Title: Trade primer for new stock brokers
Author: XanII
Script:TC Stock Exchange "The Evolution of a Financial Revolution" V4
GETTING STARTED
This small guide is meant for new players trying out the TC Stock Exchange "The Evolution of a Financial Revolution" Version 4 - script. It assumes you have read and understood the basics of setting up the script explained by the script author mark_a_condren here:
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=280559&start=0
It is strongly recommended to have the stock exchange script assigned to a specific key on the keyboard. I have it assigned to one of the keys left of my backspace key. This allows frequent use of the stock menu without the need to go via your ship consoles "special commands" - section to reach it.
As a default I have setup the script to have 5% commissions activated. However I will also take into account in this primer what happens when commissions are deactivated. In some cases this has a decisive effect on the outcome as the 5% commissions are applied every time you BUY or SELL something, so at a minimum you take a 10% hit when commissions are activated.
I recommend having commissions disabled only if you think you are not that very good with quick calculations in your head and you are not going to think much about what you do and just 'shoot away at random stocks'. Commissions disabled will make the general difficulty of the script "Easy" or "Very Easy" quite quickly.
I also recommend having 'limited stock' set to ENABLED. If this is disabled then you can easily waste all or most of your bank account if you are not careful when buying stocks. Secondly, it is unrealistic that the player can 'leverage' their bets with as much money as they want making those safe bets with low profits very very good earners with enormous leverage. However again, if you think you want to have this disabled then go ahead. It's your game and you play it whatever way you want to.
LOCAL EXCHANGES
Once you have the script assigned to a hotkey and have decided whether to have commissions activated or disabled in the script options, it's time to take a look at the main stock exchange menu. This menu contains both trade categories and reports. At this time we will ignore the reports (Items with word 'Summary' in them) as they will not be of much use until you have a trade history or have owned stock to look at.
Let's start off with the first item: Local exchanges. These are clusters of sectors in a certain area. For example, one of the first items in the list is the 'Argon stock exchange'. Now what is that? It means that this exchange is made up of ALL the Argon sectors around Argon Prime, 16 in total. Similarly, the stock exchange in Kingdoms End consists of ALL the sectors from Kingdoms End all the way down to Atreus Clouds. Note that the clusters can be HUGE (Heretics End contains all Terran sectors) or tiny (Pirate Anarchy Port). The exact sectors can be seen when opening up a local exchange. There is a "+" sign right at the top if you are unsure about what sectors the local exchange is made of.
Right, now you know that the Argon Prime local exchange is made up of all the local Argon sectors. Now what can you do with this information? You can use this information for the following activities:
1) Make share trades on non-real-X-world buyable commodities, listed under ‘Naturals’. These are actual items like 'Red Crystals' or 'Hacker chips' or 'Construction equipment', however they are not traded in vanilla X-games. If you have ever scanned/blown up civilian ships you might have noticed that they carry these strange items. Now these items are indexed and you can make share trades on them. With commissions and limited stock enabled it is important to only buy items in 90-100 Index range. Without those limits enabled you can do as you see fit. Just try it and see if you can make a profit. However with limits in place don’t try to push your luck too much. The Teladi brokers will fleece you! When the Index drops and the line shows profit then go ahead and sell. With commissions on: Be careful when giving the final order to sell. The actual 'x amount will be deposited to your account' must be bigger than the amount shown in green, being the profit sum on the previous page. V4 does not show the final costs. This will be changed in the future versions that will correctly show also the selling costs. Now it only shows the buying costs which are only half of the costs that are about to be incurred.
2) Make share trades on tradeable items: This can be weapons, shields or other normal everyday commodities that the player can buy from stations or manufacture themselves. The key here is the Index number which has colors ranging from red to green w/numbers ranging from 0 to 200.
Index:100 or slightly below. This is best time to buy. Obey this Index, it is your best friend. If you want a challenge or you have commissions disabled then you can also try your luck with items that have index in the range of 50-75 or 125-150. However if you have commissions activated, then you must follow this or you will lose money pretty much every time.
Index:125-200 means the ware item is in oversupply. The player can with their own actions remove excessive supply by actually buying the items with trade ships. However, from a stock exchange point of view the verdict is clear: Stay away from these until the supply somehow straightens itself out. With commissions disabled you might be quite safe buying Index 125 items, however, with commissions enabled you will lose money pretty much every time if you attempt these riskier Index levels.
Index:50-85 means supply has contracted below max capacity and demand is growing. This is not the time to buy anymore, however, if you have bought shares at a higher index then you are on your way to making some cash. If commissions are activated you will still be in the red, however, without commissions you probably now have a few credits to be earned if you so wish.
Index:0-50 means it is time to sell. If you bought at an Index of 100 and now the Index is 0-25, then you will have profits coming your way if you have commissions enabled. Without commissions you should have now made quite a lot of money whatever the Index is.
STRATEGIES / LOCAL EXCHANGES
The stocks are favourable to you when the INDEX DROPS. I.e. what you are basically doing here with the Index is making a future bet on what the price of commodity X is going to be soon. Needless to say the activities of the player and his/her trade ships can have a significant impact on the Index. Be prepared to influence the Index. It is actually something that is needed: If you bet on 200mj shields to drop in Index soon while your local traders or NPC ships keep filling up the equipment docks in the Argon Prime area, then you are in for a loooong wait. However if you first buy a lot of stocks and then dispatch your ships to collect all the 200mj shields, and then sell your stocks when 200mj shields are all scooped up from the EQ docks... well that a different story, and perfectly legal.
However, a word of warning: Always plan out your actions well if you do Order front running. You might not find all the items in the sectors that the stock exchange lists as 'in stock' and therefore you might end up in a situation that you have commissions enabled and are unable to drop the Index any lower than 25-40, which usually means you will take a hit when you sell. 'Front Running' is somewhat challenging sometimes and you don’t always end up with a profit if you have commissions enabled. If you have commissions disabled then this activity is a sure-fire way to always make some level of profit. I personally recommend having commissions enabled if local exchange trading with real X-world commodities is what you like most.
Here are two examples of Local Exchange trading. First one is a sure-fire bet with high initial investment but low profit and the second one is a risky bet with high initial investment but good profits if you are able to pull it of to the end. Commissions are enabled in this example.
Example 1)
Local Exchange: Kingdoms End
Item: Ion Cannons
Start situation: Demand 2, Stock 2. Index:100
You buy stocks prior to doing any real trades. If you have limited stock enabled, then you usually can only buy 10 stocks. The price of each stock is salty: the price is derived from the price of an actual Ion Cannon so if you buy all 10 you better have millions in the account. When stocks are bought you can either now send your ship to buy up the cannons, thus reducing the Index from 100 to 0 straight away, or you can wait awhile and buy more stocks before making the front running purchase thus building momentum. When you are satisfied with your stock holdings and perform the actual buying (or wait for UT/NPC’s to grab them) then it's time to sell when the Index hits rock bottom. Note though that even though you have locked millions into the stocks, the actual profits are also derived from the Ion Cannons price. So if you have commissions enabled and limited stock enabled, then you didn’t make that much money after all. This event can be labelled as a 'low-risk bet, but with equally low profits'
Example 2)
Local Exchange: Heretics End
Item: 1GJ Shield
Start situation: Demand 10, Stock 10. Index:100
Compared to Example 1 above this one contains more moving parts and is not as simple as it seems. First of all a lot of capital will be tied up when you buy the stocks. Then you better know where all the shields are located. When you are ready to deal with these items then do your thing and fill up your portfolio with the desired amount of stocks and then dispatch your ships to grab the shields. Do note that your local traders/UT ships/NPC traders can now more easily distort this operation due to the fact that the shields are all spread out in a lot of different stations. Also the amount to collect is no longer 2, it is 10 or at least close to 10 that you must collect to get some good profit out of this (commissions on). Thumb rule is that when there are more locations and larger numbers of items to collect then the more likely it is that something or someone distorts your 'perfectly legal front running' operation and you end up with a small loss. Note that commissions and limited stock enabled - settings have an even bigger meaning in this trade scenario. The point with example 2 is basically that sometimes you wind up attempting a more aggressive rip... uhm, 'trade' and notice that there is no way for you to 'complete' it properly, or then it becomes a nuisance and it requires a ton of your actual real-world time or tons of ships flying here and there looking for the shields. If this happens then you better acknowledge your losses and let go. Sell the stocks at a loss if that is what it takes to release yourself from them. V4 does not pay any dividends so holding on to stocks is pointless; turn them to cash once you are done. Holding money in stocks that cannot perform is equivalent to 'taking a loss' in the exchange world...
COMPANY INDEXES / LARGE CORPORATIONS
Second item in the main stock exchange menu is the Company Indexes. This item is divided up into two sections: At the top there are large cap companies like OTAS, Jonferco and Plutarch. These stocks are what I call 'preferred partner stock' and they resemble real life non-public tradeable preferred stocks the most. What does that mean? Well in a nutshell it means their value goes up and down according to how much time and effort you invest into them. If you are like a partner to them and if you invest time and money into them they will reward you handsomely by raising the stock price. These stocks are always medium or long term bets, rarely do you make anything out of them in short runs due to the way they are valued. This option is not good for poor players either. These are not stock options: stock doesn’t appear out of nowhere as options. They must be bought beforehand if you wish to benefit from these companies.
These large cap stocks can also act like normal stocks but only with commissions disabled. The catch is this: These larger companies stock values are calculated based on their net value. I.e. all their stations, wares, ships are calculated into the stock price. So if you blow up an OTAS transport, then the stock goes down and the price goes up, if you do successful missions for OTAS. I.e. build a mine that OTAS ordered...well, you do the math.
So you think you are a company man? Got the 'firm' Venti parked in the garage? Got an 'I <3 OTAS' Tattoo on your neck? Then these stocks are for you.
COMPANY INDEXES / SMALL CORPORATIONS
The last major Index are small cap companies. These are shown on the same page as larger corporations. Just scroll down the page. These stocks resemble real life publicly traded stocks the most and they are also just as erratic. Buy them in the 91-100 range and keep away from undervalued or overvalued stock. These bets are always short run or medium run bets. If you get stuck with small cap company stock that is far away from buying price and you have commissions activated then your only option is to either wait all eternity, or just accept that you got whacked, and sell of and retrieve some of your money.
GENERAL TIPS
* Small cap stocks appear at first like a casino stock system, but there are ways to gain the most while limiting your losses. I'll give a hint: Yaki stock exchange is the toughest of them all. Almost everything is an Index 200 item there, and the place is like a modern day Nikkei Index with nothing moving and everything in a zombie state. Keep away from there if you have commissions on. If you don’t have commissions on then this place can be a good place to try some really tough bets. Pirate Anarchy Port on the other hand is a vibrant trading hub with goods exchanging hands with very rapid speeds. I believe it is the limited amount of wares in circulation that creates such volatility here. Regardless, making bets here on items close to a 100 Index and you might get easy rewards with commissions on. Just don’t overdo it. Sometimes the prices run out of your range and you are stuck. Make pinpoint investments here and keep an eye on them. Don’t spread too much into different stocks.
* Large Cap stocks are the workhorse stock for company players. Don’t do them if you are a casual trader. If you do, then treat them as casino stocks with commissions disabled, If commissions are enabled you might as well just burn the money yourself or prepare yourself for a long stock position. No fast bucks to be made here folks!
* Real commodities trading is tougher than it looks. Plan and execute well if you intend to make money. Or keep to safe bets and bring the profits by leveraging the safe bets with extra stock. Commissions enabled are, imho, a must if you specialize in this trade. Way too easy with commissions disabled.
* If you buy small company stocks then keep an eye on the message bar at the bottom of the screen. It will occasionally show movement in the stock prices. Generally I just glance at them and if the price goes down by +2 I do absolutely nothing. However, if the price jumps by 4 or more then I go and see the status of the stock. Chances are it just jumped enough to make a good profit.
* Time, don’t waste it. You might have 12h real life playing time available but some of the stock bets here require you to use a whole lot of time to make the bets come through properly. This is the stock exchange scripts way of saying 'it's taking too long to make money, sell now and move along'. Also parking money into stocks is nothing more than a pure loss. With 0% profits its just money taken away from your bank when you need it most.
* Keep to local exchanges you know: It might be tempting to start investing here and there but don’t. Instead pick a few places where you invest. I do Argon Prime, Heretics End and Pirate Anarchy Port for the most. Occasionally there are others. The sectors differ from each other somewhat. Learn slowly as you go and stay in certain exchanges to begin with. This makes it easier to check up on the stock prices too if you don’t need to jump around in the menus too much.
* This script is an add-on to the X3TC experience. Don’t make this THE number #1 to do. Occasionally check the prices, make bets, have fun. But don’t forger to do all the other fun stuff you usually do in the X-universe.
EXPLOITS
This script does have at least one confirmed bug that allows cheating. I am not going to tell at this point what this is, but let’s just say that if you find yourself in a position where you can make tons of money by just doing large scale stock shifting back and forth using multiple ships then DON’T. You might as well install Cycrows cheat pack and give yourself the money. Much easier than fiddling around with this unpatched exploit. If you do find out what it is then just add it to your 'personal iron man rules' and play it straight.
The ink on that text hast even properly dried when i should probably edit the current text already. I seem to be getting deeper into the script all the time and detect differences that i havent seen before. 
I just cant understand why all of a sudden corporate stocks are such a bummer. and i actualy spoke about using them as 'quick bets'. well they sure dont behave like that for the moment being. 
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