Stock Market Enhancement (with screenshots)

[counting]

wow last post was from jun 2013.... Counting wtheck lol

This is how long stock market bugs and exploits had been plaguing us. I know too much and have to stay away from touching stock market in normal games, just using stock market to buy in my own company stocks with personal cash, nothing else. Otherwise, once you know the easy way out, it takes the fun out of it.

Don't set the competitor's start up to low.. Well if you only want to highlight the loophole , then it is ok..

For more fun, set the game difficulty more than 300% with competitor's start up cash, aggressiveness , expertise to VERY High then you will find a lot of challenges.. You won't able find so call the "stock loophole" in this setting..

Further if you set your start capital to very low or low, it will be more challanging..

Juz wondering why the feature at challenge game and custom game is different setting, on challenge game, I only able to buy 1 time a day for share while in custom game, it can be multiply in a day..
Should set as 1 time a day for custom game as well.

It doesn't matter if competitors are set with low starting capital or high, once you can muster enough capital to buy over 50% the first company A, the rest is just cash from debt out of thin air. I used low capital just so I can use less time to setup experiment environment (you can leverage as much as you want into negative, after the game is paused). It doesn't matter if players use these loopholes at the first day or any time in the game, still creating massive cash out of nothing (I am not talking about cheat code level 10m at a time, it's billions at a time even trillions late in the game). I use the first day just as a shock factor to get people's attention. Not to mention all the other loopholes exist (no matter alternative stork market is turned on or off), like the old "burn cash" trick still works, just not as impressive as "burn through into negative", or oscillation trick where you can always be sure to gain positive return in stocks no matter what, or cook books to inflate stock price, or insider trade tricks (this one doesn't work in alternative though).

As for trade quantity limit I don't think it's a good idea, there's no analog in real life to limit large quantity of shares purchasing, and certainly not fair considering a company only has 10m worth outstanding share 1m per 5%, the same as a 10b worth company 1b per 5 %. It's just unnecessary asking player to unpause and pause after a day many many times of 5% just to buy 10m worth of shares.

[kie99]

It doesn't matter if competitors are set with low starting capital or high, once you can muster enough capital to buy over 50% the first company A, the rest is just cash from debt out of thin air. I used low capital just to avoid more clicks, and some waiting (you can leverage as much as you want, after the game is paused). It doesn't matter if players use these loopholes at the first day or any time in the game, they still just creating cash out of nothing. I use the first day just as a shock factor to get developer's attention.

As for trade quantity limit I don't think it's a good idea, there's no analog in real life to limit large quantity of shares purchasing, and certainly not fair considering a company only has 10m worth outstanding share 1m per 5%, the same as a 10b worth company 1b per 5 %. It's just unnecessary asking player to unpause and pause after a day many many times of 5% just to buy 10m worth of shares.

It is matter, you can try set your capital at very high + competitors capital at very high..
Well, you can muster enough to buy over 50% maybe in first 2-3 months, HOWEVER since competitors have lot of cash, you CANT issue share to parent company much.. You can try this and let me know if I'm wrong..

Since you know there is trade loophole, I believe the trade limitation is the temp solution.
We don't need keep exploiting the loophole, I think the solution for this will be quite hard as need to increase the AI smartness, need a lot do a lot of programming, I doubt the batch will come out very soon..

[counting]

It doesn't matter if competitors are set with low starting capital or high, once you can muster enough capital to buy over 50% the first company A, the rest is just cash from debt out of thin air. I used low capital just to avoid more clicks, and some waiting (you can leverage as much as you want, after the game is paused). It doesn't matter if players use these loopholes at the first day or any time in the game, they still just creating cash out of nothing. I use the first day just as a shock factor to get developer's attention.

As for trade quantity limit I don't think it's a good idea, there's no analog in real life to limit large quantity of shares purchasing, and certainly not fair considering a company only has 10m worth outstanding share 1m per 5%, the same as a 10b worth company 1b per 5 %. It's just unnecessary asking player to unpause and pause after a day many many times of 5% just to buy 10m worth of shares.

It is matter, you can try set your capital at very high + competitors capital at very high..
Well, you can muster enough to buy over 50% maybe in first 2-3 months, HOWEVER since competitors have lot of cash, you CANT issue share to parent company much.. You can try this and let me know if I'm wrong..

Since you know there is trade loophole, I believe the trade limitation is the temp solution.
We don't need keep exploiting the loophole, I think the solution for this will be quite hard as need to increase the AI smartness, need a lot do a lot of programming, I doubt the batch will come out very soon..

Yes you certainly can, the reason why this trick work is because you can issuing into negative when game is paused, and the market price won't reflect the real company value immediately. DO you want me to provide a save file? Or do you want to try it yourself and see how it's done?

[counting]

It doesn't matter if competitors are set with low starting capital or high, once you can muster enough capital to buy over 50% the first company A, the rest is just cash from debt out of thin air. I used low capital just to avoid more clicks, and some waiting (you can leverage as much as you want, after the game is paused). It doesn't matter if players use these loopholes at the first day or any time in the game, they still just creating cash out of nothing. I use the first day just as a shock factor to get developer's attention.

As for trade quantity limit I don't think it's a good idea, there's no analog in real life to limit large quantity of shares purchasing, and certainly not fair considering a company only has 10m worth outstanding share 1m per 5%, the same as a 10b worth company 1b per 5 %. It's just unnecessary asking player to unpause and pause after a day many many times of 5% just to buy 10m worth of shares.

It is matter, you can try set your capital at very high + competitors capital at very high..
Well, you can muster enough to buy over 50% maybe in first 2-3 months, HOWEVER since competitors have lot of cash, you CANT issue share to parent company much.. You can try this and let me know if I'm wrong..

Since you know there is trade loophole, I believe the trade limitation is the temp solution.
We don't need keep exploiting the loophole, I think the solution for this will be quite hard as need to increase the AI smartness, need a lot do a lot of programming, I doubt the batch will come out very soon..

For the second problem, NO I don't agree it's the right solution. You just arficially create an unwanted mechanic, where this particular loophole can be plugged by blocking or limiting how negative you can go into debt when issuing to parent company. And no AI temper required. As for other loopholes they have other solutions, do you want me to list them all? I've added a lot in the previous reply, feel free to ask how each of them can be done.

[counting]

It doesn't matter if competitors are set with low starting capital or high, once you can muster enough capital to buy over 50% the first company A, the rest is just cash from debt out of thin air. I used low capital just to avoid more clicks, and some waiting (you can leverage as much as you want, after the game is paused). It doesn't matter if players use these loopholes at the first day or any time in the game, they still just creating cash out of nothing. I use the first day just as a shock factor to get developer's attention.

As for trade quantity limit I don't think it's a good idea, there's no analog in real life to limit large quantity of shares purchasing, and certainly not fair considering a company only has 10m worth outstanding share 1m per 5%, the same as a 10b worth company 1b per 5 %. It's just unnecessary asking player to unpause and pause after a day many many times of 5% just to buy 10m worth of shares.

It is matter, you can try set your capital at very high + competitors capital at very high..
Well, you can muster enough to buy over 50% maybe in first 2-3 months, HOWEVER since competitors have lot of cash, you CANT issue share to parent company much.. You can try this and let me know if I'm wrong..

Since you know there is trade loophole, I believe the trade limitation is the temp solution.
We don't need keep exploiting the loophole, I think the solution for this will be quite hard as need to increase the AI smartness, need a lot do a lot of programming, I doubt the batch will come out very soon..

And here is the save with 328% difficulty and very high AI starting capital, I only burn through 20 times in step 5, get a billion out of it (you could gain more with more burn through). And due to the inflated assets after the merger, I'm able to take 2.3 billion bank loan, result in over 3 billion available capital at hand in Apr/6 of the first year (if don't care about over-priced stock purchase, it could be done sooner in March with less gain). And due to I merger with stock-focused corporations, It took a little more starting capital to takeover the initial target company, however I do get some stock assets afterward. And the funny thing is due to I didn't burn through the target company B enough, it could actually survive afterward, just massive in debt with loans.

[kie99]

And here is the save with 328% difficulty and very high AI starting capital, I only burn through 20 times in step 5, get a billion out of it (you could gain more with more burn through). And due to the inflated assets after the merger, I'm able to take 2.3 billion bank loan, result in over 3 billion available capital at hand in Apr/6 of the first year (if don't care about over-priced stock purchase, it could be done sooner in March with less gain). And due to I merger with stock-focused corporations, It took a little more starting capital to takeover the initial target company, however I do get some stock assets afterward. And the funny thing is due to I didn't burn through the target company B enough, it could actually survive afterward, just massive in debt with loans.

Yah, I just realise that in custom game, subsidiary can issue share to parents many times in a day.
It is very different in the challenge game which around 2 month can issue share.

I remember in previous patch, there was this limitation, is it has been removed? or maybe I remember wrongly?

[counting]

And here is the save with 328% difficulty and very high AI starting capital, I only burn through 20 times in step 5, get a billion out of it (you could gain more with more burn through). And due to the inflated assets after the merger, I'm able to take 2.3 billion bank loan, result in over 3 billion available capital at hand in Apr/6 of the first year (if don't care about over-priced stock purchase, it could be done sooner in March with less gain). And due to I merger with stock-focused corporations, It took a little more starting capital to takeover the initial target company, however I do get some stock assets afterward. And the funny thing is due to I didn't burn through the target company B enough, it could actually survive afterward, just massive in debt with loans.

Yah, I just realise that in custom game, subsidiary can issue share to parents many times in a day.
It is very different in the challenge game which around 2 month can issue share.

I remember in previous patch, there was this limitation, is it has been removed? or maybe I remember wrongly?

Only issuing to public has limit, not issuing to parent company. It's meant for easier merger, but also creating loopholes in the process.

[Berbe]

The process is similar to the old method, and not only "burn cash" from your subsidiaries, but "burn through them into massive debts" :
1) Pause the game at day 1, buy a corporation A over 50%,
2) make corporation A issuing enough shares to your own company over 75% and above, as many as possible. Don't mind the negative cash in your own corporation.
3) Using corporation A to buy corporation B just over 50%
4) Using corporation B to buy corporation C just over 50%, if corporation B doesn't have enough cash, issuing its shares to corporation A, but remember not too many just enough.
5) Make corporation C issuing enough shares to corporation B, as much as possible, and make corporation B going into as many debts as possible. So corporation C can accumulate enough cash.
6) When you feel the embezzlement is enough, make Corporation B sells all its corporation C shares to tank its stock price.
6) Using corporation A to buy corporation C's tanked share cheap, over 75%, preferably all the public share. If A runs out of cash, just get more from your own corporation by issuing shares.
7) Corporation A sells all the corporation B share, and merger with C, preferably using cash, but gaining enormously more cash from corporation C's embezzlement.
8) Your own corporation merger with the rich corporation A by issuing share. And with plenty of cash, you can buy out all the shareholders and gain 100% share control.

The amount you will get depends on how many times you repeat issuing shares in step 5 and embezzlement from corporation B, but usually you need to issue at least 20 times to get 1 billion in the end. And since B is heavily in the red, it will go bankrupt immediately the next day, but no matter since all its debts are now your cash.

I tested this at the start of the Legendary Investor scenario.

It worked, although:

1. At step #6, when the stock price becomes really low, other investors kick in to buy share every time you sell a 5% slice. Wince you cannot buy shares from C with A before B sold all its stock, you cannot prevent that.
   As a consequence, less than 50% (usually ~40%) of C shares are publicly available, making the act of A buying 75% of it way more expensive than planned, thus making A issue shares to you company, augmenting your debt.
2. At step #7, the merger of A with C makes even more shares needed to be issued to your company. Since you already did that qui extensively at step #6, you need to issue less shares with a higher price+premium, so these chares become really expensive to pay by your company
3. At step #8, the money you leveraged from the stock manipulation absorbs your now quite high debt, making the you final cash reserve much lower than estimated (in my attempts from the same savegame Company C had always leveraged ~$2B, my company always ends up ~$500M). And that is before you attempt buying you shares back!
   You cannot do this last part of step #8 because the CEO of company A gets the equivalent of his/her shares translated from the now defunct company A to yours. Because of the high shares dilution of your multiple issuance of shares from A to your company, you own a lower percentage of your company stock than this company A CEO, putting you in danger. This prevents you from buying your own share because you need to buy public ones before buying from an individual, and the relative proportion of ownership from every shareholder being constant, you will eventually lose control of your corporation (thus the game) before being able to do so.
   Theoretically, without this major blow to the scheme, I would have used ~$150M to buy back share, leaving me with a net benefit of ~$350M. Not bad, but not exceptional either.