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[Goron]

Wall Street Raider v5.30
http://www.roninsoft.com/wsraider.htm

WALL STREET RAIDER (for Windows) is the ultimate in sophisticated financial simulations, a corporate takeover and stock market game and simulation, in which you strive to build your corporate empire by fair means or foul, all the while trying to stay one step ahead of the SEC, IRS, Justice Department, EPA, Congress, powerful unions and no end of ruthless competitors -- not to mention various manmade and natural economic and other disasters.

In this highly realistic simulation, 1 to 5 players (including the computer) compete to amass fortunes, investing in, or taking over and managing, any of up to 1590 companies in 70 industry groups.  Once in control of a company, you'll use all the tricks of the trade of real Wall Street corporate raiders to expand your empire and net worth:

• startups/IPOs
• tender offers
• greenmail
• stock-for-stock mergers
• LBO's
• "white knight defenses"
• antitrust suits and other litigation
• restucturings
• excessive CEO salaries and lavish stock options
• firing management
• asset restructuring
• mass layoffs
• tax avoidance
• asset-stripping liquidations
• industry domination

... and much more, in the quest for the Almighty Dollar. The individual player can also engage in risky (but sometimes lucrative) activities for his or her own account, such as short selling of stocks, or buying and shorting put and call options.

Ok... first off, does anyone have this game?
If yes, we could do some play by email. (Option A)
If no, I can play against the computer with audience input. (Option B)

Spoiler: Option A (click to show/hide)

Not hotseat multiplayer would be interesting. The game doesn't actually support play by email but I figure it can be done. Each player plays until their turn is up (they run out of transactions). Then they save and email it off to the next player. and so on... It would be slow, but an interesting experience.
We could keep track of what we do and post our transactions after each turn, along with screenshots or whatever. This would also save the other players the trouble of wasting time investigating the other players position every turn (since in a hotseat game you can plainly see what your opponent does, or easily keep up with the logs).

Spoiler: Option B (click to show/hide)

My just playing against the computer might be fun too.
I could play one quarter a day or so. I'd post what happened during the quarter and screenshots of any relevant info (controlled companies, watched stocks, finances, portfolios, industry stats, other requested info, etc.). Then between quarters you all could tell me what to do during the next quarter (buy, sell, investigate industries, watch stocks, etc.).
I think quarterly updates would be frequent enough to prevent missing any major trends or opportunities, while it would be a long enough period to actually see changes worth getting input on. All while being quick enough on my end that I'd never feel bogged down doing updates (A quarter can pass by in a minute, easily).
 Of course, the update frequency could be adjusted once we see how things go.

Spoiler: If you don't know the game... (click to show/hide)

Wall Street Raider (WSR) is fun.

Go to http://www.roninsoft.com/wsraider.htm and download the game. It is shareware- free to play a limited length game, but during that time you can get an idea of what its all about.

So I'll first wait to see if anyone has the game.
But I'll also see if anyone would even be interested in giving input for a community game like I describe in Option B.
If no one is interested in either, then I won't bother running the game.

now that I think of it, there is an Option C, too:

Spoiler: Option C (click to show/hide)

If other people have the game and want to do a succession game, that would be possible too.
We could each play for a designated amount of time (a year? 2? less? more?) then pass the save on.

[Spartan 117]

Do B please.

So, is this game like a fun, non-retarded version of Wall Street Kid?

[Goron]

So, is this game like a fun, non-retarded version of Wall Street Kid?

Lulz.
I remember looking up Wall Street Kid on Wikipedia some time ago when looking for other games like WSR. Needless to say, I was not impressed.
Having never actually played WSK, based on my best guesstimates I'd say "Wall Street Raider is nothing like Wall Street Kid."

WSR is a financial/stock/business/economics strategy/simulation game. NOT a tycoon game or an rpg. You don't control your 'character' at all. The only thing your character has associated to is credit rating, portfolio, and wealth. That's it.

I guess with at least one vote for Option B I'll go ahead and start a game tonight. If the idea goes badly I won't hesitate to quit:-)

To start, I'll try and post as much information about each industry and the economy as possible. Then you can decide what industries/other stuff you want more info on and I'll go get that.
From there you can probably start giving me instructions.
I figure the start will be the hardest part- since I'll need to give a whole boatload of info before we can even decide what path to take. But once we get started I figure things should go smoothly... maybe.

[Spartan 117]

Okay.

[Goron]

Let's give this a whirl:

Spoiler: Starting the game (click to show/hide)

Har.


The game screen.
File->new.


I select 2 players (must have 2) making the other computer controlled. It should have little affect on our game, unless we intentionally involve ourselves in Wally's business.
I change our name to Urist Dorf, for hopefully obvious reasons. Normally I start with 100 mil, but given the circumstances of this game, I figure 500m (default) will be wise.
Difficulty 2 (default), sure.
999 years (default), sure.


ok.......


Here we go!

Before we do anything, we get a notification about the Fed:

Spoiler: The Federal Reserve has shifted to a tight money policy. (click to show/hide)

Annnnd we're off!
Things get started quickly since I had the ticker speed set to 100 (max). By the time I manage to pause, 8 days fly by. You can see some of the events that have happened in the news section.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There are like ~9 sections to the main interface. Each is pretty self explanatory... I won't bother going into too many details about them unless you ask.

So, just to give an idea of whats going on...
We are Urist Dorf. A 500.00 millionaire. Right now we are completely fluid, all our money is in cash. We have no portfolio, no job, no investments... Just a bank account with Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi (MBK)

Spoiler: Personal Financial Profile (click to show/hide)

Just for fun:

Spoiler: Some info on our bank (click to show/hide)

Research Report:


Financial Profile:


Other stuff:

Time for some initial research.

Spoiler: Annual growth rates for all industries (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Economic Data (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Current Interest Rates (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: 100 Companies with largest cash balances (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: 130 Companies with largest tax losses (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: 100 Companies with largest market capitalization (click to show/hide)

Ok... Thats pretty much all I can show without going into details of specific industries.

I know I said I wouldn't, but I am now going to go into detail about the main interface...

Spoiler: The interface and stuff we can do (pic heavy) (click to show/hide)

The interface, again.


Info on the currently selected entity. This can be a player or a company.


Research tools.

Entity Info is where I can see all this stuff (as seen with MBK selected):

(See the bank info spoiler above for examples of some of these screens)


Transactions

Other than the obvious (buy stock, sell stock)
we can access these menus:




Most of these will change, giving more options,  if I have a controlled company selected. These options are all we see when Urist Dorf is selected.
For example, suppose I owned a company named Lada Motors, these are the options I'd have:




We do not own Lada Motors. I just loaded a different game up for these example images.

Other stuff:

From here we can...


My Balance.

This always displays our balance, no matter what company is selected.


Commodity Prices/Indexes/Indicators.

All important stuff.

Search functions.

Some of these buttons are shortcuts to frequently accessed stuff (like Research Report, which is otherwise accessible from Entity Info)
Others are unique, like Database search:

The database search can be very useful.

The stock quotes.

This is empty now, but we can mark specific stocks to follow. They will list here with the company name, symbol, and current price. A nice way to get a quick idea of how a company's stock is doing. (The price also color codes to show recent change, green=up, red=down, blue=same)
Here is an example of what it could look like with a bunch of random stocks:

(note, these are from a different save, so these are not accurate for this game)

News:

This is hard to keep up with. But pretty much everything that happens gets listed here.

The stock ticker

Even harder to keep track of than the news. but its also very important because thats where we pause:-)

Ok ummmm.... thats it!
It is currently January 13, 2010 (even paused, little bits of time passes with each menus you open).
We are Urist Dorf. We have 500 million dollars (and 500m in credit).

Now what?

[zchris13]

Donate to charity.

[Goron]

Donate to charity.

[Spartan 117]

Buy an up-and-coming Automobile manufacturor.

[Goron]

Buy an up-and-coming Automobile manufacturor.

I'll research the industry and post pics during my lunch.
Then you can pick which one.
Expect them in... ~2 hours.

[Goron]

Looking at the auto industries:

Spoiler: Auto-Asia (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Auto-Europe (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Auto-North America (click to show/hide)

Remember, we have 500m cash, but with credit we can essentially spend 1 billion. BUT, the second our investment goes down even a cent in value, we will have creditors knocking at our door demanding money- that will cause a 'tantrum spiral' resulting in major losses.

One way to protect Urist Dorf is to open a holding company with our 500m cash.
Then, the holding company will have ~ 475m in cash (after startup fees) and a credit line of about the same.
But again, should the holding company spend too much credit, we risk losing big monies.

There are other ways to get more investment capital- for example we can call for white knight investors (essentially sell ~12% of the company to a 3rd party).

EDIT: Also, we could found a new auto company- if that is not obvious.

[Spartan 117]

Any way we can get a slice of the action with Toyota?

[Goron]

Any way we can get a slice of the action with Toyota?

Sure.
Toyota stock is currently undervalued which will make it easy to buy into. The company itself seems to be doing ok with an AA credit rating. The 0.9 dividend is (while not !great!) on the higher end of the industry.

It seems the current management is trying to establish a new, lean and mean market force.
They have -3% growth but a moderately high R&D budget (6%).

The negative growth means that they are actually shrinking their business operations. They are  decreasing their sales capacity by 3% even though the industry calls for short and long term growth floating around 4-5%.

The R&D means they spend 6% of their sales on attempting to improve their products/services. It is a gamble, but usually bumping up your R&D will increase your returns. Your returns are essentially always like so:

Code: [Select]

Return = Potential Returns - R&DSo if a company's return is 6% with a 0 R&D, if they bump the R&D to 3%, the return will drop to 3%. BUT, over time the return will (hopefully) increase because of the R&D budget. So after a quarter the return may jump to 4%, then after another quarter to 5%. Then, the company could drop the r&D to 0 again and the returns would be 8%. Or the company could keep the R&D costs up, and hope for more increases- But, R&D is not a win-all. It is a cost and it is not assured to bring your returns up...


But, based on the info, it seems Toyota is trying to increase their returns, while cutting out fat. So... if we buy in now, its possible that after some time, the company can turn back around and bump up growth while maintaining a strong return.

My immediate guess is that this will bump the stock price in the short term as well as make the company more strong. Buying in now will be good for short term ownership as well as long term- I think.

Heres the only hitch:
Toyota is controlled by another company right now. That means some other company owns >15% of the stock. BUT, there is at least some available to buy.
At the moment I do not know how much is publicly owned (aka how much we can buy), but, if the amount we can buy is greater than the amount the controlling company has, we can take control of Toyota.

Also, to top things off, I have no clue how big the Toyota market cap is. As such I don't know how much we could buy in the first place.

I will figure this stuff out in a couple hours and post more info on Toyota.

[mainiac]

Set up or buy a bank to serve as your holding company then invest in poorly capitalized consumer goods manufacturing company and switch it's banking over to your bank.

[Goron]

Set up or buy a bank to serve as your holding company then invest in poorly capitalized consumer goods manufacturing company and switch it's banking over to your bank.

I like this idea- it is risky and fun.
but a bank will cost a minimum of 1billion to found (any other company can be done with 100m, but banks, and maybe insurance, cost a billion) and any existing bank will have a very high market cap.

Its possible we could get control of a small bank, but we'd likely just have 'control'... meaning barely over 15% ownership. And that would not leave a lot of money for us to buy up a consumer goods company.

But as I say, I like the idea- so I'd like to keep it on the 'to do' list for once we have some more capital, k? I just don't think its feasible with our current situation.

[Goron]

(accidental double post)
Also, I'll try and look into the banking industry tonight as well... even if we don't immediately act on it.