Insider Trading

[Zerico]

So with the stock market, being able to buy your own stock, and paying out dividends, is there any regulation on Insider trading.

For example, things are going well, you've got your play tab enabled and you're thinking about starting to offer a dividend. Can you buy a large number of your own stocks, offer a high dividend and recoup a portion of your money?

More over, can you make your company as sweet looking as possible, issue new stock, and then tank the stock after you collect the money, then buy your own stock with the profits at the lower price?

[Morpheus]

hm,

1) you can buy stocks of every company in the game until you get to 70%, or the rest of the shares is owned by the CEO of the company. if you do your sell button of this company gets deactivated for six hours/months. if you sell shares of a company its the buy button that gets deactivated.



2) during every turn, after everything (except the dividend) is calculated and updated, the game checks your company-wallet. if the balance is lower than the costs of the dividend, said thing gets set to zero. (due to some people paying four or five digit dividends and crashing their company^^).



3) the max dividend is set at 1$/share/month



4) you can only issue stock if

a) you own more than 50% of the shares

or

b) all shares are owned by players (so not "the public" or "private investors")



5) the max. market cap. is set to five times the net assets (book value)





so in between these rules you can play.


I)buying shares of ones own company and then raising the dividend is possible, even in the same turn

II)selling shares and then cutting the dividend is also possible

III) doing I or II causes you to be prevented from rebuying/selling the shares for six hours

IV) buying shares to raise the price and then issue new stock is possible

V) since this automated dividend Vs. wallet completly crashing a company just through the dividends should be impossible, but pumping all your companys money to the shareholders is possible, i think one or two people do that everytime after a boom.



overall

the first of your questions has to be answered with yes

the second with somewhat nes (yep a cross between no and yes). it depends what you think is tanking a company, the economy etc.



if i issue new stock and use the money to upgrade those trice damned computer lines, then my companys worth WILL go down. (each of those lines gets me at lvl 4 15 mill a month plus the profit at the shop and the different lines supplying it), but thats not really tanking the company, is it?

[Zerico]

Ah, I had not noticed those rules. (Sorry, I was a player early on, but went away for a while and just now exploring the new features of the game).

Alright, so how's this for an example, I can buy shares this turn. raise the divedend next turn just to the limit of the auto calculator. A few turns later after my stock price has gone up, I sell my shares, and zero out the dividends. I then idle all my lines and close my stores. No money coming in and upkeep costs going out lead to a lower stock price. A handful of turns, after my stock has dropped several dolars per share, I buy my stock again, restart my stores and factories and put up a small dividend. All in all this could take as long as a day.

Granted, you wouldn't want to do this over just a few dollars. To make this profitable, you'd need a big bank account.
Granted, the market would need to actually buy your shares.

And the dividend as a money maker isn't the biggie, it's just something to inflate the stock price prior to your selling.

[Morpheus]

Ah, I had not noticed those rules. (Sorry, I was a player early on, but went away for a while and just now exploring the new features of the game).

Alright, so how's this for an example, I can buy shares this turn. raise the divedend next turn just to the limit of the auto calculator. A few turns later after my stock price has gone up, I sell my shares, and zero out the dividends. I then idle all my lines and close my stores. No money coming in and upkeep costs going out lead to a lower stock price. A handful of turns, after my stock has dropped several dolars per share, I buy my stock again, restart my stores and factories and put up a small dividend. All in all this could take as long as a day.

Granted, you wouldn't want to do this over just a few dollars. To make this profitable, you'd need a big bank account.
Granted, the market would need to actually buy your shares.

And the dividend as a money maker isn't the biggie, it's just something to inflate the stock price prior to your selling.

but, due to the limited company lifespan it would cripple your max. end market cap, thus losing you more than you gained through this stunt^^

also youd better be online the whole time, since causing your company wallet to go deeply red through base-costs is still possible, and then you got a prob, since the negative wallet costs i think 13% penalty of the negative value.