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Hello everybody! I'll start by explaining some really basic things, for people who haven't even heard of it. The somewhat more advanced players can just scroll down to the real deal :P Enjoy!
What is the stock market?
For anyone who has never ever heard of a thing called 'stock market' before: The stock market is a place where you can buy shares of several companies in Neopia. The good thing is that you can also sell them again, so you can make profit. We will get to this later.
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Where is the stock market?
The stock market is in the games room at the bottom of the page. Click on that annoying little Chia and there you are! Or just click here.
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So, how does the getting rich the easy way thing work?
It's very simple and quite hard at the same time. The key to making money with stocks is to buy low and to sell high.
I'll give you a small example. If you buy 1000 shares of, let say, PEOP at 15 neopoints per share, that will cost you 1000x15=15,000 neopoints. Time goes by as usual and a few days later you check your portfolio again. PEOP now costs 30 neopoints per share. You do a little happy dance and sell the stocks. This means that instead of 15k, you now have 30k (well, minus the 20np's Nigel the Chia charges you as commission).
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That sounds easy! So how do I buy shares?
First you have to go to the stock market page. Now follow these easy steps:
1. Click on 'Find Stocks' on the top of the page.
2. In order to get a list from all the companies you have to click on 'Click here for a full list'. (Click on 'here', or just here)
3. If you want to buy stocks from a company, click on the ticker symbol (next to the logo)
4. Some info about that company will now appear. You can read it, or just click on the bold name of the company.
5. Now you can type in the amount of shares you wish to buy. Click 'buy shares' and you're all done!
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Is it really that simple?
Well. Err. No, it isn't. The Neopets Team came up with some great rules to make things more difficult for stock brokers. I will explain the most important ones to you.
1. You can only buy 1000 shares a Neopian day. You don't have to buy them all at once, and also not from the same company, though I would advice you to do this. If you sell 1000 shares after you bought 1000 shares, this does NOT mean that you can buy another 1000 shares!
2. You can only buy shares that cost 15 neopoints per share or more. Since stocks can go as low as 1 and then back up as high as 300, it wouldn't be fair if you could buy them for less than 15np/ps. At least, that's what TNT thinks.
Some good news:
You can sell as much stocks a day as you like, so don't worry about that. I will tell you all about selling stocks later.
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Which stock should I buy?
This is entirely up to you, but I do have some great tips for you.
1. If you are looking at the full list of companies, look for stocks that are at 15 neopoints per share. You can see the current price of the stocks at the column that says 'curr'. I will explain what the other columns mean later.
2. If there aren't any stocks selling at 15 neopoints per share, look for stocks that are at 16. If there aren't any of those, look for stocks that are at 17np/ps. You can also decide to wait for the next update (every 30 minutes) and see if any stock near 15 has gone down or up to that magic number.
3. Don't let stocks that have red numbers next to them scare you. The stock market is an unpredictable place. All the stocks can go up and down again.
4. It is a good idea to buy 1000 shares of one company each day. If you just buy small amounts of shares of several companies, the profit won't be worth it. If you don't have 15k a day, just buy as much from one company as you can manage.
5. Don't put all your eggs into one basket. Try to build a broad portfolio of at least 10 companies. If you have achieved this, you can start buying more of what you already have. If you only have 8 companies in your portfolio and the only stock at 15 neopoints per share is a stock you already have shares in, you may of course buy more of this one.
Here's a great link to all the 'bargain' stocks
There are two different kind of stocks. I call them the tortoises and the hares. Tortoises are stocks that move really slowly. They don't go up or down much for a long period of time. This does not mean that it's a bad thing to buy into this stocks, but you do have to be alot more patient.
A few famous examples:
AAVL
DROO
VPTS
Hares are fast stocks that tend to go up to a good selling point and down to a good buying point (15np/ps) in a small period of time. This is the biggest group, in which almost every stock fits. They usually cycle between 6-30 neopoints per share and sometimes go alot higher than 30.
There is one exception and this is POWR, short for Power-X Corp. This is a hyperstock that usually costs about 550 to 600 neopoints per share. If you're just starting out, this is not a good stock to invest in. Even I don't invest in POWR, because it's just as unpredictable as any other stock, but there are alot more Neopoints involved :P
I shall also give you a list of my personal favorite stocks. This does not mean that you are definitely going to make a huge profit out of them, but I did in the past, so you'll never know.
EEEEE
NATN
PEOP
AAVL (ah, yes, a tortoise)
LUPE
KSON
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So, I've bought a few stocks, what's next?
Ok, I'm going to bring this to you loud and clear, so you won't miss it.
BE PATIENT!
The stock market isn't a miraculous place that will make you rich in just a few days. You will have to wait for several weeks, sometimes months or even years before a stock reaches a good selling point.
What is a good selling point, you may wonder. Well, you can make this up for yourself. If you're just starting out and you don't have alot of neopoints on your bank account, it might be a good idea to set your selling point at 30 neopoints per share. If you bought at 15, this means you have doubled your investment. This can make it easier for you to keep buying 1000 shares a day. When you've been playing for a while, or if you don't have any trouble with spending 15k a day, you can make your selling point a bit higher. For instance 45np/ps. This will triple your investment. More experienced (and patient) players have their selling point at 60np/ps or higher.
The one true rule at this point is: If you're happy with the profit, then sell!
The hard thing about this is that a stock can climb up to just one tiny point under your selling point, and then fall back down again. Never sell a stock because it's going down. And even more important, never ever EVER sell a stock because it's in the red numbers and falling. Only a few stocks have gone bankrupt over the years, to be exact, only 8 of them since the market has been open. If you listened to my advice and didn't put all your eggs in one basket, the loss of just one stock won't be that bad (unless you invested 4 million in it, of course).
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I've waited and waited, and now a stock has reached my selling point. How do I sell this stock?
Hooray! It's finally time to get the big profit! Here's how the selling process works:
1. Go to your portfolio.
2. Right next to the 'icon' of the stocks you can see a grey arrow/triangle on it's side. Chose the stock you would like to sell and click the arrow.
3. If you've bought more than 1000 shares, you can see that every different purchase is shown separately. This comes in handy when you want to sell just a part of the shares. For instance when a stock is rising fast and hits your selling point, but you don't want to sell everything, in case it goes even higher.
4. In the box under 'sell' you can type in the amount of shares you wish to sell.
5. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and hit 'sell shares'.
Important!
As I told you before, Nigel the Chia charges 20np commission per sale. So make sure that you have this amount in cash before you sell your stocks. 20nps isn't much, but if you want to sell stocks from more than one company, do it all at once, so you only have to pay this commission one time.
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And now over to some quick questions alot of people have asked me before:
Are the companies and the price of their shares related to the shops in Neopia?
No, they are not. In fact, most of the companies that you find in the stock market can't be found anywhere else in Neopia. So SWNC (Shop Wizard N-Commerce) doesn't go up if you search for items 2,000 times a day.
Does the Neopet stock market work like the real stock market?
The Neopian economy is way to small for the stock market to work like the real stock market. For people who don't know how this works: If alot of people buy from one stock, the price of that stock will go up. It used to be like this, but alot of people were able to cheat. For instance a whole guild would buy into the same stock and then they would sell it again after the price had gone up rapidly. Everybody caught doing that got frozen and TNT changed the rules.
Now the stock market is, as far as we know, completely random. For all we know, TNT just throws darts every morning to decide which stock is going to rise and which is going to fall.
IMPORTANT:
Due to this, you should never ever believe anyone if they say a stock is going to skyrocket. They don't know either. And another person who tends to give the wrong advice is Nigel the Chia. He's a sneaky little liar and you should never follow his advice :D
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Now on to the most difficult part of the stock market. What do all these crazy numbers mean?
I took some screenshots to make things more clear.
The first screenshot is made of the Full list of stocks page.
As you can see there are five columns. The first three columns are very easy.
1. The logo of the company.
2. The Ticker of the company. The Ticker is the abbreviation used to designate a company. For instance AAVL for Alien Aisha Vending Ltd.
3. The name of the company.
Now we get to the interesting numbers.
4. The volume of shares. This number consists of the total amount of shares of that company, owned by all the stock brokers together. If a stock is very cheap, but still buyable (15np/ps) then this number will be high. As a stock hits 30, this number will start to fall, and as the stock price rises, the volume will decrease. If you are looking at several choices of stocks that are at 15np/ps, it is a good idea to follow the crowd!
5. Open. At the beginning of yet another wonderful Neopian day, this was the price of the stock.
6. Curr(ent). This is the price you should be looking at when you're buying stocks. If a number in this list is 15, then it's a good choice to buy!
More crazy numbers: Your portfolio.
Nine columns this time! I will explain them one by one again.
1. The logo of the company. Here you can also find the 'grey arrow' you need to click if you wish to sell a stock.
2. The Ticker of the company. The Ticker is the abbreviation used to designate a company. For instance BOTT for Balthazars Faerie Bottling Inc.
3. Open. This is the same as in the full list of stocks screenie. The number under 'open' tells you at what price the stock was at the beginning of the Neopian day.
4. Current. This is the current price (or value) of the stock.
5. Chg. Change. This shows you the difference between the opening price and the closing price. In the screenie shown above you can see that BOTT opened at 15 and went down to 14. This means that the change is -1
6. Qty. Quantity. This is the amount of shares you have bought from this company.
7. Paid. This shows how much you've paid for that amount of shares. A neat stock should always show 'something' x 15,000.
8. Mkt. Value. This shows how much the shares you own are worth at this very moment.
9. % Change. In this column you can see how much percent a stock has gone up or down.
At the bottom you can see the totals of your portfolio. For example:
Totals: 100,000 | 1,500,000 | 3,000,000 | +100%
This means that you have bought a total of 100,000 shares. You paid 1,500,000 neopoints for that amount of shares and now they are worth 3,000,000.
I wish you all the best of luck with getting rich the lazy (but definitely not the easy) way! If you have any questions, just neomail me!
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