Wall Street Raider v.5

[Young Drachma]

The only real stock market sim on the text sim market is Wall Street Raider. It's hyper realistic and well...a text sim through and through. One guy makes it and does a good job with it.

In any case, a new version came out on April 1st.

Here's what's in the new update.

Here's the download link.

5.0 -- Released: April 1, 2009 (Major release)

* Options trading has now been extended to all corporations. All corporations except banks and insurance companies are now allowed to buy put and call options, sell "covered calls" against stocks they own, or sell naked puts or calls. They may purchase puts or calls if they have the cash to do so, but may only sell "naked" puts or calls if they meet certain creditworthiness requirements, including a minimum "BBB" credit rating. As in the previous release, a corporation controlled by a player cannot sell naked calls on a stock also controlled by the player, or buy puts on such a stock, except to the extent the parent corporation is selling calls and/or buying puts to hedge its ownership of stock in the subsidiary, in order to prevent conflicts of interest (using options as the equivalent or short-selling stock of a company you control).

Banks and insurance companies are only allowed to sell "covered calls" against stocks they own, or buy puts to hedge such stock positions (or do some combination of the two). They may not speculate by buying calls or selling "naked" puts or calls. However, they may buy back calls they have sold short or may sell puts they have bought as hedges.
* While corporations (other than banks and insurance companies) can usually speculate by selling "naked" puts calls short, there are limits based on the seller's financial strength. To make such "naked" option short sales, a corporation but have at least a "BBB" credit rating or higher, and cannot sell naked options if doing so would cause the total short liability (to buy the naked options back) to exceed 25% of the selling company's net worth. Thereafter, if the short liability exceeds 50% of net worth, the selling company will have to buy back some or all of the shorted options.
* In this new version, buying or selling options may sometimes be limited, since the Options Exchange now must lay off the risk for each new option you create, by finding a corporation that is able to take the other side of the contract. Thus, if you wish to buy calls on 5% of IBM, the program will search for a seller corporation that is able and permitted to sell calls short on 5% of IBM, under the same terms (same option exercise price and maturity date). If your transaction is too large, or if you have created too many large options contracts, you may not always be able to find a counterparty, at some point. (It is no longer an infinite financial universe in W$R....)
* The main W$R screen has been improved in a number of ways, to enhance usability and appearance. Six additional buttons have been added to the main screen "Quick Search Functions" area, so it is no longer necessary to open up a menu to bring up a Research Report, Earnings Report, Financial Profile, Shareholder List, Portfolio List, or Options Portfolio List. One mouse click now brings up any of those items. Three buttons that were formerly on the main screen (Market Share, Most Cash, and Largest Tax Losses) have been moved to the General Research menu. To view new main screen, click here.
* A new button has been added to the General Research Menu, the "Largest Market Cap" button. Click it and a list of the 100 largest companies will be displayed, ranked by their stock market capitalization (stock price times number of shares issued = capitalization). This list also shows each company's credit rating and who, if anyone, controls it.
* Buy Call, Sell Call, Buy Put, and Sell Put buttons have been added to the Buy/Sell Menu, for all corporations, now that options trading is permitted for all corporations.
* If there are any open slots on the Streaming Quotes List (which displays streaming quotes for up to 15 stocks), a stock will now be added to the list automatically if it is selected as the "Active Entity" (unless you have recently deleted it from the list).
* In the previous release, a feature was added that allowed a player to manipulate the earnings of a company of which he or she was the C.E.O., by adding to or drawing from "contingency reserves." This release extends that feature to any company that a player controls, whether or not he or she is C.E.O. of that company. Buttons for these functions have been added to the "Other Trans." Menu. The prior restriction, allowing such transactions only for a company of which you were the C.E.O., was too easy to get around, and simply was an unnecessary annoyance, so we have eliminated the C.E.O. requirement.
* In prior versions, you could use the "Spread Rumors" feature to bring down the stock price of a competitor's company, just before a game ends, so that there is no time for the opponent to sue you for slander and possibly win a judgment against you. In this version, you can no longer use the "Spread Rumors" feature in the last year of a game.
* In keeping with the spirit of these dismal times, we have decided that you fat-cat billionaire players, Big Oil, and other greedy mega-corporations were getting away with not paying enough taxes (since the maximum income tax rate in W$R only goes as high as 75%), so we have added a few new taxes on capital, none of them deductible from your income tax, to make life more interesting and more like today's mad, mad world. These new taxes on capital, which can pop up at any time (and can sometimes get repealed) are as follows:
o A "Wealth Tax" (annual) on players, but only to the extent your net worth exceeds $1 billion U.S. (or the equivalent);
o A "Windfall Profits Tax" on capital assets of oil and oil-related industries that applies when oil prices are high, regardless of whether the companies have any profits;
o A "Health Care Tax" that can be imposed on the capital assets of drug and biotech companies, as well as on health care providers and medical equipment companies;
o A "Corporate Shares Tax" that can be imposed on corporations that are incorporated in the U.S. and some other countries (paid by the shareholders of those companies, based on the stock values);
o A global warming "Carbon Tax" on a wide range of industries that either produce energy or consume a lot of it, like airlines, rail, trucking, and utilities, based on their capital (business) assets, not on profits (Chinese and Indian companies are exempted); and
o A "Personal Holding Company Tax" that applies to a company that is either a "pure" holding/trading company or has less than 20% of its assets invested in business capital assets and working capital, if the company is owned directly (51% or more) by you, the player. This tax is paid by the company on its net worth (if any) reduced by the amount of its business assets. (Banks and insurers are exempted.)

Tax rates and details for all these new taxes, and whether or not currently imposed, can quickly be found by clicking on the "Economic Statistics" button on the General Research menu. Each tax is paid quarterly except the "billionaire's" (wealth) tax, which is paid at the end of each year.

Of course, not all of these taxes will be imposed in any one game (usually), and the tax rates are often rather low, but they will be imposed often enough to keep things interesting, if you are in danger of becoming too filthy rich....

* Players who like for their controlled companies to have high stock prices (a la Berkshire-Hathaway) will no longer have the stock price automatically split at prices above 1,000. Instead, splits won't be mandatory unless the stock price rises to 100,000 or above.
* The Chapter 11 Bankruptcy reorganization provisions have been modified so that companies emerging from bankruptcy will now usually have at least a "CC" credit rating, meaning larger writedowns for shareholders and creditors, but the bankrupted company will now have a somewhat stronger balance sheet and a better chance of avoiding another bankruptcy proceeding.
* When trying to change banks, if you have a very large account balance (cash) to transfer to the new bank, it will not accept such a transfer of "hot money," which might cause its stock to soar, but only until you moved the money to yet another bank. (Sound of another large loophole clanging shut....)
* Players cannot sell "unvested" executive stock options, but the options "vest" and can be sold when the player is in dire circumstances and receives a margin call. In prior versions, a player could create a margin call situation in order to be able to sell the options, but now all bonds and stocks must be sold first when a player receives margin calls or has a negative cash balance that can't be canceled by borrowing. (Another, small, loophole closed.)
* This release is file-compatible with saved game files from prior versions 3.10 through 4.90, but not with versions prior to 3.10.

[Icy]

I'm curious, is it really a "game" or just an stock market sim? Do you have goals, competitors, etc? any kind of career mode or something like that?

[Philliesfan980]

For someone who works in Finance all day this seems like a lot of work. But it does sound very realistic for those who don't do this sort of stuff day to day.

[Young Drachma]

UPDATE NOTICE:
VERSION 6.21, WITH EXECUTIVE STOCK OPTION GRANTS TO CEO'S, STOCK CHARTING, PUT & CALL OPTION TRADING, SHORT SELLING (STOCKS AND OPTIONS), STREAMING QUOTES, COMMODITY TRADING, AND INTEREST RATE SWAPS (DERIVATIVES) IS NOW AVAILABLE

Wall Street Raider Updates Information

A major update of this came out a month ago. Just in case you were looking to replicate the real life financial meltdown.

[DaddyTorgo]

He's also about to start beta for an iPad version of the game...

[Young Drachma]

Wall Street Raider Updates Information

Wall Street 7 released a few weeks ago, apparently.

7.0 -- Released: November 1, 2013 (Major release)

We have continued to add more and more highly detailed commentary on industry and economic conditions and trend analysis, for many common or unusual situations, displayed in the sidebar on the Entity Info and General Research pop-up menus, as the "DAILY MARKET COMMENTARY."

In fact, most of the huge number of hours, on weekdays, holidays, nights, and weekends, that went into doing this new release, were spent on devising and refining these new textual commentaries, to ensure their accuracy and relevance to the facts at hand, as well as their realism. Our goal has been to not only make the "DAILY MARKET COMMENTARY" useful and realistic, but to make it read much like a column you might see in a financial daily like the Wall Street Journal, Investors' Business Daily, or the Financial Times.

Trading in physical commodities (oil, gold, silver, wheat, and corn) has been expanded. All corporations except for banks and insurance companies may now acquire and hold any of those commodities (incurring storage and insurance costs while they are held). Some companies, if not controlled by a (human) player, will occasionally buy and store a commodity if its price gets ridiculously cheap, and may sell it if the price eventually rises to a very high level. Of course, you can still trade futures on all of those commodities, too (as well as Stock Index futures).
Players or companies that sell commodity futures short can (if the user turns on a "Make Physical Delivery" variable on the Settings Menu) choose to have a physical commodity they own delivered when a short futures contract expires, in lieu of a cash settlement. In previous versions of W$R, the only type of settlement of expiring futures was a cash settlement.

Similarly, if you turn on the "Take Physical Delivery" variable setting, you can buy a futures contract on oil, gold, silver, wheat, or corn, and you will take delivery of the physical commodity at the agreed contract price at expiration, instead of having a cash settlement. (If you do this, be sure you have adequate cash or credit to make the purchase, or you will be in a forced liquidation mode!)
New features have been added that let players or companies post offers to sell a certain amount of stock, and in the case of industrial companies, offer to sell business assets, and also to buy such offered stocks (at 95% of current market value) or business assets (at 95% of seller's cost, per balance sheet), which other players or companies are willing to sell. Companies that are having cash flow problems will often offer some of their stock holdings or business assets for sale in this way, instead of making forced sales that may be at "sacrifice" prices on the open market. This is the first time that Wall Street Raider has made it possible for a player to buy stocks or other assets directly from another player or from a company controlled by another player, other than by tender offers in hostile mergers.

Two new buttons for posting items for sale have been added to the "MISC" Menu, and a new "For Sale" button has been added to the "OTHER TRANS." Menu. Click on that button to view all currently available offers and, if interested, act on one of them to buy stock without driving up the stock price or having to make a tender offer. Or have one of your companies buy offered business assets from an existing company in its industry, rather than buying new assets (which would increase industry supply and reduce industry profitability). In addition, by buying business assets offered for sale by another company (at a 5% discount), your company can avoid the somewhat common situation of having to pay a significant premium ("goodwill") when buying assets from another company, if using the "Buy Corporate Assets" button on the Buy/Sell Transactions Menu.

Any offer made by you or a company you control can be terminated at any time, by simply clicking on it, from the list of offers, and answering "Yes" when asked if you want to cancel it.

Some of the few restrictions on offers are that you or a company of yours can only have one offer to sell a particular stock at any one time, and you can't offer to sell more stock of a company than you actually own. If you own 10% of XYZ Co. and post an offer to sell all 10%, but then sell 6% of XYZ, the program will automatically reduce your offer to 4%. Similarly, a company can only list one offer at any one time to sell some of its business assets. If a new offer is posted, the old one is canceled. Once an offer to sell stock is posted, any company (subject to the usual anti-monopoly rules, etc.) may accept the offer, EXCEPT the issuing company, which can only buy back its stock in a "greenmail" buyback tender offer (at a significant premium over the market price).

If a buyer chooses to buy only part of an offering of stock or business assets, the rest of the offer remains in effect. For example, if ABC Corp. offers to sell $300 million of assets, and a buyer comes along and accepts the offer, but only for $100 million of the assets, the offer remains, but is reduced to $200 million of assets. All offers expire either at the end of the calendar quarter when listed, or, if the user chooses, at the end of the following quarter. Thus, an offer posted on July 25 will expire on either the following October 1 or on January 1 of the next year.
The simulation has been modified so that uncontrolled (by human players) companies will now randomly list offers to sell stock or business assets when their credit is too bad to borrow and they are experiencing a cash crunch. Other, stronger companies, with excess cash or good credit ratings will randomly buy some of the offered stocks or, if in the same industry, business assets, from the weaker companies, in a Darwinian fashion. Only the strong survive, in Wall Street Raider, as on Wall Street.

The ability to "look under the hood," to peek at important corporate data has been added. A "Who Owns What?" button is added to the General Research Menu. It brings up a submenu that lets you see a list of all companies that have long or short stock index or commodity futures positions; companies that own physical commodities; entities that have entered into "long" positions on interest rate swap agreements (and the identity of the "short" counter-party); companies that have long or short put or call options positions; companies that own stock in other companies; and companies that are paid investment management fees by the Exchange-Traded Funds.

Each of those six listings also provides details as to amount, percentages held, or fixed interest rate for swaps, and also identifies the commodity, stock, option, or terms and types of interest rate swap, for each company with a position in any of the above-mentioned instruments. Clicking on any item will select the company in question as the new "active entity," if you wish to do more research on the company, or buy or sell short its stock.
A new button has been added to the Buy/Sell transactions menu. It now has a "Trade Futures" button, which allows you to trade commodity or stock index futures, and a "Trade Commodities" button that allows you to buy or sell PHYSICAL commodities. However, the "Commodity Trading Desk" menu that pops up when you click on either of the above buttons also has a toggle button, which lets you toggle between trading futures and physical commodities, without having to exit the "trading desk" back to the Buy/Sell menu or main screen.

Greenmail buybacks are now allowed unless the seller is a human player, or is a company controlled by a human player. Thus, a greenmail buyback is now allowed where the seller is the computer player, Wally Raider, or a company that is controlled by the computer player. However, the premium you will need to offer in that case will be considerably higher, generally, than you would need to offer to a seller that is not controlled by any player. Therefore, you can now force the computer player to sell a stock it (or a company it controls) owns in a greenmail buyback, but only if you are willing to pay a very large "greenmail" premium for the stock.

Similarly, In prior (recent) versions, you could make a tender offer for shares of a company held by another company, but not if the holder was controlled by another player, or if the holder was another player. That rule remains in effect, generally, for a stock owned by another human player or if the stockholder is controlled by another human player. But in this new version, you can now make a tender offer (at a very sustantial premium over the market price of the stock) for shares owned by the computer player, or owned by a company that is controlled by the computer player, Wally Raider.

Small (under 5% of a company's stock) LBO or greenmail stock buybacks are no longer allowed, unless the LBO buyback offer your company makes is for all of the company's remaining publicly-traded stock, or if the greenmail buyback offer is for all the shares held by the selling shareholder.

We have closed a loophole, when a merger is pending, with an uncontrolled company offering to acquire a player's controlled company. Previously, you could have your targeted company declare a large extraordinary dividend, reducing its value, while still receiving the same amount for its stock from the acquiring company in the merger. Nice trick! In this new version, however, any such sneaky action will cause the pending merger offer to be canceled. Similarly, a greenmail or LBO stock buyback by the targeted company, which would also reduce the company's net worth significantly, will also cause the pending merger offer to be withdrawn by the acquiring company.
This release is file-compatible with saved game files from prior versions 6.0 to 6.70, but not with versions prior to v. 6.0. (Note that files saved with a newer version cannot be used in an older version, so if you are playing with another person and by e-mailing the saved data file back and forth after you each take your turns, you must both be using the same registered version of Wall Street Raider.)

[Young Drachma]

Version 7.5 of W$R was released in April:

VERSION 7.50 IS NOW AVAILABLE, WITH NEW "CHEAT MENU," AN "AUTOPILOT" FEATURE FOR MANAGING MULTIPLE COMPANIES, STOCK INDEX FUTURES TRADING, EXCHANGE-TRADED FUNDS, INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT CONTRACTS FOR ETF'S, EXECUTIVE STOCK OPTION GRANTS TO CEO'S, STOCK AND COMMODITY CHARTING, PUT & CALL OPTION TRADING, SHORT SELLING (STOCKS AND OPTIONS), STREAMING QUOTES, COMMODITY TRADING (FUTURES AND PHYSICAL COMMODITIES), AND ABILITY TO CREATE INTEREST RATE SWAPS (DERIVATIVES)

The autopilot feature is huge, because the game gets unwieldy after a while.

[Young Drachma]

He's on version 7.8 now:

Wall Street simulation

Might check it out, very FOF-like in its garish interface but the most powerful stock market sim on earth.

I guess he has a new game too called "Speculator" where you play as a middle class investor: http://www.roninsoft.com/speculator.htm