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| Trading Simulator |
 Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 3:19 am Post subject: Trading Simulator Changes |
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Investing Sr. Associate
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| The trading simulator may be off-line for a bit this morning while we make some changes to the code. Thanks for your patience. |
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| Trading Simulator |
| Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 3:54 am Post subject: |
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Investing Sr. Associate
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All open positions have been closed.
There was one symbol NIKU that was not returning a value, nor could I find a value with a few minutes of research, so it was simply sold at the purchase price.
The e$ for the open positions have been refunded to your account.
The closed positions (including the ones closed during the game reset) have been archived to another database table, and the portfolio_holdings table has been emptied.
There are a few changes to be made to the trading system and we'll be back online. Thanks for your patience. |
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| Trading Simulator |
| Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 4:06 am Post subject: |
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Investing Sr. Associate
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According to the Yahoo web site, all options quotes end int .X. As per the eInvesting Administrator, options trading has been prohibited at this time. Because we can identify option quotes (as opposed to other OTC or .PK stocks) we do plan to reactivate options trading.
You can no longer buy stocks with a dot "." in their symbol. This will not prevent you from selling a stock that gets delisted, but you cannot purchase anything with a dot. Thus the importance of the .X for option symbols; we need to be able to tell the difference between OTC stocks and option quotes, and it appears that we will be able to do so.
Note: You can still get quotes for these items (options and "dot" stocks) but cannot complete a purchase.
You can no longer buy stocks that are priced below $2 per share. The intent of the trading simulator is to give you a way to try out investing strategies that you might use in the "real world". The assumption is that most folks would not be looking for cheap "penny stocks" as an investing opportunity, but more of a speculative purchase instead. For that reason this limit has been put in place. We do, of course, reserve the right to change or remove this limit at any time.
The trading simulator will be back online shortly. |
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| Trading Simulator |
| Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 4:19 am Post subject: Trading Sim Back On-line |
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Investing Sr. Associate
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We should be good to go with the simulator updates.
As noted elsewhere, we will be recoding the portfolio % return calculations and rolling out those changes before the end of the month. |
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| Grimreaper |
| Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 4:42 am Post subject: |
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CFO
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If I wanted to it appears I could have bought DDIC at 1.69 today, so i don't believe the bugs are worked out yet, it also appears that you are allowing buys only at what the current market price is based on your 15-20 minute time delay, if that's the case it's fine with me, but don't mislead the new fokes into thinking your simulator is realistic, buying stocks on a 20 minute time delay is not realistic, especially if you can buy after hours at the closing prices  |
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| Benjamin |
| Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 5:02 am Post subject: |
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Administrator
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Actually it's up to 1.70 now. 
You can see what the stock is worth, but if you try to put the trade though it is not allowed. Give it a try if you like.
Well, the delay is so you can't look at realtime stats and cheat. As far as 24 hours trading goes I believe members should have access to the portfolio at all times. If you don't have access to a computer during the day you can still make moves after hours. Think of it as putting the trades in for the next day at the current price.
It may not be 100% realistic...it is of course a simulator. But this game should be fun. |
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| Grimreaper |
| Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 5:12 am Post subject: |
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CFO
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OK, I didn't put in the order because I didn't want to start off the new game by cheating  if I am understanding you correctly I will be allowed to buy any stock that trades above 2.00 at the closing price, even if the stock is driven up 30%+ on some sort of AH news, is that correct? if it is it means that you can use the time delay to cheat, (ex. stock X closes at 2.00 and gets an AH buyout bid from company Y at 3.00, I can buy company X at 2.00 and then sell the open during regular hours to bank the gain) explain to me how the time delay is going to prevent cheating  |
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| Benjamin |
| Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 5:35 am Post subject: |
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Administrator
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Oh sure, just tell everyone another way to cheat. 
It's not perfect, but this is how it'll go for now.
If we notice someone trading this way just to make cheap gains action will be taken. |
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| Grimreaper |
| Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 5:42 am Post subject: |
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CFO
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I just pointed out the most obvious way to cheat, it isn't something that anyone hellbent on cheating wasn't going to figure out eventually, hopefully you will keep a careful watch over the top 20 traders to see if there is any rampant cheaters on the list, you don't want the top traders at your site to look like the top 10 at this site: www.clearstation.com, that's what happens when you are allowed to buy/short on a 20 minute time delay, especially when you can buy at yesterday's price based on today's breaking news  |
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| Trading Simulator |
| Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 7:27 am Post subject: |
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Investing Sr. Associate
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| Quote: | | If I wanted to it appears I could have bought DDIC at 1.69 today, so i don't believe the bugs are worked out yet, |
You can get quotes for anything you want. You cannot place trades if your stock falls outside of the allowed parameters.
| Quote: | | it also appears that you are allowing buys only at what the current market price is based on your 15-20 minute time delay, |
That is the way it has always worked. Unless someone can find a free real-time quote engine that supports remote queries (like Yahoo) it will always be that way.
| Quote: | | if that's the case it's fine with me, but don't mislead the new fokes into thinking your simulator is realistic, buying stocks on a 20 minute time delay is not realistic, especially if you can buy after hours at the closing prices |
At the current time trades are still completed at the time you place them. The Yahoo quotes are 15-20 minute delayed, so yes, you could play the 20 minute swings in prices and make some small change.
We are working on the design for a way to add a delay to the trading simulator so that all trades are placed on a 20 minute delay (meaning they match the quotes, so if you have access to real time quotes you can't use the advance info to make trades) and a time window. Meaning you will only be able to trade when the market is open. You can enter orders anytime you want to, but they will only be executed when the market is open.
This will allow us to prevent people from making big trades on after hours price changes. It will also allow us to do limit versus market orders and any of a number of "real-world" trading options that we would not be able to do otherwise. The challenge with limit orders is to find out how a stock has traded "through" a range, and not just above or below it.
Bottom line: the changes for this month are incremental. More changes are planned. |
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| Grimreaper |
| Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2005 7:36 am Post subject: |
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CFO
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| Great, just allowing trades during regular hours would eliminate most of the big problems, if you put in a buy order after the markets are closed you should get the opening price the stock trades at. |
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| Trading Simulator |
| Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 10:45 am Post subject: |
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Investing Sr. Associate
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| Grimreaper wrote: | | Great, just allowing trades during regular hours would eliminate most of the big problems |
Trading is now allowed on Mon - Fri between the hours of 9 to 4 Central Time (where our server is located). We will not allow trades after 3:59 PM or before 9:00 AM on market days. Note that this does not handle "short days" (there are often half-day trading sessions) or holidays but it's a start, and it will prevent people from issuing "buy" orders outside of allowed trading ranges. These changes are in place as of now, although they have not been fully tested. I will attempt to make some trades in about 20 minutes and see what happens.
| Quote: | | if you put in a buy order after the markets are closed you should get the opening price the stock trades at. |
This will have to wait until the trading "queue" system goes into affect later this month. Note that the portfolio return % numbers will change once the trading engine is replaced. Those with multiple small profitable trades will do better under the new system, as their "total" portfolio return will be calculated rather than the average of their trades. |
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| Grimreaper |
| Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 11:21 am Post subject: |
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CFO
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| I think what you just said means that you will only allow trading after your simulator begins updating prices actively during each trading day, is that correct? |
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| Trading Simulator |
| Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 2:33 pm Post subject: |
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Investing Sr. Associate
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| Grimreaper wrote: | | I think what you just said means that you will only allow trading after your simulator begins updating prices actively during each trading day, is that correct? |
Ummm, no. The simulator updates prices whenever someone asks for them, whether you're getting a quote prior to making a trade, or during the portfolio update process. What has changed is that you will not be able to enter orders before 10:00 eastern or after 5:00 eastern time. The simulator will simply reject your trade.
Where you might be getting confused is the talk about the trading "queue", where all orders will be placed on a 20-minute delayed basis. This will eliminate the 20 minute "advantage" that free real-time quote servers provide, and prevent someone from making a lot of very short 20-minute trades just to play the difference between "now" and "20 minutes ago" quotes. This system is currently in development, and we hope to have it in place later this month.
Once that system is in place, we plan to look at introducing limit orders, stop-loss orders, short sales, and possibly bringing back options trading. |
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| Trading Simulator |
| Posted: Sun Aug 21, 2005 3:42 pm Post subject: |
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Investing Sr. Associate
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Starting Monday, Aug 22, we will be testing our order queue. Here's how it works.
As you may know, we use Yahoo quotes to drive our trading simulator. Yahoo quotes are 15-20 minutes delayed, depending on the market. For this reason, and industrious person could monitor real-time quotes and make a nice return by trading on that advanced knowledge. Our orders were placed at the quoted price immediately so you could buy something that you know is going to go up in the next 20 minutes and make a profit.
While it's not realistic, our solution to that issue is to put all orders into a queue and process them 20 minutes later. So if you do have access to real-time quotes (and there are plenty out there) you can see what the stock is trading at "now" and place your order. When our quotes catch up to the real-time data (20 minutes later) then the order will be filled.
Essentially we've put the entire market, not just quotes, on a 20 minute delay.
What happens to the order once it goes into the queue? There is a process that runs continuously from market open to close, Mon-Fri. This process checks the queue every 60 seconds and fills the buy / sell orders. What happens if something happens to that process and it dies? A secondary process starts every 15 minutes to check on the first one. If the first one has died due to an error of some sort, then the new process kicks in. Given that we're on a 20 minute delay and we're never more than 15 minutes from a restart on the queue monitor, I think that's a reasonable solution.
For the first few days this week your orders will be processed as previously, meaning immediate. After a few days of testing, we'll cut over to the delayed orders. All orders will be market orders, meaning that the quote you see when you place the order will likely not be the quote used to fill your order, so please keep that in mind. If you don't have enough funds to cover your buy 20 minutes later, your order will not be filled. The system will attempt to fill the order 3 times before it gives up and cancels your order.
We will be building an order queue monitor for each user. You can use this to monitor the status of your open orders, and even to cancel an order if you change your mind. This system is still being developed, and may or may not be ready this month.
We will also be using the order queue to provide limit order trading in the future. Limit orders are not a feature of the current update.
Any questions, just ask.  |
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