There's nothing like the high energy of hectic trading on the stock market. To get a feel for financial adventure without endangering your savings account, just run the game Wall Street on this issues START disk. Like the real stock exchange; the market in Wall Street changes as a result of many different influences: anything from idle rumors to major mergers can send the bears hiding or the bulls charging!

You'll find the program for this article, WALLST.PRG, on your START disk.

On Black Monday-October 19, 1987-Wall Street was definitely not the place to be. That day the stock market dropped like a rock, fortunes were lost and the pillars of world finance were shaken.

Fortunately, you don't have to risk your life's savings for a taste of the financial fast lane. You can wheel and deal like the best financial wizards when you play Wall Street, the new game on this issue's START Disk.

WALL STREET
Wall Street is a stock market simulation that runs on any ST However, you must run the game in medium resolution, so you'll need a color monitor. (And if you have a Mega with a blitter chip, some of the screen displays look better if you turn it off before running the game.) To play Wall Street, copy the file WALLST.PRG to a fresh disk and then double-click on the WALLST.PRG icon.

The object of Wall Street is to begin with $10,000 and turn that into a million dollars in one year by buying and selling stock. The game is broken up into 52 trading weeks; each week you can use the Activity menu to buy and sell shares or consult a broker, or use the Index menu to study the market index to decide on the best investment strategy.

For example, to buy stock use the Activity menu to select Buy Shares. Click on a company name to see how many shares you can buy, then use the calculator to purchase the shares. You can sell shares in the same way using Sell Shares. To check the market index, drop down the Info menu and select Market Index, then click on which stock symbol at the bottom of the screen you want to check.

When you've finished trading for the week, click on Finish Trading on the Activity menu. A graph will show whether each stock price went up or down, and you'll see the current value of your portfolio. A pie chart shows how close you are to your goal of a million dollars. You can refer back to this screen at any point during the trading week by clicking on Present Status under the Info menu.

PLAYING THE MARKET
At the end of each quarter (that is, at weeks 13, 26, 39 and 52), you will receive interest on the amount of cash you have. You may also receive dividends on some of your stock (dividends are a stock's earnings over the latest quarter, and may be awarded as cash or as additional shares of stock). At the end of each year, the high scores over $50,000 are saved to disk. To view these scores, click on Top Ten Tycoons under the Info menu.

Wall Street will inform you of occasional market flurries. For example, the value of a stock can go sky-high very quickly as a result of a merger, takeover or high profits. In other cases a high-priced stock will be split to make it generally accessible: if a share was selling for $300, it may be split into 10. It will now sell for $30, and if you owned one share, you will now own 10 shares. Industry insiders may try to sway your buying decisions with Hot Tips; remember that these tantalizing pieces of advice can be wrong as often as they're right!

MARKET SAVVY
What influences a stock's price? The laws of supply and demand are the dominant forces, although the market changes according to such influences as business activity, stock performance, market conditions and investor optimism. To make a profit on the stock market, you have to buy your shares at as low a price as possible, and sell the shares later for a higher price.

"Buy low, sell high" works as a general rule, but at times you may want to sell a stock at a loss; if you feel that the stock is going to go lower, you will want to get out before you lose even more money. At other times, you may have your money tied up in a losing stock and be unable to act on a stock you feel is going to win. By selling one stock at a loss, you may be able to make a large profit on another.

If you're having trouble deciding which stocks to buy or sell, Wall Street offers you a choice of three different stockbrokers: Wildeyed Willy, Cautious Charlie and Nervous Norman. Each consultation costs $50. For this fee, the broker will examine and analyze all the reports and recommend a course of action on a particular stock. Click on the Consult A Broker option of the Activity menu. Click on the door of the broker you wish to consult, and the broker's advice will flash onto the screen.

If you trust your own judgment better than Wildeyed Willy's or Nervous Norman's, study the Market Index to pick the winners (and to avoid the losers). The Market Index presents a picture of each stock's performance over the course of the game. By examining each stock's index, you have a clear view of how well each company is performing. But remember that no matter how much you analyze the stock performances, luck can play an important role in your success or failure in the stock market.

THE WHIZ KID OF WALL STREET
Of course you want to make a name for yourself as the great whiz kid of Wall Street. Keep in mind that each stock performs in a unique manner- some will keep going up or down, some won't change too much and others will go through a variety of cycles.

You don't have to buy and sell constantly; sometimes the fastest way to make money on Wall Street is to hold onto the same stock for several weeks. On the other hand, you can lose a bundle by not dropping a lousy stock at the right time.

It would have been very easy to write a stock market program in which all the stocks behaved in a predictable manner. But it wouldn't have been very realistic. The real stock market isn't like that: each stock performs differently because a wholly different set of factors influences it. You can make educated guesses about what's going to happen, based on past experience and the company's track record, but the bottom line is: when it comes to market trading, an educated guess is just that-a guess.

After you've played Wall Street a few times you may feel you're ready to take on the real market. Just pack up your ST and bring it to the trading floor-and if you make your fortune on Wall Street, remember where you heard about it first!

Tony Lovell would like to express his thanks to Ken Shelson for his assistance on Wall Street.

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Tony Lovell is a professional fundraiser in Toronto. In his spare time he writes computer programs and film scripts.
 
 

If you enjoy Wall Street, you'll want to know that author Tony Lovell has created an enhanced version called Wall Street Wizard. Wall Street Wizard has all the fun and features of the START version plus margin trading, company financial reports and three levels of play. For ordering information, contact Tony Lovell, Lovell Marketing, 699 Eglinton Ave. West, Suite 207, Toronto, Ontario M5N 1C6, Canada.