank. I could do this up to the point where the interest charged by the bank compounded exceeds my potential profit. Now techinically I don't have an infinite like of credit, but for all intents and purposes there are financial institutions out there would have that capability. However, this scenario is designed so that there is no borrowing or lending or any account of leverage. So I can short this stock only to the point where I have liquid assets to cover my positition. There are two conclusions one can draw from these prices. One is that the game and market's very design is flawed. The other are that participants are not rational. Both can be true of course.

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